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Mac-Case Clone for PCs
An anonymous reader writes "Ever wanted a Mac case for your pc? Well this is your lucky day. Well sort of... you can read a preview of this yet-to-be-released case at hardware-unlimited.com." Smart design -- Now, if only this came in black ...
Apple does something slightly out of the ordinary -- shave off a few edges, put a spit shine on the thing, throw in a screen -- and they're the heights of hardware innovation.
Yes, cloning Luxo Jr. makes up for it all, but it's the exception that proves the rule. For the most part, a tower is a tower is a tower.
They don't have to be.
Where are cases that look like they'd fit directly in with an entertainment system, replete with integrated DVD-ROMs and elegantly sliding front panels for expansion?
Where are low depth mods of rackmount cases, meant for vertical deployment next to your monitor?
Why is everything so angular? Volvos weren't this boxy. Why is every sharp angle in the computer world the kind of thing you could just *see* a prisoner filing down in about five minutes into a lethal weapon? I mean, I know programmers have a thing for powers of two (bug me, we'll chant 2^n, it's a real party lemme tell ya), and 90 is 360/2/2, but damn. Pass calculus already.
Hell, just to be ornery -- where's a natural keyboard clone you can stick a PC inside? In case you haven't noticed, your keyboard is several times larger than the avarage laptop.
This isn't random complaining. We've got cookie cutter cases with trivial modifications for a reason: Systems that *do* new things are apparently selling better than systems that *look* like they do -- or at least, the economies of scale of making nigh-identical cases are so incredibly massive that every deviation from the standard design introduces order of magnitude slashes of profit margins.
You might say this has as much to do with the limitations of the ATX spec, which specifically for cost purposes enforces fixed locations for all motherboard connectors. I don't know. I saw one random hobbyist with an ATX machine made out of a hollow cylinder of transparent plexiglass, illuminated with LEDs and with a detailed LCD providing system stats. Damn thing was a work of art. Sony, the one company most known for its attention to industrial design, recently came out with the closest "competitor": A _dark_ grey box with a spinach green LCD.
And that's the thing, folks. That hobbyist probably spent dozens of hours hand crafting that beauty. The processes required to make such a unique case are extraordinarily varied and unique, and if every new generation of computers needed completely new case designs, costs would shoot through the roof. Your case would become the most expensive part of your machine.
And so...we don't have unique cases. And I think I'm OK with that. But everyone, please. Unless you're talking about that brilliant homage to Pixar, don't think there's any originality at all among corporate case design.
There's just not. Your dollars have spoken -- maybe even wisely.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
A lot of the others posts hightlight one of the very important points about apple cases - the ability to open them up and have everything there easy to access. Brilliant. PC cases have cut me up and stabbed me so many times that this was ground breaking. Like most simple ideas are. But, alsa, that is not my point.
Forgive me, but this case is disgusting. I would be embarrased to show anyone this case, it looks cheap tacky and the sort of thing a wannabe design student from school designed. To coin a phrase, "close but no cigar". Yes the apple case has curves, yes it's smooth plastic, yes it has handles and yes if you copied it out right you would have a law suit on your hands. But if you can't come up with something usefull and good looking dont even goto production.
Let me ask a few questions, can you imagine a group of designers using this case? No neither can I. Can you imagine your parents using this case? Nope, not them. Can you imagine walking into work with your machines looking like this? Nope neither can I. Schools? Nope, Universitys? Nada. yet these are all places where Apples feature and look correct. Please, please, please can someone not come up with a case that is nice to look at, unobtrusive and functional. Surely I am not alone in wanting something like this.
chris at darkrock dot co dot uk
http colon slash slash www dot darkrock dot co dot uk
A friend of mine in the mid-seventies put an aluminum V8 into a little Toyota (or maybe it was a Datsun, I forget.). Took quite awhile and a lot of mods on the poor little Toyota. He then drove the thing to Kansas.
The point? Well, I think he did it so he could say he did it. That and the little Toyota could smoke anything else on the street. Computer hardware mods are kinda like that too. Fun to do and the result is you have something unique (or at least different from the mainstream.)
I once hacked an Atari ST into a beige tower PC case. Wasn't much point in the exercise other than my ST looked a whole lot different than other STs and I learned alot about hacking hardware. Case modding is overall pretty damn cool, IMO.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!