There are whispers on the ground that Apple has actually moved to request Pegatron to cease production of new ultrabooks by Asus of Taiwan – asking Cupertino’s manufacturing partner to make a difficult choice – either work with Apple, or to select Asus and walk away from Apple. This bit of news comes about thanks to Chinese publication Commerical Times, as Apple is said to have been extremely vexed that Asus’ Zenbook is extremely similar to the MacBook Air in terms of design – using a similar aluminium unibody construction to boot.
It is also believed that from the end of next month onwards, Pegatron will stop production of Asus’ Zenbook, and when that happens, it would most probably mean that Asus will look towards other rival manufacturers of Pegatron, including Compal and Wistron. Asus has remained mum on the situation so far, as I think they believe that cool heads will always prevail in a potentially explosive situation. What do you think of Apple’s “ultimatum”?