This story is part of 9to5Mac’s series celebrating Apple’s 50th anniversary.
Aluminum was once a cheap metal to consumers, primarily used in soda cans, kitchen foil, cookware, and window frames. It also lived a double life as an industrial material used in aerospace. It was simultaneously a disposable commodity in everyday products and an engineering marvel that helped get humans to the moon.
That is of course until Apple decided to make aluminum their signature material, in the blink of an eye aluminum became a consumer luxury the second Steve Jobs revealed the 12” and 17″ PowerBook G4s in 2003. What followed was 23 years of ultra premium aluminum devices that completely changed the way we live.
In 2001 Apple had seemingly landed on titanium as its new signature material to follow its multi-colored plastic era when Steve Jobs introduced the PowerBook G4 Titanium. But the material had shortcomings when the company attempted to build products out of it, namely its painted finish that chipped over time. No other products of that era got the titanium treatment. Only two years later, they’d move on entirely when Steve unveiled the 12” and 17” PowerBook G4 models. He said:
We built it out of a new material. After researching everything, the best material to build this out of was an aircraft grade aluminum alloy. It’s beautiful and it’s hard anodized and not painted.
That said it all. They could achieve the look they wanted, a satiny silver finish smooth to the touch without paint, without multiple layers of materials, that could hold up over time. It was lightweight and easy to work with, making a product like a 17” laptop even remotely feasible.
Titanium was central to the announcement of the first PowerBook G4 in 2001, but aluminum was only a brief slide in the updated models’ announcement. The irony being that aluminum ended up being far more important to Apple’s future, even if titanium would later rear its head again.
Apple would go on to use aluminum in iPods, displays, the iPhone, the iPad, and just about everything in between. In 2007 when they introduced the first all aluminum iMac, Steve said they “build our most professional products out of aluminum” and highlighted how durable and recyclable it was. By then it had largely taken over the whole product line. Towards the end of the year the iPod Classic would adopt aluminum too.
In the fall of 2008, the company would host a MacBook event to introduce the iconic unibody. While the event was more focused on the construction of the casing, none of it would’ve been possible without aluminum. All that was left was the plastic MacBook which would eventually be killed off permanently in 2011.
Around the time of the Apple Watch launch, the company decided to put a serious emphasis on the material again in a way they hadn’t in awhile. They began referring to specific alloys and chose to highlight the premium nature of the material again. That was for multiple reasons.
The first was that Apple Watch was supposed to be a fashion accessory as much as it was a gadget. Aluminum wasn’t the most common watch material at the time, so Apple had to make the case that it was fashionable. As the material used for the sport model, it also had to highlight its durability and lightweight nature. Jony Ive narrated a video highlighting the material, saying aluminum was “naturally strong and lightweight, it’s the ideal material for Apple Watch Sport.” They had to sell aluminum watches as high end even if they were playing second fiddle to the much nicer stainless steel models. Ive would emphasize that “our engineers have custom designed a new alloy” that was stronger but lighter than any other company’s aluminum. They merchandised aluminum watches right alongside 18K gold ones. That’s something only Apple could get away with.
The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, which were introduced alongside the original Apple Watch, were made of 6000 series aluminum. But the company didn’t talk about that. A year later, they’d hit home that the successors, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, were made of 7000 series aluminum. This was because they needed to prove that the new models couldn’t be bent the same way the infamous bendgate scandal showed the 6 Plus could be. The company returned to highlighting its aluminum as “aerospace grade” and it has continued to. The material has even returned to Apple’s flagship iPhone models, with the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max’s new unibodies being made from it.
Apple’s aluminum bet 23 years ago has yielded benefits not just for the quality of its products but for the environment. It’s a highly recyclable material, something that Apple began talking about in 2007 with the iMac and later with its environmental report cards. Now Apple products are often made out of 100% recycled aluminum. The company created a supply chain that feeds itself. It’s a brilliant move that only someone like Tim Cook could execute as the requisite operations guru.
Looking back, it’s remarkable what Apple achieved with aluminum. It changed consumer’s perception of the material, educated the masses about the engineering marvel that it is, and helped to better the environment by being designed to be recycled. I don’t think Steve even realized what they were starting in 2003. Aluminum is Apple’s signature material, bead blasted aluminum whether it’s applied to an Apple product or something else looks Appley. It likely will for the foreseeable future.
Header image credit: Tobias Röder via Unsplash
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