This - and also Pegatron was spun out of Asus, and both Asus and Apple use Peg for manufacturing and integration. The same tool makers, tools, people etc. were used on both of these products. Intel designed this chip and board so that the manufacturers can go out and release these types of devices, and now we are supposed to believe that because Apple were the first (they weren't really the first either, I saw a HP carbon fibre prototype in Korea long before the Air was released) and are the prettiest, that nobody else is allowed in the market?

Edit: to add to this, it is important to understand that how tech is manufactured has changed in the past 10-15 years. It used to be that a company like Apple would design the case, the circuit board, all the components, etc. and then take it out to manufacturers and get a quote. What happens now is that the ODM is involved from very early on in the process, and it is more likely that it is the ODM (like Pegatron, Flextronics or Foxconn) go to the tech company first with a new board.

for eg. in the case of the Air-type laptops, Intel designed that chip and board with this market in mind. Intel would have went to the ODM's, and they would have designed reference boards and reference devices together. The ODM's and their marketing and tech guys then would have taken all this out to Apple, HP, Sony etc. and pitched it to them, and then went back to Intel and locked in a multi-year contract on component supply (which wins them favor when the next set of chips and boards are released).

What the tech company does now is manage outsourcing relationships, supply chain (which is also now outsourced), industrial design (can also be outsourced), marketing and retail. The ODM takes care of what the internal layout is and this is done to a spec (although not a detailed spec). At the manufacturing plants you have design offices - this would be 2-3 people from Apple and around 30-40 people from the ODM working on the schematics and tooling. The Apple people would hang around during the prototype phase. ODM's offer this service at no charge based on orders coming in later.

On the Crunchpad project we got hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of design work done for us for free with various ODM's on the promise of us manufacturing with them. Our specs were very vague, the initial prototype hardware spec was a 15-line email at 3am in the morning from me. Two days later I was holding a netbook with those specs. They all work the same way, and when you are in China or Korea you see the reps from all these other companies hanging out in bars and around the factories.

Intel bends over backwards to get their chips and their boards into new devices. They heavily discount and will throw as many people at you as you need. I wouldn't say that it is easy to start a hardware company, but it is certainly more efficient and a lot easier than what it was before the ODM model. If you have a brand and a decent idea the ODMs will fall over each other to get your attention - and will likely run it at cost to you, with tooling costs financed etc. for the first x thousand units.

The key point here is that the story about Apple sitting in their lab and designing a laptop which nobody else can see and that others have 'copied' couldn't be further from the truth. That board and a lot of that design comes from the ODM's, and they know that other companies are working there as well. This is why you hear Apple complaining about gestures being copied but not complaining about Laptop design being copied.

Further Edit: I know a lot of tech investors shy away from Hardware startups, but if you have a good hardware idea the MVP costs have come down just as much as they have for software. If you have a good plan you can get to a prototype that you can then use to test the market and raise more money from for very little. I would hasten to say that with the market being as competitive as it is now, that you could almost get it for free - by just signing a longer term agreement. All the ODMs have large teams of engineers that they want to put to work. If you present an idea well and take it to the 5-6 majors one of them is bound to pick you up. Just demonstrate that you understand the market, will be able to build the brand and are stable enough to trust with long-term finance. If anybody is thinking about doing hardware feel free to email me