There is one big advantage to magnesium that is the strenght to weight ratio. They could greatly reduce the weight of the ipowerbook if they moved from aluminium to magnesium. I don't understand why they still use aluminium when there are better metals to use.
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Apple should move to Magnesium for its case.
- Thread starter DVK916
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They do use a magnesium core surrounded by super high strength Plexiglas on the ibooks)have for 4+ years. Whats magnesium strength to thickness ratio? Could this be the reason its not used on the super-thin pro lines? Or maybe anodized aluminum looks cooler and doesn't need to be painted(remember Ti books) Also the difference in atomic weights is 2.7 with magnesium being 24.30 and aluminum being 26.98. Thats a 10% difference. To make magnesium stable it is often alloyed with aluminum further negating this difference. We are talking grams in something that weighs over a kilo. I am sure apple throughly looked into magnesium and choice anodized aluminum for some reason.
It's kind of meh, especially with thin stuff. Mg has a tendency to be brittle, so you end up mixing it up with aluminum anyway. It works better in thicker parts like cast frames. Another problem when it comes to Apple is that the metal tends to have kind of a brutal looking finish, they'd want to paint it or go with a plastic casingDVK916 said:
