
Plastic Macbook. Do you want one? - sturza
Hi guys, i got this idea that my current MBP retina 15&quot; is really heavy and getting hot sometimes.<p>Would it be a good idea to custom design a case (display cover, keyboard enclosure and bottom case) to be 100% plastic?<p>I&#x27;d like one and i was wondering if you&#x27;d want one as well.
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askafriend
The Aluminum acts as a heat sink...

It’s a dumb idea what you’re suggesting. Sorry, I know this isn’t what you
want to hear but you need to hear it.

This is why HN shouldn’t design a laptop.

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theqoo
Yes please, I'm a fanboy of apple but I have metal allegy, So I can't use
macbook at all.

I've used white macbook, and after changed to metal macbook I got rash on my
hand, so I gave up to use it.

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prowebdeveloper
Thought the the idea of the metal enclosure was heat dissipation? (i.e the
whole thing is a giant heatsink)

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rasz
>my current MBP retina 15" is really heavy

Weight: 4.02 pounds. Did it gain weight since you bought it?

>and getting hot sometimes.

its designed to cook its internals instead of running loud fans - thats what
users want, that and thin. Dont worry, both CPU and GPU will throttle around
80-100C and will not get damaged.

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karmakaze
Uh no. The rigid case helps keep the logic board from failing. The unibody and
later ones only fail in other places (screen connector, keyboard) and was a
great step in reliability over the plastic MacBooks. I had a rubber-like matte
black one. Btw the 17" so-called-unibody model wasn't a single metal piece and
failed more than all the others.

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johnnyRose
The heat has to go somewhere. If your machine is feeling hot, the heat is
escaping. Trying to prevent that by using a less conductive material may not
end well for your laptop.

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Nextgrid
Look into seeing what makes it run so hot. Ditch Chrome, Slack and any
Electron apps and your laptop will be cool forever.

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sturza
It's not running "so hot", it's just annoying. The weight problem is the one i
want to get rid of. I recently got an ideapad that is partly plastic, it's not
hot and it only weighs 1kg.

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sturza
While having a 4 core i7 8th gen, which i cannot get into a MBA

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bwb
Wouldn't it melt?

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busymom0
Doubt it. A lot of windows laptops are made of cheap plastic. Thinkpads for
example. It’s only recently when they have switched to metal. Even MacBook
used to be plastic a decade ago.

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quickthrower2
A case in point: kettles

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PaulHoule
No.

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Jaruzel
You should at least expand why.

My thoughts:

\- Plastic will warp when heated.

\- The metal in the MBP is probably being used as a heatsink

\- It won't look good.

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PaulHoule
I don't want an MBP.

There are two contradictory things about Macers:

(1) They hate macs. They are always complaining about their computers, about
how they waste time hanging around the "genius" bar. (e.g. maybe it is not
smart to do!)

(2) They insist on buying macs no matter what and won't consider that you can
get plastic computers, computers with good heat sinks, computers with more
RAM, computers with NVIDIA graphics cards or AMD APUs, etc. if they just were
willing to take their business elsewhere.

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sturza
I cannot speak of other users but: 1\. never visited the genius bar in 9/9
years of multiple mac ownership 2\. it's the only platform where i can run
100% native windows, *nix and macos(need this for iOS development)

