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Make Your Own Transparent iBook

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the working-with-what-you-got dept.

Blackstealth sent in linkage to an attractive and clever mod for the Apple iBook. The TronBook takes the idea of a transparent iBook and takes it a few steps further. I wish we'd see more laptop mods of this quality.

4 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. Picture Mirror... by FyRE666 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here for when the site inevitably goes down :-)

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    Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
  2. RE: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Apple produces transparent pre-production models of every product. Sort of a final debugging - that way, if a chip blows, or there's a stress on the plastic somewhere, it can be identified quite easily...they've been doing this for years...

  3. Re:Transparent prototypes by Draoi · · Score: 4, Informative
    I can vouch for that, having worked there in diagnostic engineering. Early models were made in perspex as soon as the basic form was decided upon. The product design team used this to ensure that everything would fit in the final unit, that the airflow was going to work out, etc. Also, you could easily look through a unit and immediately know if it had a modem, the latest processor card, etc. Cool stuff. The *really* early units were made of of sawn-up sheets of perspex which had been glued and taped together. The components were glued or velcro'd into place & the whole box was about three times bigger than the normal product. I can recall the first TiBook looking like this in the lab .....

    Another thing Apple does is colour their PCBs according to the design/manufacturing phase. EVT boards (engineering trials) were red, DVT boards (design trials) were blue & PVT/production were the standard green colour

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    Alison

    "It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein

  4. Realistic here by 2nd+Post! · · Score: 4, Informative

    The iBook is covered in polycarbonate plastic. The same stuff they use in ultra hard shatter resistent eyeglasses and in bulletproof glass.

    Unless you're carrying steel surgical instruments and diamond cutting blades in the bottom of your briefcase or in your backpack, the iBook will probably suffer, at most, cosmetic scratches from the run of the mill stuff.

    Alloys will deform *and stay that way* where the polycarbonate will flex and return it's shape. The iBook itself has a polycarbonate shell, a magnesium frame (you wanted alloys? you got it), rubber mounting for the drives and other components, and it's got an extra sturdy hinge for the screen.

    The only stronger laptop I can imagine would be the Panasonic ToughBooks. Everything else I've seen (even my Titanium PowerBook) pales in comparison to an iBook.

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    GPL Deconstructed