I also filed the corners off my MacBook
brt.fyi
brt.fyi
Also, TIL that Bosch also makes files. I was under the impression that they only made powertools (or electronic measuring devices, or other things with a battery or power cord).
Which feels weird when you consider the pedigree of shimano, but it makes sense when you think what kind of internals an ebike motor would need.. I guess.
A few years between each bike and very different bikes. But Avinox feels like it has come from nowhere to be on par or superior to Bosch. The charging plug egonicis is 100x better too.
(They are or at least were originally a bearings company, specialising in things that need to spin with very low friction, and all their seemingly unrelated businesses started from that)
that was 40-50 years ago, so who cares, but Shimano is truly interesting for cultivating so many different opinions.
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/second-world-war/blitz/blitz-...
Bosch's logo is something like a sparkplug (the thing used in internal combustion engines). To this day, the 'mobility' division is the biggest one. See https://www.bosch.com/stories/creation-of-the-bosch-logo/
Decades ago I actually had an offer to work for them as a research student working on optimising internal combustion engines.
Bosch used to do the first magnetos / dynamos in the early 1900s motorbikes / cars. The principle is similar to this day - one rotating magnetic field within one static. You can do all kinds of shenanigans and combinations of permanent magnets / coils where it's either the electric current generating a magnetic field or the magnetic field generating an electric current. Depending whether You want the movement to generate electricity or the electricity to generate movement.
In the first magnetos (the thing that uses the engine rotation in order to generate a current that then makes a spark in the spark plug) they used permanently magnetized exterior plating and a rotating winding. That's sort of what You see in the logo - two coil windings rotating in their housing.
https://www.da7c.co.uk/technical_torque_articles/magneto_ign...
But yeah, it's magneto ignition device, pre-sparkplug.
Bosch developed the "experimental" ECU software that VW used in the Dieselgate vehicles.
I believe their corners are already/still rounded, though.
If we have to be precise, however, perhaps blades would be a more appropriate term to refer to their products' edges.
This reminds me, the backplate of the Mac is also sharp as heck. I actually cut myself once when I was replacing a motherboard on an older Intel Mac. You don't really expect it to be this sharp when you lift it up.
Bosch dates their appliances using a thing called the Fertigungsdatum Number. The first two digits represent the year of manufacture, the second two are for the month. Except the year doesn't align with the actual year, you first have to add 20. Why 20? Well, Bosch first started using their internal dating system back in 1920 and appliances from that year started with the code "00". I had an oven that had a date of "7808", which means it was manufactured in August 1998 (it lasted almost 30 years before we finally had to replace it last month).
In 2020 the system wound back around and started with "00" again.
I opted instead for GE Cafe / Profile appliance everywhere, which are fully usable without the app. None of my appliances have ever or will ever be connected to any network. The GE Cafe dishwasher also has a built in grinder/disposal unit which helps it deal with heavily soiled dishes much better as well as a bonus, and a fully stainless tub.
Best of luck with your new dishwasher, the Bosch units are legitimately very quiet and powerful for cleaning (I believe they're still the quietest by at least 2db on the market, and every 3db is a doubling of sound power and intensity since its a logarithmic scale).
This is true, but the ear measures sound pressure, not sound intensity. Sound pressure requires a 6dB increase to double. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power,_root-power,_and_field_q...
And human perception of loudness is also non-linear. The increase necessary for a perceived doubling in loudness is frequency dependent, but at most frequencies it's higher than 6dB. At 1 KHz you need roughly 10dB increase for a perceived doubling. See:
Whoever installed your device didn't properly adjust tension springs that keep the door open. You can do it by yourself with user's manual (that can be downloaded.)
They invented the O2 sensor that lead to electronic fuel injected engines being awesome, and they still produce huge numbers of OE automotive engine management systems.
They've got their self-branded tools, but when you buy a Dremel widget or a Diablo saw blade, you're also buying Bosch.
I used to get home aquarium equipment that was made by Bosch. I've owned a (rather high-end, for the time) aftermarket car stereo that was a product of Bosch. The Bosch dishwasher I had was a skookum choocher despite being relatively inexpensive and near the bottom of their line.
They make industrial automation hardware and sell plant engineering services. They build and run factories that manufacture semiconductors.
I'm only scratching the surface here.
Chances are excellent that you've got stuff related to Bosch all around you, wherever you go.
A choocher is a thing that chooches; it's a machine that accomplishes things. Like a steam locomotive, chooching along and doing real work as it goes.
Skookum is a term borrowed from Chinook that means things like strong, brave, or excellent. When an object is skookum, it is resoundingly well-made, robust, or reliable. Some things are more skookum than others, while some aren't skookum at all.
