Apple Places a Job Listing For Plastic Design Engineer, Hinting a New Cheaper Plastic Body iPhone

Apple today posted a new job listing for Manufacturing Design Engineer with a focus in Advanced Plastic Tooling and Process. According to the job description, Apple is looking to expand and improve its current plastics division.

Identify, develop and launch new tooling and process capabilities in support of new Apple product developments. Areas of focus will be "non-traditional" Apple plastic processing such as thermoforming, foam molding, blow molding, etc., and their application to new Apple products. The successful candidate will have demonstrated history of bringing new process and tooling technologies through a full development cycle and launch into high volume production.

Though Apple has focused heavily on aluminum for the iPad, the iPhone, and the MacBook line for the past few years, the Cupertino-based company has continued used plastics for the Apple TV, the Airport Extreme, keyboards, and other accessories.

Recent rumors have suggested that Apple is working on a low cost iPhone that will be constructed primarily of plastic. The iPhone is said to be a hybrid of the iPhone 5 and the iPod Touch, with a plastic enclosure.

A new hire specializing in plastics is unlikely to be involved in the design of the low cost iPhone, given that it is rumored to be released later this year, but the open position does support reports that Apple is focusing on novel uses of plastics for upcoming products. [MacRumors]

You can follow me on Twitter, add me to your circles on Google+ or Subscribe to me on FaceBook or YouTube. You can also check my Website and Blog to keep yourself updated with what is happening in the ever changing world of technology

The Truth About Android is That it's Cheap, Not Good

When Android first appeared I had an inkling that it would be a hit. I didn’t enjoy the early incarnations of the software – the G1 was like a Sidekick on steroids – but generally I expected Android devices to blanket the world for one simple reason: it was free and carriers no longer had to worry about Java stacks and wonky, homebrew OSes. Instead they could sell phones that worked, approximately, like every other Android phone in the world. It was Google’s gift to an industry that was facing competition from all angles.

And that plan worked. But I always wondered if my “free” hypothesis held water.

Today Sam Biddle at Gizmodo published a great examination of just what makes Android so popular – the phones it comes on are cheap and, as such, are popular with a wide tranche of users. While the iPhone (with its black metal and fancy glass face) costs $299 on a good day and $500 on a day when you’re not out of contract, devices like the Motorola Atrix HD costs 99 cents with contract.

Writes Biddle:

The split between the ever-pricey, ever-coveted, newly chamfered iPhone and everything else is glaring: The iPhone is universally considered good. A lot more Android phones are considered good enough—or, more to the point, good enough for what they cost. And it’s that trait more than any new feature that’s guaranteeing Google its role as Phonemaker of The People, a democratic gadget, while Apple succeeds only in cementing its grandfathered slot in the gilded pockets of the overly-discerning overclass.

In short, when it comes to phone popularity, Google is doing everything right by essentially giving the OS away to all comers. This is essentially “Free As In Beer” software that allows manufacturers to slap a solid, usable OS into a slow, wonky phone and sell it for pennies. The resulting popularity, then, of Android (and Samsung) is driven less by the high end but by the low.

Biddle goes a bit more into detail in his post, but I think it’s important to remember this extremely important distinction between iOS and Android. While Android is winning – and that’s unequivocally true – it is winning by Hoovering up the low end of the market. Barring the beautiful flagship phones that cause even me, an inveterate iPhoneboy, to salivate, Android is scorching the earth by being the cheapest and not the best. Once it gets both of those factors right, however, watch out. RIM and Microsoft will be flattened and Apple, even given all of its die-hard fans, will finally see true competition. As any booze hound will tell you, there’s good whiskey and there’s cheap whiskey and rarely, is there good cheap whiskey. Google needs to hit that sweet spot and then the market will really take off. [TechCrunch]

You can follow me on Twitter, add me to your circles on Google+ or Subscribe to me on FaceBook or YouTube. You can also check my Website and Blog to keep yourself updated with what is happening in the ever changing world of technology

The Cheap iPhone is Rumoured To Have a Plastic Body To Save Costs

Apple's rumored entry-level iPhone reportedly may adopt plastic for its chassis instead of reinforced glass or unibody metal as in the company's standard iPhone models, to save cost, according to sources from the upstream supply chain. However, Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) declined to comment on its clients or orders when asked about the report.

The rumour in the supply chain is that the inexpensive iPhone chassis supplier will reportedly be a US-based electronic manufacturing service (EMS) provider.

However, other rumors are circulating that the entry-level iPhone will adopt a chassis mixed with plastic and metal, with the internal metal parts being able to be seen from outside through special design, the sources noted.

The sources pointed out that the related upstream components for the entry-level iPhone are currently going through validation and the actual product may show up in the market in the second half of 2013.

You can follow me on Twitter, add me to your circles on Google+ or Subscribe to me on FaceBook or YouTube. You can also check my Website and Blog to keep yourself updated with what is happening in the ever changing world of technology