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Comment by tgb | Hacker News Reader

I remember coming across this some time ago on HN and being really interested by the white plastic bit. It clicks into place Apple's ability to set itself apart visually during the white earbuds era of iPod advertisements. PCs were black and gray and beige, Apple was a shining white.

And no one else could mimic their style, since it was just too difficult.

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This makes me think of Peter O'Toole wearing that shining white ... garb in the middle of "Lawrence of Arabia" in defiance of all the filth in the desert.

Lean did it because he could and because it reinforced the messianic oveure into which the character had fallen. And because it looked amazing in all that light. It still does. The failed theater at which I first saw this on posters kept that image for ten years or more.

But understood in the context of all that history, we gain that Lawrence was the agent of so much destruction. Destruction that we barely understand now.

So I hope all that gleaming white was worth it. Because I'd hate to think of the price we paid to get away from putty color.

Deserts are dry, not filthy. White is the traditional colour for a tunic worn in those areas, according to this: http://www.pbs.org/lawrenceofarabia/revolt/clothing.html

Where does this "filth" idea come from?

Well, there is a whole lot of awful dust in the desert.

The tunic got quite dirty later in the movie, and the character kept calling the desert "clean". Deserts have considerable quantities of dust.

My take on the movie is that this was being communicated as a character detail of Lawrence, part of the messianic nature of the character.

Deserts are one of the cleanest natural environments. It's pretty easy to keep white stuff white there in comparison to grassland or forest (just to pick two at random)

The earbuds (and the translucent iMac that predates it) aren't the best example of "no one else could mimic their style".

When the first iPod came out in 2001, Apple wasn't the behemoth it is now; its market cap was around $7 billion (http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Apple_(AAPL)/Data/Market_Capi...). At that time, many companies could have paid as much attention to design as Apple did.

"And no one else could mimic their style, since it was just too difficult."

The magic of Apple isn't their design, it's the ability to re-create and distribute good design cheaper than Braun. [0]

[0] https://twitter.com/HannuRytkonen/status/731511690911711232

The H&M of electronics.

That's just designer nods to earlier work/aesthetics, and happen all the time in industrial (and graphic) design.

Especially since we're talking about 20 and 50 year old designs at the time -- it's not like copying this year's hot product to sell a cheap imitation. Totally different era, totally different functionality, totally different devices -- but borrowing the old visual style.

The magic of Apple is the functionality and thinking behind their devices. There are tons of same looking competitor devices that get it wrong.

E.g. the whole idea behind the unibody design is not the seam-less look, it's the sturdiness and tolerance of the materia. Competitors copy the overall look and color, but leave out both the seam-lessness AND the sturdiness.

Or take touches like the mag safe port, the touch trackpad, the no-button trackpad, the first to come out with the hi-dpi display -- plus the thinking that goes into ensuring good battery life, small weight, and thinness along with said sturdiness. Competitors often leave out one or more of these -- which are all important for a laptop.

Where Apple fails, OTOH, is their occasional cheapness, still selling embarrassing starter configurations (memory, disk-size wise). Of course if they do sell these, and buyers have no problem, kudos to them, but one would expect more, since that's too is part of the whole experience, even if the buyer thinks 128 GB SSD is good for them.

My wife got (on my recommendation) the starter config Air, and it's never occurred to me that there was anything inadequate about it (to be fair, two years in, she ran out of disk space and had to move a stash of photos to an external hard drive, and for me, I can't stand the tiny display, but it works for her, so that's great).

I use a 128GB SSD, have done for nearly two years.

This is my main machine (a laptop) for work and home.

Never had a problem and I don't expect to have a problem before the laptop fails.

As for the entry level MacBook Air, for my work the CPU is a little slow, and I would probably boost the RAM for the occasional "lets open everything", but I see no reason to increase the SSD size unless it is trivially cheap. Each to their own though.

I genuinely can't tell how much of that is supposed to be a joke.

Any manufacturing experts can help us understand why white plastic is difficult?

White plastic highlights defects including contamination with other colors (or materials), burn marks, and shrinkage. It is common for one injection machine to be used for many colors and types of plastic, but since white is such a pure color, it is very easy to see swirls or traces of other colors in the part. Even different batches of white plastic can cause unsightly marks; getting some nylon in your ABS part will certainly ruin it. Burn marks (which are dark) obviously stand out more against white than any other color, and are generally caused by either the mold or plastic being too hot. Shrink marks are caused by uneven cooling of the plastic because of machine settings or part design, and are most visible on white because of uneven reflections and small shadows. Even tiny scratches can ruin the glossy finish of a smooth part.

Since Apple has huge volumes, they can dedicate machines to injecting a single mold, and ensure that plastic colorants are matched across batches; the rest of us (with volumes of less than ~100-500k/yr) have to settle for grey.

If anyone wants to chat about part design and manufacture, let me know.

I certainly am! Please tell more. :)

We manufacture large parts in Apple white, and it's not caused a huge number of problems. At least not yet.

Is this still a thing?

I ask in seriousness, as commodity smartphones with small production runs, less than 100k, and earphones, even USB cables, now exist at very low prices, production runs and seemingly margins.

Or has the mold part got easier, allowing different shapes/sizes without burning, and the colourants / dedicated white production line now standardised?

Smartphone enclosures themselves are usually quite simple, and if you look closely, you will see that most small devices are designed much more simply than Apple products. Apple dedicates more effort into modeling plastic flows, shrinkage, and other manufacturing issues than most other OEMs. Apple also dedicates more effort to refining production techniques than most other manufacturers. Companies like Samsung and HTC have volumes almost as large as Apple's, and are not far off.

Molding parts has gotten a little easier over the last 10 years. Molding machines are more easily tuned, and CFD tools have gotten much better and easier to use. The Bolt post is addressing new companies with 1k-100k/yr volumes and less expertise than Apple, and the post is largely correct.

Thanks.

After reading further comments I decided to compare all of the white plastic devices I have, and they're all a often noticeably different colour, even on different parts of the same device.

What about white with texture? Definitely understand white shows artifacts on glossy textures very readily, but we've had decent luck with Mold-Tech textured whites at admittedly very small volumes (1-5K).

Color match is still rough though.

Texture makes any color much easier to deal with, as it makes mixed colors, materials, and shrinkage less visible.

Really glossy any colour is difficult. Glossy black shows sink much worse than light colours in my experience. Texturing fixes so many difficulties in injection molded parts.

I think several of us are interested in some insight into this world. It seems like you have it and are able to convey it in an easy to understand, compelling way.

I suggest you write a series of blog posts that explain interesting bits and quirks of manufacturing processes that the rest of us outside of the industry don't really think about.

It's a way that you can help inform the world, and also capitalize off of your knowledge! Please consider it :)

Seconded!

Black makes it easier to hide defects. White makes any tiny issue show up very clearly, it's hard to get the exact shade of white right, and you'll need to run lots of plastic through the machine to make sure no little bits of other colors are still waiting in there to ruin your new pieces.

I'd rather go back to what came before Apple: Next cubes. They were sleek, black cubes with better usability and performance than many competitors. Xbox also did great-looking, black boxes. So, one can still differentiate with a good form of black.

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