Don’t miss the best of The Mac Observer Set us as a preferred source and our Apple reporting ranks higher in your Google Search results and Discover feed — one tap, no account changes. Apple previously explored a more ambitious version that relied on even more glass and reduced the use of metal, but the company abandoned that design early in development after running into manufacturing problems. According to Gurman, Apple struggled to connect the glass panels reliably while developing a design that could survive large-scale production, which ultimately led the company to move forward with the less extreme glass-centric version.