A skookum choocher is a well-made machine that does a great job of doing stuff.
The one who then took that amazing spectacle and turned the participants all against eachother?
No. I don't think that their disinclusion in my comment is particularly rude.
(Googles)
Well who knew? Bosch own Freud. Does that mean Bosch saw blades are also Diablo/Freud, just in Bosch blue? There's so many different variants, and they change over time, that a straight D vs. B visual comparison isn't really possible.
That doesn't mean that they're all the same; but it doesn't mean that any of them are different, either.
If I had to guess, then I'd guess that there are differences. There's a lot of variables that go into the design of a saw blade.
Depends who owns the patent for that.
From how I use the trackpad, the bottom of my thumb always feels sore-ish after a day's work and it took me a while to trace this to the sharp cornern of my macbook.
Because macs have 3 big markets
1) graphic designers/ photo editors
2) web developers
3) people who value looks above other considerations
Number 3 buy more macs, so square corners it is
This thread is full of people who are scared of changing the look of their macbooks. Jewellery? Or fear of standing out?
There is a large culture in the Mac community that anything that modifies your device, may have a impact on your expensive warranty when you need something fixed. Apple has taught their customer base well.
This translates into Macbooks that have been modified often having less resell value. See how many time people with the thermal mods need to point out warranty, battery, and the ability to remove it.
Laptops in general, be it macbooks, windows device, ... are already difficult devices to sell (in my experience) because they are very personal. So anything that steps outside that norm, makes it even harder to sell.
If your planning on keeping your device until eol, modify away. But a surprising large amount of people buy these devices with the idea of reselling after a year or two (as they hold value better then win devices), so they can then use that money on a upgraded version.
Apple has taught their costumers that Apple products are a style choice, a lifestyle product. It makes them boring. Their utility is secondary to their look and the added cost elevates that to a pain point.
Absolute irony coming from someone who uses a Thinkpad. ;-)
The second reason is compatibility. Apple does a pretty good job with x86 emulation, but it still a problem for many Windows games, Linux support is not the best either.
And then, there may be plenty of specific reasons, maybe you are missing some connectivity, maybe you don't like Apple, maybe you want a Nvidia GPU, etc...
The compatibility yes I fully agree. This is sort of a trial for me to see how well it works with Linux VMs and a comparable setup, but if I cannot get it to work as well then I will switch back. So far it is working well though
At that time, you could get a decent entry-level Windows laptop for around 700 euros that can do pretty much everything you want a laptop for if you are not a power user. More than that and for most people, it is "expensive". At 950 euros, you are paying for options, and it turns out that the package offered by that M4 Air is what you want, but it is likely that a gamer would want a different package for these 950 euros. Personally, I went for a 1000 euro ThinkPad because it was a better fit for my needs at that budget. In particular, I wanted more than the 256 GB of storage you most likely had (1 TB).
Because a used Thinkpad running Linux is the people's champ. It costs $200 instead of $2000. Parts are plentiful and virtually anything can be replaced with a small Phillips head screwdriver. The screen doesn't break if you look at it wrong. You can drop it down a flight of stairs and it'll keep chugging. Linux support has been great for north of a decade. It's the pinnacle of productive e-cycling.
Apple Silicon's value prop is undeniable but their laptops are otherwise "meh". Judging by all the internet whinging you'd think that every laptop besides a MacBook has a Game Boy screen and a trackball but the truth is that many non-Apple laptops are perfectly usable. I have both and actually spend more time on my Thinkpad.
Personally, it's because I hate MacOS with a fiery passion. The UX is just awful.
Disappearing scrollbars are a bug, not a feature, on a desktop OS. They make sense on a phone/table where screen real estate is a premium, but on anything 14 inches or more, it's just not necessary.
I hate the dock bar. I don't want multiple windows from a single app coalesced to a single icon. If I have two PyCharm windows open, I should have two entries so I can click between them in a single click.
I hate that I can't disable scroll wheel acceleration. I have my scroll speed set to 1 click of the wheel being ~3 lines of text. 4 clicks should always be 12 lines, regardless of it's a quick flick or a casual scroll. MacOS insists on making it so a slow click of the wheel scrolls half a line, but a quick flick of 4 clicks or so goes 3 pages.
It's utterly stupid that Home/End bring my cursor to the begin/end of the current document, rather than the beginning/end of the current line.
I could go on and on about the things I despise about it. But as a general rule, if there's something that Linux and Windows do the same way, but MacOS does it differently, I'll hate it. It feels often like MacOS wants to be different for the sake of being different rather than actually being better.
