How Apple Made the Space Black MacBook Pro Darker Than | Hacker News Reader

How Apple Made the Space Black MacBook Pro Darker Than

ifixit.com

I love how they wrote an entire article fawning about how awesome this process is before showing that it doesn't actually work at resisting fingerprints. Apple's reality distortion field at work.

If you compare Apple's effort to PC laptops you see what they are on about.

It does leave fingerprints which are noticeably worse than Space Grey but it's easily 10x better than the dozen other black laptops I tried at the store today. Clearly there's a lot of engineering just to achieve that level of improvement.

Yeah, they went to the specialist shop or asked a few experts how to do it, applied it, done.

But... It is an awesome process? And it does look cool and is 'more black'?

How much more black could this be?

VantaBlack or MIT-carbon-nanotubes black?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21093784

The answer is: some. Some more.

It seems to have less of a print than the current space grey. An improvement over the status quo lines up with Apple’s claim of “more resistance” to fingerprints.

The article says that "[...] the blotch is unquestionably more noticeable on the black frame". It also looks more noticeable to me on the picture.

It may look more noticeable on the black frame than on the silver frame, but why do you think it wouldn't have looked even more noticeable on a black frame that wasn't given the fingerprint resistance treatment?

Should we not compare this "space black" finish with something like the MacBook Air's "midnight black" finish?

I also doubt whether a finger covered in Cheetos dust is representative here. Seeing a comparison with just normal finger oil fingerprints would be interesting.

which part is distorted here?

> A-for-effort and partial credit for the outcome

No, thanks. I'll hold out for the Vantablack version.

I asked ChatGPT4 for the best commercial alternatives to vanta black:

1) Black 3.0 2) Musou Black 3) Singularity Black

Found a reddit post of someone saying they painted their laptop with black 3.0 but the paint rubs off and its not something they'd want to handle on a daily basis.

Best I could find is a video of someone painting a laptop case with musou black https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwvSX12MITk which while looks awesome it also looks like it would rub off on everything you own so probably not realistic either.

Did more research and found this reddit post of someone who anodized their macs: https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/wswe1r/my_anodized_mac...

Now I'm wondering how dark a matte look you can get using a similar approach.

Black 4.0 was recently released too! It’ll be great when ChatGPT has a better way to stay up to date :)

"The Ultimate Test in Fingerprint-Proofing? Cheetos Fingers"

OG silver is the way to go.

Everything else is a fad.

The article says they aren’t sure about the details of the etching process, so I had a look at the patent which says briefly, in a paragraph towards the bottom of page 16 / column 8, that they use a bath of hot phosphoric acid. Phosphoric acid is one of the main flavours in cola drinks.

Science! Apple scienced it again! I do think this is a repeat of a decade ago with the original black core 2 duo, a processor change instigated new colors. Then again a decade ago from the core 2 duo black and gray were apple standard colors.

If Apple made hammers, I wonder what they'd look like.

Tangential, but what do hackers use to eat messy foods without oily fingers? I imagine it may be small tongs.

Or chopsticks

chopsticks are excellent for cheetos

>But the best thing you can do for the planet is keep hammering away at the laptop you already have.

You don't say! Is this a form of satire? Who the f would replace a laptop for a slightly darker shell? smh

So much of tech is actually just fashion. Who would buy a new colourway to signal you have the newest most expensive product? Ugh, far too many people.

Colour alone was enough for MKBHD to order one but at least he had the sense to cancel after using a review unit for a few weeks and basically getting early buyer's remorse... mostly because it wasn't dark enough to be exciting to him and felt like another grey.

> Colour alone was enough for MKBHD

No it wasn't.

He said the main reason was that he was using a M1 MacBook Pro which is a couple of generations behind. The black colour was an additional benefit so combined he thought it was enough to make the jump.

But both the colour and the performance wasn't enough which is understandable. M1 MacBook Pro is still an exceptional product.

Nope. It was an OR not an AND. His conclusion: "Maybe my upgrade will happen when they really commit to the matt black thing OR there is another huge upgrade."

He knew the spec bump wasn't going to be enough. His conclusion on the colour: "I am glad there is a new... darker... colour available, but it's weirdly not for me". If he liked the colour, he would have kept his order.

> Who the f would replace a laptop for a slightly darker shell? smh

Heaps of people. You know there's literally billions of people, right?

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