Inside Apple’s Broken Sapphire Factory

http://online.wsj.com/articles/inside-apples-broken-sapphire-factory-1416436043

by domdip • 12 years ago

20 20 12 years ago

online.wsj.com

bensherman• 12 years ago

Got a non-paywall link?

omonra• 12 years ago

Google the headline in a Chrome anonymous window. First link should be full text of the article.

zzleeper• 12 years ago

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

Cookingboy• 12 years ago

Content behind pay-walls should not be allowed for submission on HackerNews.

wmf• 12 years ago

Also, complaints about paywalls should not be allowed on HN.

melling• 12 years ago

Why not? Plenty of people here can read it so there can be a discussion, which should convey most of the information that's in the article. In the end, everyone reading HN benefits.

dang• 12 years ago

It's not that simple. HN prefers accessible stories, but it also prefers original sources and demands substantive ones, and many of those are behind paywalls. Are we to ban the NYT, Economist, and New Yorker? That would be chopping off a foot to spite a hangnail.

Not all paywalls are equally problematic, and most of this content is not truly inaccessible. There are standard workarounds that everybody already knows or can easily learn. It's not as if HN users are shy about pointing them out.

The status quo isn't great, but the brokenness of online content models is not something we can just fix by decree in our little corner of the web.

mullingitover• 12 years ago

Google the article title. No paywall on articles linked directly from Google.

softdev12• 12 years ago

This is really incredible. To summarize for people who don't have access:

1) GT was a solar furnace maker that first offered to sell Apple 2300 furnaces so that Apple could produce sapphire screens for the iPhone 6.

2) Then Apple decided to lend GT $500 million and have GT own the furnaces and produce the sapphire (although it had no experience in producing high quality, production volume sapphire) for Apple.

3) GT became a captive supplier to Apple and had exclusivity arrangements - so it couldn't diversify its business.

4) GT hit production problems with almost 50 percent of the boules of sapphire being cracked and unusable.

5) GT had operational issues, where people were paid to just sweep the floor over and over.

6) GT eventually filed for Chapter 11 - surprising Apple.

7) The iphone 6 didn't have sapphire screens.

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

Actually they said "more than half" were unacceptable, but still your summary is basically an accurate one of the article.

I don't know if it is the same but in the semi-conductor business the reactor/furnace used to make the silicon boule had an oversized influence on the yield of the wafers produced. That lead to some folks timing their wafer starts to coincide with a specific lot of wafers.

idoh• 12 years ago

non-paywall link: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/wall-street-journal...

pbhjpbhj3• 12 years ago

For me I get: "You've reached a subscriber-only article.", ie it's paywalled there too.

acveilleux• 12 years ago

Funnily enough, that's a paywall link too. At least for me in Canadialand.

fallinghawks• 12 years ago

It's odd. I googled the article, got a link at theaustralian.com, went there, no paywall. But then copying and pasting the resulting link, it goes to the paywall.

pbhjpbhj3• 12 years ago

Similar/realted (from what I can tell) stories:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/10/shattered_apples_jil... (interesting info on Sniper weapons pod use of sapphire in comments).

http://www.macrumors.com/2014/11/19/gt-advanced-sapphire-fai... (references the WSJ article)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/19/us-gtadvanced-bank...

jmcguckin• 12 years ago

Typically, news sites with a paywall (e.g. WSJ) will give you access if the referrer is from Google. I simply google the headline and follow the link back to the story and am granted access.

Always works for me.

mcphage• 12 years ago

I assume this article is Apple telling their version of what happened. Honestly, though, it's kinda what I expected—GT agreed to produce iPhone screens for Apple, which they were unable to do effectively enough.

wodenokoto• 12 years ago

For those too lazy to do a google search on the article, this link should get you there: http://www.google.co.jp/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&...

Inside Apple’s Broken Sapphire Factory

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