Porsche will contest Laguna Seca in historic colors of the Apple Computer livery | Hacker News Reader

Porsche will contest Laguna Seca in historic colors of the Apple Computer livery

newsroom.porsche.com

119 pointsAmorymeltzer58 comments

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apple should go back to their classic logo

minimalism and thinness-for-thinnness-sake has been played out: everything looks the same and is devoid of personality.

People want personality back:

https://x.com/HeyZaraKhan/status/2050166377269620920

Related, MB bringing back physical buttons:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47997418

Physical media is making a comeback too (including books)

I had an IT job where I got to replace ink in enterprise printers and the tactility was great. I completely understand the convenience of always plugged in and connected drives, but for some media it would be great to have some clicks or tactility when plugging things in, and having more plug and play storage options. I miss the days of plugging in a “thing” which holds a defined media or set of media. Game disks and cartridge support on PC, even if it isn’t practical, would be great to see

I love this too! What do you think of the "halfway faked" devices like the Yoto player [0]? My kid uses it to listen to audiobooks -- it has no actual content on the card, just rfid telling the device (now set this as the current album for playback).

[0] https://us.yotoplay.com/

The absolute, very last complaint that I have with Apple's brand right now is their logos. They can abandon minimalism once they're done worshiping authoritarianism, until then they don't deserve it.

They should make finder’s search function actually work so that you can open apps on the latest release or macOS. Everything else is irrelevant when you are shipping massive UX regressions and bugs.

I have to agree

Modern Apple is like the bland decorations of today that make houses look more like a hospital than anything else

That Rainbow Apple theme on the cars is just something else. It almost has Nickelodeon levels of enthusiasm

Respect to those handful of timeless brands that have pretty much never changed. Sony is basically the same since the 50s.

I wish they’d bring back the original PlayStation logo though, not just on anniversary editions.

Especially the ones you could rotate.

wrt Porsche, Apple, and physical buttons:

Porsche makes an Android Auto/Apple Carplay head unit that's compatible with their older cars (including single-DIN for the classics). I always thought it was super cool that they made that as an option for people who wanted to daily drive their 914 without giving up some of the practical benefits of a newer car.

They put out some delightfully cheesy ads with at least some actors who didn't speak English but tried to sound things out phonetically.

Those rainbow colors have a different connotation in popular culture. Not sure if Apple's marketing team would want to take any risks there.

Disagree. The people that buy Porches and Macs see that logo as iconic. Sexy as fuck.

Sexy in the LGBTQI+ sense, yes. There's nothing wrong with that, and sends an inclusive message which is good. However, not sure if Apple would want to go that direction.

Apple CEO Tim Cook came out as a homosexual in 2014, making him the first openly gay CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

Man you are ultra focused on LGBT

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/05/apple-introduces-the-...

I think now it would be confused with the lgb** flags

LGBTQ?

> People want personality back:

It's more like people under 30 are nostalgic for an era they never experienced, mostly never even actually existed, and that they can only experience through mindless consumption of plastic gadgets and retro inspired pop culture.

> It's more like people under 30 are nostalgic for an era they never experienced, mostly never even actually existed, and that they can only experience through mindless consumption of plastic gadgets and retro inspired pop culture.

So what you're saying is they are no different than any other relatively modern generation?

eg. Apple's 1990s ascension built on the back of Dieter Rams nostalgia.

The colors look beautiful on the car. Hopefully a Ternus-lead Apple will find the courage to adorn the Macbook Pro line with six colors.

I would bet there's so much pent up demand for properly colored macbooks. What's the argument against it – SKU explosion?

> What's the argument against it

every cent you invest in the product is taken from your profit.

Not if you add it to the price.

The red one goes faster. I mean costs more.

Is there?

I walked past a parking lot yesterday and everything was in black, white and silver.

When I bought my house the agent turned up her nose about the wood furnishings instead of "millennial white".

The resale value of macs is one of their selling points, just like cars. Generic colours win. I contend there is no pent up demand.

As a millennial I grew up with 90s fun colors. I want color. Gen X has largely oppressed us with Millenial White, Beige and earth tones. It is both inoffensive but also depressing.

Remember the old fruity iMacs and iBooks? They sold like hotcakes after Apple was making grey machines for decades before that. Pretty soon every computer manufacturer was making colorful machines. Those things had great resale value back then too.

> I walked past a parking lot yesterday and everything was in black, white and silver.

Everything else is artificially expensive. This says nothing about customers except that they're price sensitive.

