| "So what do we think they're manufacturing with sapphire?" This is just fun conjecture, so take it with a grain of salt the size of a racoon's head, but considering you can make sapphire panels large enough for vehicle windows [1], you might be able to cover a TV with it (among other things). Consider that Jony Ive is credited with a design for a TV where the display slides inside a glass enclosure [2][3]; Perhaps you'd want to coat the enclosure with artificial sapphire to maintain a strong protective layer, or even use a thin, strong sapphire enclosure to reduce thickness while achieving good-enough strength. We know that Apple was happy to build its new Mac Pros in the US because they're expensive (high margin) and the largest number of buyers would be in the US (video production, music production), thus a reduction in logistics costs could help balance higher worker costs. We can make the educated guess that an Apple TV would cost a lot - perhaps approaching or exceeding the cost of a new Mac Pro. So it's not hard to imagine a chunk of production moving to where the customers are. Either way, looking at [3] we can see that Apple is interested in glass enclosures for its devices, so sapphire would be a good way to minimize scratches and general wear. [1] http://www.photonic.saint-gobain.com/uploadedFiles/SGphotoni... [2] http://www.patentlyapple.com/.a/6a0120a5580826970c0192ac6465... [3] http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2013/08/apple-fi... |