Macbook

Until now, all notebooks were designed the same way.

By assembling multiple pieces to create a single enclosure. But once you include all the necessary parts, you add size, weight, complexity, and more opportunities for failure. Solving a problem like this required more than an incremental change. It required a breakthrough. To create the new MacBook, the design and engineering teams devised a way to replace many parts with just one. That one part is called the unibody — a seamless enclosure carved from a single piece of aluminum. Of course, building only one part creates its own set of challenges. When you have multiple parts that are fastened together, tolerances don’t need to be perfect. You have wiggle room, both literally and figuratively. But when one part is responsible for many functions, it’s critical to manufacture that part with absolute precision, down to the micron. Every time. Millions of times over. There was only one way to achieve this level of precision: mill the unibody from a solid block of aluminum using computer numerical control, or CNC, machines — the kind used by the aerospace industry to build mission-critical spacecraft components. When you pick up a new MacBook, you immediately notice the difference. The entire enclosure is thinner and lighter. It looks polished and refined. And it feels strong and durable — perfect for life inside (and outside) your briefcase or backpack.