Plastic gets a bad rap, and often for a good reason.
But it is also superior to metal and glass in many ways.
The draw here, for Apple, was presumably price.
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Apple has reused the shavings from its milled aluminum iPads to build MacBooks Air, for example.
Plastic, on the other hand, isdowncycled into some other product.
Recycled water bottles do not become more water bottles.
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They may become a rug or a fleece hoody instead.
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But some plastics are better than others.
But polycarbonate has other problems: It contains bisphenol A, aka BPA.
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Plastics Have Some Advantages
Materially, however, plastic has several advantages over aluminum and other metals.
It’s cheaper, for a start.
On the other hand, aluminum will stay deformed and may crack or break.
But glass is also very fragile.
In addition, plastic is easier to work with, which makes it ideal for mass production in factories.
And another potential problem with plastic is that it is not as rigid.
Pick up today’s MacBook Pro by a corner while it’s open, and it remains rigid.
Move back in time to those plastic MacBooks, and they would bend like crazy.
Part of that was the construction methodthey weren’t milled from a single block like the unibody aluminum Macs.
On the other hand, the current 12.9-inch iPad Pro is also far too easy to bend.
Ask me how I know.
But there is precedent for high-end plastic computers.
Lenovo’s ThinkPads offer plastic models, for example.
What would be neat is a plastic-backed iPad mini.
Sadly, it doesn’t look like we’re getting any kind of plastic iPad soon.