Many many reasons to avoid Apple products. I still laugh at their 2012-14 era macbooks with a SATA cable that made 3 right angle turns and was easily the most replaced part at the college help desk I supported. How did they solve that? M.2 then soldered drives.
The Neo changes the price debate and their high RAM devices are coveted by devs I work with. But there are many reasons to avoid Apple if you aren't already in that ecosystem. You'd have to pay me to use an iPhone or daily drive a mac.
At least now window snapping is built in instead of a $5 add on for a feature 90% of Linux supports (and 100% of Windows since XP). Non Mac editing tools are very competitive. Unless you prefer Mac/Apple ecosystem or are using Mac specific apps there are other options I'd prefer.
For instance, there was a great article here in the past weeks (can't find it right now sadly) that highlighted how the file name preview works in Finder. It does it in a very intuitive way and without covering any of the other files listed. You wouldn't notice it visually, but it sure is useful. A lot of the hardware also feels really polished as a tool, like the trackpad (although I admit it's probably not as difficult to make this look good).
And then you have these edges again and it feels like it was done by a completely different design team without any communication to the rest.
I got a plastic MacBook eventually which I filed down too because the edges were really sharp there. And plastic is easy to file. Also replaced the screen with a matte version, on the plastic MacBook that was also easy because the screens were readily available and there was no glass overlay.
Then I had a unibody MBP 15" matte. Less sharp and with off factory matte display. Not great keyboard though.
The current MBP I find abhorrent. Even after they switched from the horrible butterfly mistake the travel is still way too shallow. I just can't work with that anymore. These days I just don't buy laptops anymore. Only desk PCs.
I don't like to be precious about my tools either, scratches and so on are evidence it's being used for what it's made for!
This is part of the fun of reading other peoples writing - thanks for sharing your work!
Sigh.
Like those fancy luxury cars some people buy but are too expensive to drive, maintain, insure, or repair. One scratch wipes out their savings so the car sits in the garage.
Fast forward a few years, I gingerly took out the pad and pulled out a sheet. I didn't do it right and tore the sheet down the middle and had to take fresh one. Then I dropped my pen while writing (since I was so "careful" with the paper) and had ink droplets fall onto the sheet. Finally, when I put pen to the paper, I found that it had absorbed moisture from the air and the the ink bled into the paper ruining everything.
I daily drive what some think are just for special trips.
Oh, and a Passat for the missus. The kids call the Passat 'The muggle car'.
I really could do with a couple cars less (mostly to make room for a Toyota Century, I have wanted one for years), but I love all of them for different reasons, so...
The 'problem' is that as it migrated (much like, say, Leica cameras and optics) from being tools for professionals into status symbols, a lot of its owners went from basically banging it about, relishing each and every battle scar obtained to (sigh) worrying about resale value.
I have a micrometer. It's delicate and lives in a velvet lined case.
I could treat it like a hammer but I know that once the surfaces get damaged it will be less useful.
It's no less of a tool just because you take extra care of it. I don't treat it well because I want to hand it down to my grand kids, I treat it well because it's delicate I want to keep it working.
Likewise, I don't baby my laptop but also don't throw it around, drop it or use it as a step to reach high shelves.
I don't sweat dings but I do use a proper fitted case when I transport it because I don't want them either.
and also put the code in a public repo for anyone to use https://github.com/brtmax/prime-flow-field
Some tools do not work if you don’t treat them with utmost care (like an optical system that might need a clean room to work, or that gets damaged by a small bump, or whatever)
My 2015 MBP has this exact same issue.
The two sins are:
1. Blurring things that shouldn't be blurred.
2. Blurring too much.
Racing games are notoriously guilty of #1. If you're in a third person view, your car should basically never have any motion blur. Likewise, a car driving the same speed as you right next to you shouldn't get blurred. You should only see blur in the road and scenery that is close to you. Instead, the devs will just apply a post-processed radial blur that blurs the entire scene, which just turns the entire screen into a blurry mess.
The width of the blur should at most be the delta between frames, and ideally, just half that, really. But a lot of devs seem to have this idea of "Motion blur is a neat effect! We should emphasize it!" and the blur will cover an area covered by multiple video frames.
A motion blur that is more subtle can actually look amazing. It doesn't look blurry, and instead, just makes animations look more fluid.
Motion blur is why movies can be 24 fps and look fine, but a game at 24 fps typically looks incredibly choppy.
The "sharp edge syndrome" here to me seems to be a good thing then as it acts as a reminder for proper ergonomics / posture.
First Google AI search result on the topic:
"Never rest your wrists on your MacBook while typing. Instead, let your palms rest gently on the laptop body only when you pause. Hover your hands as you type. This prevents you from bending your wrists and protects the nerves in your carpal tunnel."
