But it sounds like Apple was bankrolling GT for the factory. which means they negotiated some kind of investment budget. Apple probably went through the list, found what sounds like excesses and asked GT if all this was really necessary or if it could be done cheaper. Apparently GT failed to justify the cost, so it was stricken from the final budget. When shit hit the fan it might have been too late to start redesigning and they were already behind schedule and budget with botched batches, GT might not have had the financial muscle to fix it and Apple might be concerned about throwing good money after bad. After all, this is how most terrible investment decisions are made, we're already $500 million down the hole so we need to spend a hundred more to finish it. Then we're already $600 million down the hole so we need to spend a hundred more to finish it and so on. Apple had a reasonable plan B by sticking with Gorilla Glass so they weren't pot commited as they'd say in poker.

Remember, just because GT can point to this and say that's why it failed doesn't mean it'd be a success otherwise as they might have stumbled on the next hurdle too. After all, if the product that did come out okay was that great I'm sure Apple would have been more willing to see it through too, unless they decided it was cheaper to let GT fail and pick up the pieces. I really doubt it's as easy as Apple buying GT's assets, installing a few UPSes in the factory and they're ready to go for the iPhone 6s. Like they say, production at this scale had never been attempted before which generally means you have to expect the unexpected. GT seems to have bet everything on things going according to plan, they gambled and lost. It's pretty cheap to try blaming Apple for their own botched execution, they're a business and don't just throw money around. If they failed to get sufficient investment that's nobody but GT's fault.

I've tried with rocks and sand, no effect. So the hardness is clearly higher than quartz. And once you're to that point, how much do you really need to go higher?

I just wish there was a better way to prevent breakage. :

It's not the ambient temperature of air that's key here, it's the ambient temperature of space, which is about 2,7K.

All objects are constantly radiating energy and receiving energy back from other things that are radiating. When two objects in radiative exchange are roughly the same temperature, this balances out. But when one is hotter than the other, the hotter one loses more energy than it takes in, and vice versa. And it's not just a little difference - radiative heat loss is proportional to the absolute temperature to the fourth power, that's a pretty big exponent. So when you're exchanging energy with space, which is so cold that it takes very sensitive instruments to be able to measure *anything*, well, that heat is simply lost.

You can see this effect for yourself by noting how cloudy nights are usually warmer than clear nights. Clouds are cold, but they're not as cold as space!

The effect of the combination of radiation, absorption, and reflection, with different band peaks for each phenomenon, manifests itself in atmospheres as a greenhouse effect (positive or negative) versus the radiative equilibrium temperature.

This "modulation" happens all the time, few things in this universe are true blackbodies, most prefer to radiate in specific bands. They're apparently using a material that tends to radiate only on one narrow band at regular earth temperatures.

Not sure how much benefit this provides to the building owner, to the point that they'd be willing to cover their building in hafnium-and-silver coated panels, rather than just white paint...

"Neutral", seriously you want a government imposed Pravda? Or are you just trying to set up such an absurd left wing straw man to get everyone on Google's side? What the EU is generally against is bundling products and services because it hampers competition and creates vertical collusion and hidden costs. Say you buy a car only to find they use IP, warranty terms, secret error codes and such to make sure you only use original parts, authorized service dealers, approved fuel and tires from partners and so on . There's laws curbing such behavior because it's in the consumers' interest that car companies compete on making cars, auto repair companies compete on maintenance and repair and tire manufacturers compete on making car tires. It doesn't mean the government should jump in national everything so everybody gets "fair" maintenance on their cars.

For example, during the first iPhone launch here they tried playing the "exclusive carrier" game bundled with a high monthly cost, but our consumer laws demand you can terminate such a agreement by covering their loss. So those who wanted another carrier would sign up, got their iPhone, insta-canceled, paid for the full price of the phone and was free to sign up with another carrier. That effectively killed it, pretty soon after you could buy it directly with no subscription and sign up with whoever you wanted. And that's how it should be, phone manufacturers compete on phones and carriers compete on being carriers. Companies don't want free markets where prices are low and competition intense, they want dysfunctional markets where they can make huge profits. This is very obvious in software where they want you to buy into the Microsoft stack or the Apple stack or the Google stack. If the bits and pieces were compatible and interchangeable you'd see a lot more competition and many smaller third parties providing a few parts. Bunding is a way for megacorporations to make sure only megacorporations compete.

TiO2 is already commonly used for making white paint.

What the material is doing (or is claimed to do, anyway) is to re-radiate incident radiation at a wavelength that can pass through through the atmosphere back out to space without being absorbed (i.e. it won't heat up the atmosphere). Since the surface can absorb heat due to convection from the air, it can re-radiate that heat as well into space. This material is not merely reflective, its radiation properties are such that essentially acts as a refrigerator; it can pull heat from the air and radiate it to space.

Your understanding of the process could use some polishing too.

You're right, the heat flows do balance; the heat entering the object from the air must exactly balance the heat leaving to space due to radiation. But heat flows from high temperature to low, so that means that Tair > Tobject > Tspace i.e. the object can (and must) be cooler than the air.

Yours, truly --- Google.

Yes, but the equilibrium temperature of the object will be between the air temperature and the sky temperature. The object will be cooler than the air, and so heat transfer due to convection will go from the air to the object. However, the object will still be warmer than the sky, so heat transfer due to radiation will go from the object to space.

Nope, quite possible per the first law of thermodynamics, as well as the second and zeroth laws. If the atmosphere is transparent and the object is exposed to the sky, heat can radiate from the object to space (which, even accounting for solar exposure, has a mean effective temperature well below that of air temperature in many places ~ 230K). If the air is still and the object can reflect most of the incident radiation, there is no reason why the object can't cool below air temperature. It is a completely separate mechanism of heat transfer to a different heat sink.

Does anyone actually have problems with scratching of the latest generations of gorilla glass? I've had my Xperia Z2 for over half a year and because it has a glass back as well as front it makes it less risky to try scratch tests, so I've done it a number of times and let other people try to scratch it, and nobody has ever succeeded. I'm sure if you put a diamond to it you'd scratch it, but short of that, I can't see why more scratch resistance is needed.

Now, *crack* resistance, they could use good improvements in that. : But from reports the sapphire wasn't that crack resistant.