iBook Clamshell(www.ibook-clamshell.com)
56 pointsby polishdude206 hours ago16 comments
  • ZekeSulastin5 hours ago
    I don’t think I’ve seen a cookie banner pop up with a “please reconsider” on refusal … ever, actually. Neat?

    I had Debian running on an old clamshell iBook for a bit; the main things I remember were that it was kind of neat, and that it took less cpu to play music from my server via mpd and pulseaudio-over-network than it did to play the files directly on the iBook.

    • halapro5 hours ago
      I'm struggling to come with why reasons why such a website should display that banner. Apple doesn't.
    • Someone5 hours ago
      > I don’t think I’ve seen a cookie banner pop up with a “please reconsider” on refusal … ever, actually. Neat?

      On the subject of cookie banners, https://gdpr.eu/cookies/ says

      “To comply with the regulations governing cookies under the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive you must […] Make it as easy for users to withdraw their consent as it was for them to give their consent in the first place.”

      I don’t think I’ve ever seen a site with “withdraw cookie consent” functionality.

      The best you can get is that it is as easy to not consent as to consent (and this site doesn’t even accomplish that. Not consenting requires two click, consenting only one)

  • schappim3 hours ago
    Oh memories! The iBook SE was the first Mac I had.

    This was pre-Mac OS X. The thing had a terrible 800x600px screen but still it was my gateway to decades of Macs.

    The switch to Unix in MacOS X cemented their place in my life.

    I will totally deny that the Macs in Independence Day and Mission Impossible were major influences on my juvenile mind to switch to the Mac.

    • schappim3 hours ago
      I just remembered that it came with a Yo-Yo charger! Fun times!
  • toddmorey5 hours ago
    It’s interesting to remember Apple used to orient the logo so that it was upside down when opened.

    That looks right to you as you open the laptop, but wrong to everyone else. Now when you’re in a coffee shop, all the little metal promotional billboards are correct.

    • PetitPrince3 hours ago
      Classic Thinkpad use to do that as well. A reasoning I've read somewhere (here perhaps ?): the laptop is here to serve you, not be an advertisement.
    • 107292873 hours ago
      Check your local classifieds for « DY » laptops, you’ll find a lot of hp computers for this exact reason !
    • exitb4 hours ago
      It seems that other laptop manufacturers were doing the same thing around the turn of the century, although usually not as prominently.
      • bluGill3 hours ago
        In the OJ Simpson trail IBM made a sbecial thinkpad for the judge so the logo would be right side up on tv.
    • benatkin4 hours ago
      It also looks wrong to the owner as they return to their table without closing it. Which is quite common.
    • twic4 hours ago
      A wise laptop manufacturer would choose a logo which looks the same both ways up.
  • Cockbrand4 hours ago
    The clamshell iBook had one very distinctive disadvantage: when the laptop world had finally arrived at a default display resolution of at least 1024x768, the iBook had an 800x600 display. This forced web designers (in a time before widely supported CSS or even responsive design) to design for the smaller viewport of the iBook instead of being able to take advantage of the higher-res displays of the rest of the world.
    • qingcharles3 hours ago
      Peter Gabriel gave me his in ~2000 because I needed a crappy Mac to test our music streaming and downloading on. I liked the design, but was very underwhelmed by the hardware and software. In that way, it was good for testing. I remember it quickly ended up in a closet with some big elastic bands pushing something onto the trackpad button, since there was an online game at the time called "Hold The Button" with a leaderboard and we wanted to be #1.
      • pstuart3 hours ago
        Any more interesting tidbits to share about working with the man?
    • schappim3 hours ago
      Ha! That 800x600 screen was the first thing I remembered about it, that the composite (or s-video) out…
      • geerlingguy2 hours ago
        It had a weird/custom TRRS adapter, I believe, to get analog video out.
  • turbonaut2 hours ago
    Compare the prices vs a Neo…

    1499 usd for the cheapest clamshell!

    https://www.ibook-clamshell.com/index.php/en/model-overview

  • isoprophlex4 hours ago
    Man do I love that old Apple typography, the tall serif'd letters.

    I'm sad everything's serifless these days...

  • drivingmenuts28 minutes ago
    They should resurrect that design for the Neo.
  • joe_mamba5 hours ago
    Shame Apple didn't have the balls to release the Neo in those bright colors in homage, and instead went with the safe, bland, corporate committee, focus group approved, muted colors like the rest of their product lineup. Booo! Missed opportunity.
    • baal80spam4 hours ago
      I am quite sure that they will expand the colour palette in the next gen. One more way to distinguish that you have "a new version of the thing".
      • joe_mamba2 hours ago
        The limited color palette isn't the issue, it's that the colors have no vividness as the iBook.
    • nielsbot4 hours ago
      This could simply be because you can’t get colors as bright as plastic from anodizing aluminum.
      • joe_mamba2 hours ago
        That couldn't be more false, you absolutely can gen bright colors anodized to aluminum. See: bike frames and carabiners.
    • ranger_danger5 hours ago
      It's almost like companies know what sells best and go with that for maximum profit :)

      Why is it a shame that they didn't choose to lose money on purpose?

      • s0ss4 hours ago
        Yeah, the ones that aren't being made sell terribly!
      • anamexis4 hours ago
        Why is it a shame that companies safely maximize profit at the expense of expressive and novel design?
  • accrual4 hours ago
    I've been thinking about getting into retro Apple laptops! I'm wanting to start with either a Tangerine iBook or the glossy white MacBook A1181.
    • max85394 hours ago
      Power Mac G4 Cube design is something unique. I was thinking of getting a full set with a keyboard, mouse, speakers, and monitor.
  • ChrisMarshallNY5 hours ago
    Cool site.

    I always enjoyed the concept of the iBook, but never found it something that I wanted, personally.

    I used to refer to it as "the MacBook Toilet Seat."

  • ranger_danger5 hours ago
    I remember when it came out, John C. Dvorak called it a toilet seat.
  • spankibalt5 hours ago
    Better known as "Barbie's electric toilet seat".
  • qgin4 hours ago
    I wanted one of these so much.
  • zoklet-enjoyer4 hours ago
    I was in 8th grade and the school's computer lab was filled with iMacs and the library had iBooks students could check out. That was where I discovered Wikipedia, Yahoo Clubs, and Geocities. We had a PC at home but it was older and we could only get dial up at the time, so the higher speed connection at school and the faster hardware was great.
  • listsgenie6 hours ago
    [flagged]
  • jmclnx5 hours ago
    clamshell, that is a name from the past. But has nothing to do with Apple

    >Clam is a Unix(tm) shell that has many features of tcsh, sh and improvements all its own.

    >Clam is copyright (c) 1988 by Callum Gibson. Clam is provided free of charge.

    This came on CohWare Vol1 with Cohorent OS and gave one a small csh(1) environment. I think it was for the 286 version of Coherent which I used back then.