They have created an open source "daughter board" for this purpose.
As it stands, System76 has mediocre branding and design in my personal opinion. Not great, but also not bad. I am not excited about the wooden trim approach integrated in the PC case. But, these things are subjective. If they nail ID, I believe they have a really bright future. When I say, hire a top notch designer - I mean, someone who can change the world type; not someone that they can just hire by posting a job ad. But, it has to start from the owners of the company. If they think Design as a cost center in marketing, forget about it.
I don't know, it's looking better now than some generic boxes you see from big name companies.
For one, ID is not a mutually exclusive endeavor. If a company has A, B, C and D. Adding E, in this case - ID, only adds to the value of the company. Good ID never diminishes it.
I am comparing System76 with 70's IBM, Apple and Braun in my original comment. If IBM didn't pay attention to design - sure, they'd be successful probably. But ID has only added to their goodwill and brand name. Unfortunately, it is no longer true with IBM today. :-(
Executives that pay attention to ID and its value create a direct unspoken visual link with their customers. Customers notice the smallest details, perfection in every aspect of the product and they realize & get the impression about company's dedication towards other non-ID related things. Stripe does this really well. It is even more critical for a physical product that you touch and feel. ID is sort of like a short-cut of communicating the abstract concept of quality to customers. It works brilliantly as a marketing tool as well as a tool to deliver actual measurable benefits to the customer (ease of use, clarity in operation, aesthetic appeal, etc.)
It turns out, if you are manufacturing original products for mass production, you are doing ID. So yes, there is no path to success manufacturing original products without doing ID. I wasn't implying one needn't have ID any more than your comment implies one needn't have engineering.
What I was referring to your comment about "hire a top-notch industrial designer" to produce distinctive designs of impeccable taste.
Yes, products with exceptional ID will sell in major ways.
It turns out, that products that are exceptional in a lot of dimensions sell in major ways. Products that are exceptionally inexpensive sell in major ways. Products that are exceptionally marketed sell in major ways. Products that are exceptionally well engineered sell in major ways.
...and if everyone is employing exceptional ID, then doing so yourself doesn't actually make your product exceptional.
And no, customers don't "notice the smallest details, perfection in every aspect of the product". There are some products that certain customers fetishize and absolutely do notice this stuff, but the vast majority of products people interact with on a daily basis barely register.
I agree that ID is a short cut for communicating quality to customers. Sometimes you shouldn't take the shortcut. Sometimes it's better to take the long way around.
Great ID can work brilliantly as a marketing tool as well as a tool to deliver actual measurable benefits to the consumer. Great engineering can do the same. Having a unique value proposition (which I'd argue is System76's case) can do the same.
There's more than one kind of market success and more than one path to market success.
Don't you feel that there are a lot of products out there that are not designed well? They're just slapped together, molded shut and ready to mass market? ID would just be a one time NRE cost if they don't use expensive materials.
If you get a chance, do catch the "Dieter Rams" documentary by Gary Hustwit. I thought it was amazing and you'd I think enjoy it.
I do, but I feel the same way about engineering. Curse of high expectations.
But I like the lighter wood. It feels almost midcentury modern.
More importantly, someone's made a tower computer that doesn't look like something from a 10-year-old's comic book collection, or every Wintel box made since 1993.
Just to quote two examples:
https://streacom.com/products/db4-fanless-chassis/
https://www.cirrus7.com/produkte/cirrus7-nimbini-v2/overview
They also copied a page from Apple’s eco playbook and will plant a tree for every machine sold which is nice to see. A solid move given the company’s size and reach. I wish more IT companies would use that as a marketing move, it has good signaling value and helps drive change.
I’d like them to do even more with the wooden look and feel, but their cases are still not far removed from a typical desktop. I think it would be great to see them do something really small, in the Mac Mini style, but with that warm wood look. That would look great on any desk.
I’d also like to see someone Hackintosh those machines just for fun.
I disagree with the idea of creating "fresh" and "trendy" design. In all cases, except say Fashion, it creates substandard design to cater to originality & staying trendy. Timelessness cannot be realized if your design philosophy is to try to stay "fresh".
What is fundamentally wrong with metal & clean design? The answer shouldn't come from the fact that "Oh shit, someone is already doing that, let's do something different. May be wood?". The answer should come from fundamental understanding of materials, their use, durability, haptics & touch, engineering needs (bend radius, coefficient of thermal conductivity, flextural ridigity, etc.) and DFM aspects. Everything else is decoration, not design.
As Paul Rand said, "Don't try to be original. Just try to be good."
In the case of System76, they had to bend wood vaneer (poor bend radius) which probably added additional expense to the manufacturing process.
You can actually cut the stuff with a normal pair of paper scissors. It's pretty wild stuff.
And although this isn't strictly the point you were making, wood is an excellent material to house electronics - it absorbs moisture and heat well, is extremely durable, it is a renewable resource, and while it goes in and out of fashion through the decades, its consistently attractive when used judiciously. This desktop case probably just has a sliver of wood panel which exempts it from these benefits, but I hope in the future we will be able to use natural materials more effectively, perhaps even to make the computer hardware itself.
Nothing is "fundamentally" wrong with it. In fact we have gotten to a point that laptop chips can function just fine for many tasks in suboptimal chassis because they are fairly efficient, let alone desktops. The reasons to choose a different design as a customer at least are personal. In my opinion the minimalist industrial design is overused and interacts poorly with my brain. In the absence of any design elements on it I find the products bland and with little character. I have a hard time remembering another glass/metal phone or another bland-painted building with aluminum stairs. Apple knew that years ago and imo it's probably why they stuck with the iphone 6 design for so long, so the market floods with it and thus it becomes memorable. The iphone 10 has more glass and the notch, so in a way it's scaling back the minimalism, closer to the iphone 4/5 era when the phone had a few more geometric elements on it.
