[lylecheatham]

Apple actually gets a decent amount of coverage for their very impressive injection moldings. Most advancements in IM today are not in the ability to make complex parts, but more in the ability to make them pretty.

Apple makes many parts with extremely tight tolerances with almost no visual defects, and within the industry it's understood that it's extremely hard to make your IM parts look like Apple's for that reason.

[detaro]

Yes, even mainstream media covers that every now and then (e.g. "Apple just bought an entire company making X to make even better macbooks/iPhones/..."), but as the parent poster complained 3D printing is getting more attention.

Whereas "within the industry" is exactly the thing I'm talking about: the threshold for getting into more mainstream media is not necessarily related to actual importance and different from what field-specific or even just enthusiast perception focuses on. E.g. the bits and pieces I know about injection molding mostly come from "maker-type" publications that, while of course also talking about 3D printing a lot, also cover entry-level discussions of what happens if you try taking something to larger-scale production - and "forget about your product looking like an Apple product" is high on that list ;)

[lylecheatham]

Yeah I think it's just how news media works I guess. Especially since 3D printing is a cool technology that hasn't quite hit it's stride yet, people are want to see how it's going to change things.

IM has been the same old IM for the past 5 decades more or less.