That also pretty much exactly mirrors the way we learned typing / posture at school in Austria.
They could have put sensors on the body and made it alert you in MacOS, but you know, it is what it is
I've been using computer keyboards for 30 years and have never done that.
Still no wrist problems.
I don't typically type on laptop keyboards though, and I use a very firm wrist pad, and sit at a height that makes my wrists nearly perfectly straight.
Thanks to both authors for sharing the work!
Google Pixel 7/8 have sharp edges on their camera bump on the back.
https://www.andar.com/products/the-helm?variant=397924980491...
Pricey, but the lip covers the edge. My current one is 4 years old and lasted a couple of generations of Macbooks.
Perhaps you could claim I should be using larger laptops ad part of the "holding it wrong"), but then my preferred Thinkpad X1 Carbons do not cause the same issue for me.
(Nor the screen reflections, or mushy keyboards of my work Macs)
Take of that what you will, but I can't imagine that I filed off that much. I'm assuming my kitchen scale is just not well calibrated
(This is particularly true if it's a book that's still in print, or was in large enough print runs it's easy to buy another second-hand copy when the one you have falls apart. It's still somewhat true even when that's not the case.)
Though admittedly, caring about this is even more vapid than caring about my books being pristine.
anyways, everyone handles their items differently, which is fine - a friend once borrowed a book from me which was in pristine condition after multiple years of me owning and reading it. when he returned it, the back was completely wrinkled, pages had dog-ears, he had bent the cover all the way around to be able to hold it better etc.
that kind of made me sad because it felt like something i took a lot of care to keep it in good condition was "destroyed" in a matter of weeks. of course i wasn't mad towards my friend because i realized that people handle books differently.
that being said. if someone borrows you something, try to keep it in more or less the same state as when it was given to you. accidents happen, of course. i on the other hand have learned to either not borrow books i care about, or make a point about me taking care of them when reading.
sometimes it's also not as easy as "just buy another copy". some books i care about because i bought them on a vacation, or someone gifted them to me. so the exact item has a sentimental value an additional copy will not be able to replicate. but again, i just learned to create two categories of books in my mind, those i borrow, and those i don't.
after all it's 2026, just download an eBook from Anna's Archive (if they borrow the physical copy from me there's no monetary transaction towards the author as well, so i really don't feel bad about it in these specific situations).
To be honest, it is not like we were maniacs about that, books are meant to be read, and accidents happen, but damaging a book if you could avoid it just felt wrong.
And I am also thinking about libraries that have books that are hundreds of years old or more. The reason we still have them is that people cared.
It is not entirely rational, but it is one of these things, like playing with food, a moral consideration more than a practical one.
I never thought about blogging about it though. Perhaps something to consider.
What? You can damage even the most robust and simple tool by using it wrongly or inattentively.
Amazon link to a debuting tool. It uses sharp harder metal to cut off sharp metal edges.
These tools are made to remove burrs resulting from machining processes. They are very useful for quick&dirty jobs on bore holes or rough edges where optics don't matter, but they lack the precision for sensitive work.
Anybody who's not very well versed in using a deburring tool is just about guaranteed to produce a terrible result that will only take longer to sand out than approching the task with files and sandpaper from the start.
Not as bad as I would have thought, but I would still go OP's way if I wanted to do this.
But he ran into a real problem: his computer began locking up. No warning, no prior glitches, just a hard lockup, and only a power-cycle could get it going again.
And I took one look at his setup and I said, "Dad, you need to ventilate that thing at the bottom. I bet your CPU is suffering an overheat condition."
And so Dad went out and he purchased a little laptop stand for the laptop, that contained fans in the base, and he set the laptop stand across his lap and put the laptop on the laptop stand. And he didn't even need to actively run the fans, but just the extra height and bottom ventilation did the trick, and his laptop never locked-up again, and he was overjoyed, along with the cat, and Mom as well. And they lived happily ever after.
Next version: edge sharpness detectors. Or body resistance measurements.
Even still, I'm looking forward to the day where I can run Asahi on this
At the time they called this crazy and unproductive, but those obsessions with control of my tools built the foundational skillsets that drove my career.
That's just not the definition of the word "tool" at all but okay... whatever
Some people would like to pretend means of production are holy assets you're supposed to value and trade (INVEST!!! making value is for losers and _these_ workers), when it's just a consummable that should serve a purpose right now.
A computer is a tool and customizing the case is not unheard of.
Thank you for desmystifying the Mac. Users know best.
If your primary concern is something looking pretty, it is no longer primarily a tool.
Probably loose wording as damage can mean break something or make it look less pretty. I think the intent is clear though.