[nrp]

The note on Apple seems implausible. Apple (among other top consumer electronics OEMs) have fairly robust quality control processes that are specifically designed to catch falsification/errors in testing on an ongoing basis. Components and modules are inspected and tested both outgoing from a supplier and incoming at the final assembler, and the full product is also tested at multiple points (usually with both built in self tests and external automated fixtures or operators). In addition to that, units will get pulled on a sampling basis for much more thorough inspection, usually by people employed or contracted by the OEM separately from the final assembler. In addition to that, field failures are tracked. In all of this, each step is fully traceable down to which individual operators and fixtures went into each assembly and test step. You can be sure that if a supplier is found cheating the spec, they’re not getting business from that OEM again and may have additional damages depending on the contract. YMMV if you’re buying stuff from brands you’ve never heard of from Amazon marketplace sellers, but any major OEM works like this.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

I think you are writing about some past entity which has morphed into something different which has only the brand in common with that past. Or how else do you explain: 4min,45sec youtube video 'Louis opens new Macbook Air, immediately loses mind.'

[1] https://youtu.be/iiCBYAP_Sgg

where said Louis discovers placebo cooling.

This is broken by design. They should apply quality control to their minds, because no amount of that elsewhere can fix that.

[amatecha]

I mean, he doesn't make any genuine effort to actually try to make sense of it. From what I can surmise, the case is presumably "air-tight" except the air ducts along the back edge, and the fan will pull air through the case and over the heatsink. That said, that doesn't necessarily mean it's effective enough, as we can see! hahah :P

[nrp]

You can only dissipate so much heat passively conducted through the surface of the device before the temperature of either the internal components or the surface of the case exceeds what is safe. Getting around that often just means having some amount of forced air to carry heat away. In this case, it's a blower that pulls air in from vents, pulls it over various parts of the cavity (including some amount over that heatsink), and exhausts it out. Given how low the TDP of the CPU in a MacBook Air is, the thermal budget presumably balances.

[winrid]

The fan should draw air over the heatsink right? Also that CPU has a 7.5w TDP. Your phone's cpu probably runs at 5w and has no fan.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

The CPUs in phones have some sort of TIM (thermal interface material) applied to them, and are either in direct contact with the inner side of the case, or a heatpipe which dissipates the heat elsewhere, over a larger area. This does nothing of that. It's just sitting there simmering nicely. The only reason i can think of is that they recycled most of a former model, and then shrank the cpu-board which then didn't reach unter the vent anymore.

But how did they even manage to oversee that during testing?

HOW?

[AFascistWorld]

It all sounds awesome, just like the records kept for every single step of production in that PCB factory, how-to instructions for every single action, I mean it's eye-opening how many records Japanese factories keep, except it was all useless at least in that case and in its intended purpose. Workers would check if the fake data seem reasonable and do faking blitz before inspections. The factory had only one incident in which it paid damages for high frequency interference issues to a Japanese TV maker.

Rebellious middle school drop-out (no offence) workers earning basic income plus 1.5x overtime wages for 12 hours a day 6 days a week won't take any of that seriously, schedule and cost are always of higher priority.

In the story of iWatch, the two groups of independent contractors use their barely working equipment to do seal test, the equipment is so bad that it returns different results even for a same watch part, but hey we gotta make it work, so their tech guy wrote code to always return results that are up to standards.

[baybal2]

> Rebellious middle school drop-out (no offence) workers earning basic income plus 1.5x overtime wages

It's very ironic that when you are going to a higher tier contract manufacturer, you can expect worse results these days.

We often work with small contract manufacturers who very narrowly specialise in high value and low volume runs.

They have very competitive HR policy for good assembly line workers, and are meticulous on work hygiene (like strict 8h shifts, mandatory physical exam, mandatory P.E. and rests.) CNY15000 for a professionally educated assembly line worker with 4-5 years of experience and proof of skills is not a rarity there.

Same with SMT technicians industry wide. Up to date training certificates + 5-7 years of work experience on high end equipment sets CNY15000 as a minimum for a good professional. SMT technicians make higher net salaries in China now than in USA! Totally true, go google it.

You think cost? We don't give a square f* about that when labour on even low volume and poorly mechanised production runs makes less than 10% of product value. Dramatically lower return rates and faster turnovers pay for that like 10 times over.