In my opinion what is missing from every modern design, be it the applesque industrial or google's kitsch "throw all the colors that don't mix together, remove all textures" material design are little things that make the product memorable. Ideally these come from quirks that add usability or from the materials used. In a different era with a more limited materials available choosing the right thing for the job meant more diverse products. A macbook today is not more memorable than a razer blade or some other copycat. The same goes for chinese phones and iphones. I've confused an iphone with a cheap android replica so many times. Industrial design works when you are the only player doing it. But apple is not.
Product design is a relatively new thing and it is going through the same phase that architecture did with modernism and brutalism( and post modernism probably too). But this endless streamlining and simplifying of devices is not as positive as designers want us to believe. At some point they'll run out of stuff to simplify that people will buy and will try to differentiate by going to the opposite direction or just stick with brand recognition. So while I don't think a wooden pc case is the end all be all of design I'm glad s76 is doing something different. And this kind of change always comes from the "alternative" underdog.
And has anyone achieved timelessness? Ever? I cannot immediately think of any industrial design which does not feel either "current" or "dated".
In fact, not sound as bad. Is necessary to get more details of the hardware to check compatibility, but could be a great option
Imho, it's just that the case does not feel nice. While reading the specs, you have the impression that they have good engineers, that they carefully select components and design the air flow... but the whole case is still not there. As if someone made a draft and stopped there, carrying a "good-enough" tag.
I agree with the GP: They would benefit from an outstanding designer, and that comes with CEO blessing and will.
Not that there is anything wrong with it, but there has been so little innovation in PC design for so many years. Everything is still dominated by LEDs and sharp edges and some desire to appear "techy"
It's like we're still living in an era where computers are a novelty, not just another thing in the house
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_modding
As for why most cabinets look so similar outside of that, I’d say it is probably at least in part thanks to such designs being the best we have in terms of airflow and ease of access to components within.
Coolermaster served that role for years but seem to have vanished.
Recently I ended up putting nearly £2K worth of equipment into one of these.
https://www.corsair.com/uk/en/Categories/Products/Cases/Carb...
It's quiet, neat and doesn't have a glow in the dark multi colored LED anything anywhere.
Eventually I decided on Fractal Design's Define series, they have variants with and without the windows. Now I have a Define RS 5 Black (without the window!) and it is a great quiet case with many details, such as keeping dust out with meshes and vacuumable mesh filters.
The System76 case looks nice, my initial impression was that it looked almost like a quality speaker with a kind of walnut finish. On further examination, it did not look so great, unfortunately. I'd like to see that tree part replaced with a dark metal-bluegrayish matte metal or something.
(another good one was Sharkoon REX8 or its predecessor T6 Value but both aren't apparently produced anymore, bah)
https://www.cultofmac.com/188753/the-braun-products-that-ins...
Going into an organic artsy & crafty direction vs. high-end industrial design like Apple is a good choice if you support the DIY spirit (e.g. Linux & open source), it's more authentic in that context, and you won't be compared to Apple or perceived as imitation of them.
It's also a good alternative to the cyber futurist gamer look that dominates the PC industry.
i am looking at this laptop:
https://system76.com/laptops/galago
it's obvious these guys took their design cues from apple's laptops, but they've paid about a tenth as much attention to the details as apple would. unnecessary bumps and blemishes, odd discolorations here and there, couldn't be bothered to do anything about that hideous rectangle at the top of the screen where the camera is located, etc.
i am contemplating a career move (no more ios development) that would mean i am free to leave apple's ecosystem. if some other company could make laptops as beautiful as apple's, without duplicating the mistakes apple has been making over the last few years, it would really grease the skids for me.
At the top of that list I would probably put the Dell XPS 13 , and it can be bought with Linux. HP (Envy/Spectre) and Lenovo (x1 carbon) have laptops that look to be very high quality, but I don't have personal experience with them and they don't ship Linux.
But the value of the compute power for the buck was top notch. Also, their support was always stellar. Ill certainly buy form them going forward, just wish the gazelles had more physically sound chassis.
So, i would just want to get my hands on a thelio to test out. If System76 is listening, how bout getting a base model to me to review here on HN. :-)
Don't get me wrong, I think it's great they made a cool looking case and threw an AVR in there for controlling the fans, and if I wanted to buy a new desktop, I'd seriously consider one of these...
...but open source hardware it is not... and the claim about it being manufactured in Colorado seems a bit specious. Maybe they're milling the cases in Colorado and installing the parts? The real parts that do the computer part seem to be the same as the real parts in any PC.
They tell you exactly what they mean in that paragraph:
> US-sourced wood and aluminum are formed, finished, etched, and built by artisans in our Denver, Colorado factory. Premium components from around the world are then assembled to your final specifications. And to offset environmental impact, every Thelio sold plants a tree with the National Forest Foundation.
So yes, they make the case in the US and assemble the parts in the US.
They mentioned multiple times that their intentions are to make the hardware as open as possible with each generation. They never claimed that this hardware is 100% open. My guess is that it has to do with how many parts they can order from mobo manufacturers so they slowly release more and more pieces.
>and the claim about it being manufactured in Colorado seems a bit specious. Maybe they're milling the cases in Colorado and installing the parts? The real parts that do the computer part seem to be the same as the real parts in any PC.
That's correct. But coolermaster or corsair cases aren't necessarily made in the USA while these are. Basically what they are saying is that everything they do themselves, including the value-adding steps is done in the USA.
I so wish they had put this bang in the middle of their home page.