Actually, I was looking at a linear spring for a solenoid. The high Young's modulus makes it a good candidate for such applications, where linearity of force over displacement is important.
Nobody's put much effort into it yet. Apple has a long history with new materials. I bet you were a LiquidMetal fan until Apple got involved.
Pure BS. LiquidMetal has been around for a decade, they've pushed it all over the place, and no one really has bought off on it. Vertu did, for some of their cell phones (making Apple a Johnny-come-lately to that application), but in terms of bigger uses? Few and far between.
Regular metals don't cast very well due to their crystal structure. There are various methods to overcome many of the problems, most of which involve more time, effort and expense. Apple is not going to intricately investment cast 20+ million consumer products a year.
REALLY? What's your background? It's clear you're not involved in manufacturing or casting of products. The minimum size of details that you can cast with most metals is on the order of 0.5 mils, with wall thicknesses of about 20 mils. LiquidMetal doesn't help that at all. You're well ABOVE the range of crystalline structures (typically 8-10 microns) inside the steel.
You know what you've read on their website, and have nothing to base it on. Other than Apple is using it therefore it must be the Greatest Thing Ever.
Apple moved away from plastic for good reasons
Yeah, they like to be different...
the aesthetics
Sure, it looks different than plastic.
heat conductance
BS. Glass and steel are TERRIBLE conductors of heat; carbon infused plastics - or thin-wall plastics - are better conductors and radiators of heat. Your ignorance is showing...
and strength just isn't there
How much strength is required? There are thin phones made from plastic bodies all the time. The Motorola RAZR for instance, and it didn't have a problem with shattering and breaking.
The reason Apple's using glass and metal has NOTHING to do with engineering and EVERYTHING to do with looks. They talk about engineering reasons, and people like you swallow it up, but real engineers know it's all just fluff to cover up "hey it looks cool".
machining is expensive
Yes, it is. Which is why you can cast those parts if you know what the heck you're doing. Casting the details needed inside a cell phone component, or small portable product is not difficult if you know what the heck you're doing. It's done quite often with laptops and radios.
So Apple is looking for a metal that can be manufactured as cheaply and accurately as a plastic
That's not LiquidMetal. It's as expensive as any other typical casting metal (it's basically a slightly different alloy with a different quenching process), and the license fees are added on top of it. The higher costs - and nothing really special in terms of Young's modulus and overall strength - are the reasons no one else has really started to use it.
That Apple has been playing with this stuff for a couple years and just decided to dump a ton of money on an exclusive license pretty much shows Apple found some great uses for it.
Yes. A large segment of their fanbois will slobber over the "new stuff" and claim "it's the greatest stuff ever!" and give Apple another marketing point.
So what about the fact that Vertu was using this 5 years ago? Does that mean Apple was stupid for the last 5 years, since it's been out and used in cell phones for that long? Was Apple dumb to not use it in all their iPhones? Clearly the ability to BE used in a phone has been around at least as long as the idea of the iPhone...
They did it for a $6,000 phone that was said to be extremely durable because of it. Apple is planning to use this massively where most people can afford it. Companies have used machined metal for consumer electronics, too, like Mobiado. Price? Well, you can buy a "Mobiado" for an average cell phone price from the same places that will sell you a Breitling watch for $100. Nobody did it as the major part of mass-produced consumer electronics before Apple as far as I know.
The minimum size of details that you can cast with most metals is on the order of 0.5 mils, with wall thicknesses of about 20 mils. LiquidMetal doesn't help that at all.
LiquidMetal's alloys help for speed and expense. Most consumer electronics are made using injection molded plastic for a reason -- it's cheap, fast and easy to manufacture complex shapes. Yes, you can get some extremely fine cast metals that usually need only minor finishing. These are not cheap, fast and easy to do. LiquidMetal didn't invent amorphous alloys either, but the founders did invent a way of making them relatively cheaply and in volume.
Yeah, they like to be different...
Turns out that makes for excellent profits compared to the run-of-the-mill competition.
Other than Apple is using it therefore it must be the Greatest Thing Ever.
I'd love to hear your opinion if HTC or Moto had done this. You probably love machined aluminum now that HTC is doing it.
Glass and steel are TERRIBLE conductors of heat
Yet so much better than most plastics.
How much strength is required? There are thin phones made from plastic bodies all the time.
There are many applications where amorphous metals are not a good idea, but consumer electronics practically begs for it. My SanDisk USB drive was virtually indestructible, even even going through the washer and dryer. Otherwise I've cracked, broken and seriously scratched up many consumer electronics plastics. I have destroyed so many, yet my mostly-metal Aiwa tape player from the 80s still works and even survived a war (I once bent the metal lid so that it wouldn't close by dropping it down a concrete stairwell, and simply bent it back with a pair of pliers). Toughness and scratch resistance are two of the properties of Vitreloy. Apple would like products that don't scratch, break, crack or deform easily when you drop them.
The reason Apple's using glass and metal has NOTHING to do with engineering and EVERYTHING to do with looks.
That aluminum is why Apple laptops are so thin and sturdy. I can apply twisting pressure to the average laptop that's even thicker than a MacBook and it'll creak and twist. Not the MacBook Pro, even at 1" thick with a 17" screen it's solid. In addition, the bodies are machined with all the holes, supports, wire guide channels, etc., that will be needed to drop-in the motherboard and other parts and cables. Contrast with traditional design, requiring separate frame and plastic case parts.
Think of how monocoque revolutionized aircraft. Apple did that for notebooks.
Apple decided to move to glass specifically because field tests of the iPhone, which was originally designed with a plastic screen, resulted in an unacceptable level of scratching on the screen. Apple went even further this generation by using Corning Gorilla Glass (which has been in consumer electronics use since last year). If your favorite manufacturer has lower standards, and will thus accept plastic screens, that's your problem.
It's as expensive as any other typical casting metal
As if the price of the metal were as important as how fast and cheaply it can be accurately formed into complex shapes. Injection molding isn't cheap because the plastic is cheap. Injection molding is cheap because once you have the molds set up you can make millions of complex parts with high tolerances in a relatively short time. Apple wants that, but with metal.
Apple has a long history of inventing new manufacturing methods and materials. It will be interesting to see what happens here. Like I said, they wouldn't be jumping in with this kind of cash if they didn't already have something down. This total exclusive buy-out of their technology for consumer electronics is on the level of a flat-out acquisition, and Apple is notoriously stingy with the money on that level. For reference, Microsoft and Apple are almost the same age, and Microsoft has made almost two hundred acquisitions and stake purchases. Apple is around 30.
Interestingly, when I just looked up those relative investments (I know Apple was stingy, but wanted numbers), I found they bought a stake in Imagination. They make the GPU in the better smartphones and the video decoder in the A4. So now Apple has stakes in ARM and Imagination, plus bought PA Semi and Intrinsity. Not only that but Apple and Intel were battling to see who could buy the most shares of Intrinsity a while back.
What all that means is that despite your desire to portray Apple as a superficial design company, they are obviously bulking up on the hard-core engineering end of the spectrum. You forget that Apple was founded on innovative hardware design with Woz's first Apple I board, which many referred to as a beautiful work of art. To you it's probably boring. To us geeks, the efficiency and simplicity is what makes it beautiful.