That's why I am very hesitant to use it for mass manufactured goods.

ME misses 1 defect showing few months later, and you get n hundred thousand units recall, or worse, the client asking the money back. For a CM it's a complete devastation.

Machining is also very uneconomical unless you can contract high volume machining specialist, but that's impossible for most <1m runs.

Only the biggest PC makers like Asus, and Acer can afford custom casting, and press forging at economical scales, but even they don't go for aluminium everywhere. ASUS for example went with stamped steel shells for some economy models.

When you end up with a part that needs a lot of steps and removes a lot of material you need a machine that is more complicated, more expensive and with a lower throughput than a machine that simply stamps parts out of a sheet, or shapes them through a mandrill.

Casting is a whole other deal, you end up with different properties because the way you cast has different requirements than creating the raw stock. If the part or product you want to make can't match with the results of a cast part (more than just surface finish) you simply can't use casting (until some sort or alloy is found that delivers the required properties).

You can obviously use other methods, i.e. metal injection, or sintering, or you could simply make it out of plastic. Or you make multiple simpler parts and interface them together (screws, glue, welds etc). But all of those are fine from the construction perspective, but not fine from the aesthetic perspective, and those are valid requirements as well.

The manufacturing method generally is selected during a 'design for manufacture' phase, and that phase only comes after you have already established some parameters on the look, feel, and other properties of the product.

If you could just make it out of concrete or a single injected piece of plastic and still meet all the requirements, they would probably do just that (as the process is simpler, cheaper, higher volume etc).

Fatigue, and failure modes are unpredictable for a lot of alloys.

Machinability, and masleability is usually going in reverse to strength.

Tempering, and annealing to counter the above add to cycle time, and cost.

Some aluminium alloys cold flow.

Aluminium is generally excellent for corrosion resistance against anything you have in your household, but sometimes it isn't.

You can't weld it.

Few things can stick to it.

It's thermal expansion is much bigger than glass, and steel.

With cars it is slightly different most states have something called a "lemon law." If there are more than three repair attempts in the first 6 months for the same issue and the problem is still not fixed then the manufacturer must offer a full refund.

Not sure why people buy Apple...

What OP must clarify though is that apples authorised resellers in India do actually perform a good job of replacing defective goods under warranty, which makes getting extended care for apple products in India of paramount importance. Outside of warranty you are so screwed!

I still think you should take up Apple’s offer to have it repaired/replaced. I guess that’s your only recourse.

It depends on the circumstances, but in the UK and most of Europe, consumer rights are much stronger than in some other parts of the world.

Here in the UK, the basic rule is that the vendor who sold a product to a private individual is on the hook for anything that goes wrong -- that is, they can't just pass the buck to a manufacturer under warranty or some other fall guy, they have to deal with the problem or be held responsible. Whether the vendor can in turn recover any losses from the manufacturer or reseller who supplied them is then that vendor's problem, not the end customer's.

Usually if a product is defective, the next step will be to repair, replace or refund. The legal position tends to be based on both sides being reasonable. For example, if you have a product that fails earlier than you might reasonably expect but still after a couple of years of use, you might get a refund for part of the original purchase price but you probably wouldn't be entitled to all of it. On the other hand, if a product fails in the first few months and the vendor can't repair or replace it, you're probably entitled to a full refund and there is a presumption that the product was defective unless the vendor can prove otherwise. In some cases, rights to a partial refund might last as long as 6 years, if the product purchased might reasonably be expected to last that long but that one didn't.

Several other shenanigans that vendors try to pull elsewhere also don't hold up here. You can't rely on dubious arbitration terms in sale contracts to override statutory consumer rights. A vendor also must not mislead consumers over their rights, for example putting up a sign saying "no refunds" when the buyer might have a legal right to a refund for a defective product. In fact, it's actually illegal for merchants to mislead in that kind of way, which is why you'll see often notices up at the tills that say something like "your statutory rights are not affected" to make it clear that they're not trying to illegally misrepresent anything about those rights.

This is all in addition to any more generous policy a merchant might voluntarily offer or any warranty a manufacturer might offer on its products regardless of where someone buys them.

Most countries also have laws to give consumers a time period where they can return whatever they bought, no questions asked (as long as the product is in good condition)

So the product was not, in fact, in good condition when he wanted to return it.

If I sell you a TV, pretending that it was working perfectly when I know for a fact that there's a component in it that has 90% chances of blowing up in the next month, you'd be perfectly right to complain and expect me to pay you back your money after your TV exploded.

Even in Sweden, consumer law paradise, I’m pretty sure you can’t ask for your money back.