Apple is the best (not perfect!) when it comes to product marketing in the sense of delivering products the market wants. So there is surely a market reason why the iPhone Pro line went highly saturated (and black was conspicuously removed!) while the MacBooks Pro have remained monochrome.

I’m guessing it’s as simple as business users not wanting to flip up a bright orange or deep red lid at a meeting.

It's not a 'greige' (grey-beige) paint job tho so it doesn't look very good. The rainbow apple logo needs the greige to foreground its vibrancy. White is too loud, and drowns out the pop.

Got down voted here but I was being serious. That greige colour of early Apple was part of the branding that made room for the colourful logo. These race cars break design rules and look worse for it.

Yeah except the race cars look amazing, and this is one of those liveries that has been legendary for decades.

...but it's not the livery that Apple actually used at the time? Near as I can honestly tell, anyway.

Also. Personally, I don't think the cars look great in white.

There was no shortage of bright white plastic in late 80s-early 90s Apple products. //c, Unidisk 3.5, and the like. It all looked fine.

I recall mostly greige from that period, changing slightly in hue between the Apple IIe and (say) the Quadra line. Citation needed

E.g., https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple%20II%20Documentation%20P... for some good shots of the 800k UniDisk drives.

We used a lot of those where I worked, back in the day. They were as white as the driven snow.

IIRC some of the //cs were a silvery-greige color, like the IIGS, but the first ones were certainly white.

Yes, it took a few years of tweaking to get the colorway right. Too bad they didn't use the final product for these cars.

Neat. Porsche releases different gear from time to time based on classic liveries. An espresso cup wearing this livery would be nice.

For example, here's what's left of the martini racing collection: https://shop.porsche.com/us/en-US/c/collections?hierarchical...

Ah, they just today did Formula E in a Pink Pig livery (https://www.fiaformulae.com/en/news/1062899) but I think the Apple livery might have been more apt.

Yummy pink pig liver. So livery.

Oh that's why the "Hoonipig" had that livery. I must admit I didn't think much about it's origins, but it was one of my favourite cars to come out of the Hoonigan/Ken Block machine.

edit: on second look, it doesn't seem like the same pink but it is a similar aesthetic. Surely a homage but maybe not as direct as I thought.

Whoever designed the modern version of it, did an awesome job. Modern porsches (past 2000) have gotten a bit too boring, and it needs to be bring some more color in their line up.

Here's Porsche really at its best, on the Nurburgring's Nordschleiffe in 2018, which is arguably the most complicated and diverse track on the planet doing a cool 5m19s (in 2024 a Mercedes AMG GT One was a full 1min10s slower, for example):

https://youtu.be/PQmSUHhP3ug

Any car lover who doesn't know that vid can safely watch it.

Damn, just when we of the emulator and vintage stuff scene thought we were safe using the old colors as they hadn't any relevance anymore, booom, it suddenly becomes trendy again.

This is a strange sounding title. It sounds like Porsche was fighting against Apple’s colors in Laguna Seca, when instead they’ll be used on Porsche cars.

The title reads perfectly fine to me. Especially with the `in` preposition.

> to take part in a competition, election, etc., and try to win it

https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/eng...

Out of the context of racing perhaps, but the 'in' should have made it clear. Maybe if you don't know what Laugna Seca is one might get confused. But then this press release probably isn't aimed at you.

FWIW I agree with you, this title made it sound like Porsche was going to file a lawsuit against Apple. Maybe it's a cultural thing but I've never heard "contest" being used this way in American English, at the very least.

Apple itself sells some classic logo merch at the Apple Park Visitor Center Apple Store in Cupertino.

Worth a visit, in my opinion. ;-)

iirc the apple color porshes were kremer k935s?

i was actually at laguna for this: https://sportscardigest.com/le-mans-winning-porsche-935-k3-s...

Been thinking about something similar. The tricky part is always the consistency guarantees.

I saw "livery" and thought, "Beige?"

Only HN could find something negative to say about a wrap on a car. The internet is a remarkable place.

Race fans criticize liveries all the time.

Was this sanctioned by Apple??

Common sense or reading the article would help.

> “We’ve enjoyed a longstanding relationship with Porsche, going back to 1980 when a Porsche race car first carried the Apple logo,” Oliver Schusser, Vice President Apple Music, Sports and Beats, said. “That moment marked the beginning of a shared passion for innovation and creativity that continues to define our collaboration today. As Apple celebrates its 50th anniversary, we’re proud to once again partner with Porsche on a design that pays tribute to that original 1980 livery.”

This is a nothing burger of a story.

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