If Woz were still in Apple there would be Apple-run makerspaces, with Apple branded 3d printers and all the types of filament you could dream of. Too bad Jobs turned the company into a boring locked-down anti-consumer appliance factory.
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Endangered classic Mac plastic color returns as 3D-printer filament
61–70 of 88 posts
Re: Endangered classic Mac plastic color returns as 3D-printer filament
#62Something that has been kind of funny for me, perhaps others are feeling this way: I see increasingly this "retro computing community" fawning over machines that I think of as ... just machines that I used once. Some of the machines were even kind of scorned at the time as I recall — now they're sought after, lovingly restored.... I don't know if my reaction is as one who is being made aware of just how old they are…
The people in the retro community do not require these machines to perform all their tasks. They're not filing their taxes with a Macintosh LC III. They have modern computers! This allows old computers to be appreciated very differently. And retro enthusiasts will often love a machine because it is such a bad machine. It gives it a different appeal, its history and poor reception part of its charm. Ultimately, they'r…
If you’re driving around in your 1971 Ford Thunderbird and the vacuum line fails, making it so your headlights doors are stuck closed, that would have been super annoying in 1977 as you were driving home in the evening.
In 2025 it’s just “the charm of owning a classic car”. Instead of an annoyance, you might think of it as having a unique and endearing quirk.
Re: Endangered classic Mac plastic color returns as 3D-printer filament
#63I was really hoping this would be the colorful plastic backs of the early 2000s iMacs we had in school
Re: Endangered classic Mac plastic color returns as 3D-printer filament
#64Here's what the foreword to Keep It Simple https://arnoldsche.com/en/vergriffen/keep-it-simple/ https://archive.org/details/keepitsimpleearl0000essl/ says about the Platinum colour, also known as Snow White:
> Esslinger had been working with Steve Jobs since 1982 and was of paramount importance for the look of Apple products as an external designer -—as of 1983 also as Corporate Manager of Design. The start of collaboration between Steve Jobs and Hartmut Esslinger went from 1982 to 1983 with “Snow White,” a new color and design concept that was the base for all future Apple products. Besides specifying certain design aspects, the concept entailed introducing a new color. The dull “greige” of the industrial and corporate workplace was to be replaced by a broken white-called “Snow White" in the US. First used for the Apple llc, this white not only made the computer esthetically compatible with living rooms but also psychologically underpinned the user-friendly menu navigation. The new “Snow White” line worked up by Hartmut Esslinger was supposed to be launched with the Macintosh Computer—originally designed by Jerry Manock-but many reasons made this impossible. So the revised version could not be introduced until later: with the Macintosh SE.
Re: Endangered classic Mac plastic color returns as 3D-printer filament
#65> The PLA filament (PLA is short for polylactic acid) allows hobbyists to 3D-print nostalgic novelties, replacement parts, and accessories that match the original color of vintage Apple computers. > Over time, original Macintosh plastics have become brittle and discolored with age, so matching the "original" color can be a somewhat challenging and subjective experience. So it seems like the color is for 3D-printing s…
> Makes me wonder if there will be a "thirty years discolored" version as well, if you want to print a piece to replace something broken... or can you just leave it out in the sun for a couple weeks or something? Would probably just need to make this part of a build loop where you send it through a high intensity light/heat cycle such as when they beat up jeans for purchase by people who buy those. "Would you prefer…
Nitpick: the "Platinum" color in question was part of the "Snow White" design language introduced in 1984 (and originally using a different color before switching to Platinum) so this is the wrong filament for emulating the color of 1977 or 1980 Apple products.
Re: Endangered classic Mac plastic color returns as 3D-printer filament
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, it's kind of weird. I had a 386 with 4MB RAM and am not the least nostalgic about it. In fact damn near everything about that machine was limiting and something I couldn't wait to replace with something newer. I even didn't care for the beige color schemes of the day -- I remember going for the brushed aluminium case way back because I was excited it wasn't freaking beige. Watching some of the channels though I…
> I had a 386 with 4MB RAM and am not the least nostalgic about it. In fact damn near everything about that machine was limiting and something I couldn't wait to replace with something newer. It is difficult to be nostalgic about the machines lacking, for want of a better term, a soul. PC compatibles are as soulless as it gets. Quite soon after introduction, they became part of the endless treadmill of faster CPU - m…
I had the weirdest 286 clone I'm quite nostalgic about - a tiny little thing with a 9" monochrome screen and 40Mb HDD that I learned C on. Whole thing was shrunk in the same proportion as the monitor, so it looked like a shrinky-dink version of a standard desktop of the era. The CPU component would have been about 8" wide. I tricked it out with a 28.8k modem so I could get to local BBSes.
This "tied an onion to my belt" reminiscence may go to support your theory.
Re: Endangered classic Mac plastic color returns as 3D-printer filament
#67First thing I thought of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N5Eqt5AEN8
The first mac cube was the 4th computer I ever got my hands on, iirc. TRS80, Commodore, Apple II, Mac Plus
Re: Endangered classic Mac plastic color returns as 3D-printer filament
#68Polymaker's Panchroma Matte White is also a very close match to Classic Mac plastics. And since I didn't actually see a link to the filament in the Ars Technica article, here it is https://polarfilament.com/products/retro-platinum-pla-1kg-1-...
Panchroma Muted White is the one that is somewhat similar to the Apple platinum color. Someone sent Polymaker an RGB color code instead of a sample, so it's pretty off in reality. That would be fine, because all machines are yellowed to some degree anyway, so colors vary widely. More importantly, it's just terrible filament. Layer adhesion is virtually non-existent, compared to Polymaker's Poly Lite filaments. I have…
Yep, you're right, I meant Muted White.
I've not had too many issues with it on my crappy Ender 3 clone. I print at 225C with a 60C bed, which lowers to 55 after the first layer. Never had any problems other than typical bullshit with my Z-offset.
Re: Endangered classic Mac plastic color returns as 3D-printer filament
#69These kind of "off-white" colors of the 1980s are making a comeback these days; they were considered dated design during the early 2000s but in the 2020s they're "in" again, e.g. anthropic.com, hume.ai, ...
Re: Endangered classic Mac plastic color returns as 3D-printer filament
#70Why PLA though, it PETG has much better qualities
I'm not sure if there's any material limitation to it, but every PETG roll I've used has come out with a very glossy finish, which is probably not what you want here.
Matte PETG is available. No affiliation, but: https://californiafilament.com/collections/new . Great when you want the properties of PETG but not the shiny plastic look, e.g. printing things for car interiors. Like GP I'd also love to see this filament in PETG.