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Comment by psychometry | Hacker News Reader

Their obsession with thinness and lightness has stretched their manufacturing QC beyond its breaking point. Almost all of the widespread hardware problems Apple is experiencing these days could've been avoided if they would just allow themselves an extra millimeter or gram here and there.

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>Almost all of the widespread hardware problems Apple is experiencing these days could've been avoided if they would just allow themselves an extra millimeter or gram here and there.

That's a bold claim. Can you back up it?

>That's a bold claim. Can you back up it? They made similar products in the past that were thicker and not easily bendable. That seems to speak for itself.

That's true, although their thinnest products always had a small surface area as well (iPod nano), so less torque could be applied which probably contributed to the durability.

Apple also changes materials and processes all the time. Despite being thicker (and shorter), the iPhone SE bends more easily than newer iPhones like the 6S [1], 7 or 7 Plus [2].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWRnDVcfA3g [2]: https://www.squaretrade.com/press/SquareTrade-Labs-iPhone-7-...

Every device that supports 3D Touch is highly resistant to bending, because AIUI the way 3D Touch is implemented basically puts a metal plate inside the phone. This is why the iPads never got 3D Touch, because they’d end up too heavy with a metal plate that large.

It's basic engineering mechanics. All bending equations come back to the second moment of area [1], which for a rectangle is b*h^3/12. Double the thickness and your object becomes 8 times stiffer. Second gen 10.5" iPad Pro (can't find dimensions for 3rd) is 6.1mm. Change that to 7.1, and it becomes (7.1)^3/(6.1)^3 = 1.58x stiffer. Not indestructible, but a massive improvement for a small change.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_moment_of_area#Rectangl...

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