David Galbraith of Oobject trained as an architect, which always makes his commentary on the design of gadgetry come at interesting angles to that of regular ol’ techdorks like me. I’m going to quote his latest write-up nearly in its entirety, but leave the actual Oobject gallery for you to go explore.
Apple’s refresh of the Macbook line this fall is more evolutionary than revolutionary. In terms of design they have continued the trend, which started with the iPhone (see the drilled headphone jack hole on the original model) towards machining directly from block metal. This has lead to the latest Macbooks as being described as having monocoque structures, something which may not strictly be false but which is meaningless in the context.A monocoque is a single piece shell structure, it is a nice sounding word and is often used in marketing literature because it sounds technical. Because of this, and because of the fact that things like commercial airliners are hybrids of frame and shell structures almost anything can be described as such. There is a perfect geodesic truss in the list below which is described as a monocoque shell structure (the opposite), while an ordinary soda can is a monocoque.
The use of machining for Apple parts has more to do with tolerances and finish and almost nothing to do with structure, so the term is not relevant.
Below we discuss the merits of things which are described as monocoque – but as for the Macbook, not really.
Mythbusting the Macbook monocoque from an architect’s perspective [Oobject]
Monocoque? is it cantilevered as well?