
A facelift for the Macintosh - donohoe
https://curved.de/news/curvedlabs-ein-facelift-fuer-den-macintosh-198570
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Udo
> _However, when building new technology Apple often unfortunately neglected
> their own design history._

One might argue that good designers and designs move on as they co-evolve.
This "new" design is a nice piece of borderline-functional retro chique, but
apart from being thin it hardly qualifies as futuristic or practical from our
perspective today.

As components shrink, people expect the display to become the only visible
component of the computer - and Apple is clearly on that path. I would
consider it the right path from a usability as well as a design perspective.

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davekeck
> people expect the display to become the only visible component of the
> computer ... from a usability as well as a design perspective

I'm not sure putting the ports on the rear of the e.g. iMac improves
usability. It certainly looks nicer, but I wouldn't consider the required neck
acrobatics to plug in a thumb drive a usability improvement. (But I guess it
makes sense in the long-term with everything going wireless.)

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jacquesm
Simply hook up a short cable and let it dangle from the rear.

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SwellJoe
What? How is that more aesthetically pleasing _or_ more functional than simply
putting the ports where you can reach them easily?

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derefr
There are basically four kinds of devices:

1\. interaction peripherals where Bluetooth+batteries is workable (keyboards,
mice)

2\. interaction peripherals where Bluetooth+an external power cable is
workable (speakers)

3\. low-power data peripherals (CF cards, flash drives) where low-speed USB is
acceptable

4\. high-speed data peripherals and controllers (RAID storage, discrete GPUs,
etc.) that effectively need a PCIe channel

1 and 2 are wireless, obviously. 4 doesn't get reconfigured much, so it makes
sense that Thunderbolt and related "extension" ports are on the back of the
device. (They were previously _inside_ the device, after all.)

3 is the main problem, then, that currently suggests accessibility of ports:
the small, transportable, label-able data-containing devices that descend from
floppy disks.

But why not think of alternative solutions, if "lightweight" data storage
devices are the only constraint?

One design I always thought fondly of was having small magnetic-backed data-
storage "pucks" with no plugs as such, and making the non-screen part of the
computer (e.g. the front-bottom panel area of an iMac) a magnetic attach-point
for them. You would literally "mount" the your drives onto the computer.
(Presumably it would inductively power them while they're there, too.)

This wouldn't be a very fast storage device class compared to something using
actual wires, but it wouldn't need to be; fast storage is what Thunderbolt et
al are for.

It'd likely also have other uses: for example, magnetically attaching your ID
card (which is also a smart card) to a corporate computer to cause it to log
in—and also to indicate to anyone else walking by that the computer is in use.

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Springtime
Regardless of its practicality the design made me smile.

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zbowling
The design is a bit tacky and has too many useless elements. The extra long
thing next to where the SD card goes into. Why is there a slit there? Just to
remind you of the old Apple II? It's not needed and Apple would never do that.

That Apple logo on the front is nothing Apple would do. Lower left? nah. Apple
would put one Apple logo on it. On the back. Maybe even none at all (look at
the Mac Pro).

The headphone jack seems perfect to pull the thing down right on it's screen.
The blue glow on the back? really?

Apple designs are about removing the bezel and letting the computer disappear
and let the screen come out. This thing is like 60%-70% computer and 35%
screen. This isn't a "facelift", it's a mock up of a design regression.

 _This would never be something out of Cupertino._

~~~
wodenokoto
> That Apple logo on the front is nothing Apple would do. Lower left? nah.

If you look at the actual apple computer standing next to the mock-up, you'll
see the nothing-Apple-would-do-lower-left logo.

According to his biography, Steve Jobs added a handle to the original iMacs,
not because he wanted people to carry them around, but because it made it less
threatening to people who aren't used to computers.

So adding things is part of Apple's design history.

Anyway, the rest of the slit is a speaker, so while it is obviously there as a
throw-back (the whole design is a throwback) it does serve some purpose.

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tommoor
This looks like it wouldn't stand up to me? There would have to be something
pretty weighty in that bottom portion...

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LimitedTime
I miss the sunflower design.

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simplexion
But can I play Bolo?

~~~
joshdance
Bolo! Many an afternoon was spent in the computer science lab that had a bunch
of Macs hooked up, playing Bolo.

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rahulgr8888
The design seems good though a little unnecessary. There's a lot of extra
unused space on the screen which is also increasing its weight. Now if the
screen's triangular, that'd be awesome.

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Hilyin
Yeah, who wants widescreen anyway? ;)

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donatj
Widescreen has never been a very good layout for anything other than
multimedia.

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kevin_thibedeau
It's good for side by side docs/code as a space saving alternative for a
multi-monitor setup.

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kondro
The worst part of this design is now Apple can never release it.

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onion2k
The designer has probably infringed Apple's design patents making this. The
designer couldn't do anything if Apple released an identical product because
they'd countersue him and win.

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zmonkeyz
I like that design. :)

