iPad mini: Why Tim Cook’s Apple is a better company than the one Steve Jobs left behind. - Slate Magazine

Excerpt from a Farhad Manjoo perspective on Apple's new product announcements

"The machines Apple unveiled today only bolster this record. After the event, I spent a few minutes using the iPad mini, the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and the new iMac—not enough time to gather enough fodder for a full review of these devices, but enough to be impressed, especially by the two new Macs. The iMac, in particular, shows off Apple’s design prowess. Its front edge is just 5 millimeters thin, which is thinner than many laptops. It’s so thin that when you gaze at it from the front and even from some angles on the side, it looks like a cardboard cutout of a computer, not a working machine. (If you examine the iMac’s back, you do see a bulge in the center that presumably houses the machine’s guts.) Apple says it needed advanced manufacturing techniques to build a machine so thin—among them something called friction-stir welding and a method to “laminate” the display that eliminates a gap between the LCD and its cover glass (something it does on the iPhone, too)."

iPad mini: Why Tim Cook’s Apple is a better company than the one Steve Jobs left behind. - Slate Magazine