[HN Gopher] iBook Clamshell
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iBook Clamshell
Author : polishdude20
Score : 62 points
Date : 2026-03-22 14:34 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ibook-clamshell.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ibook-clamshell.com)
| joe_mamba wrote:
| Shame Apple didn't have the balls to release the Neo in those
| bright colors in homage, and instead went with the safe, bland,
| corporate committee, focus group approved, muted colors like the
| rest of their product lineup. Booo! Missed opportunity.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| It's almost like companies know what sells best and go with
| that for maximum profit :)
|
| Why is it a shame that they didn't choose to lose money on
| purpose?
| s0ss wrote:
| Yeah, the ones that aren't being made sell terribly!
| anamexis wrote:
| Why is it a shame that companies safely maximize profit at
| the expense of expressive and novel design?
| dmonitor wrote:
| I do wonder what the reasoning is behind using safe colors
| for the Macbooks while giving the iPhone Pro bright orange as
| one of its three options.
| baal80spam wrote:
| I am quite sure that they will expand the colour palette in the
| next gen. One more way to distinguish that you have "a new
| version of the thing".
| joe_mamba wrote:
| The limited color palette isn't the issue, it's that the
| colors have no vividness as the iBook.
| nielsbot wrote:
| This could simply be because you can't get colors as bright as
| plastic from anodizing aluminum.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| That couldn't be more false, you absolutely can gen bright
| colors anodized to aluminum. See: bike frames and carabiners.
| nielsbot wrote:
| Well seems I can't delete or edit my comment anymore
| jmclnx wrote:
| clamshell, that is a name from the past. But has nothing to do
| with Apple
|
| >Clam is a Unix(tm) shell that has many features of tcsh, sh and
| improvements all its own.
|
| >Clam is copyright (c) 1988 by Callum Gibson. Clam is provided
| free of charge.
|
| This came on CohWare Vol1 with Cohorent OS and gave one a small
| csh(1) environment. I think it was for the 286 version of
| Coherent which I used back then.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| >d : a hinged container, case, or cover that opens like the
| shell of a clam
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/clamshell
| ZekeSulastin wrote:
| I don't think I've seen a cookie banner pop up with a "please
| reconsider" on refusal ... ever, actually. Neat?
|
| I had Debian running on an old clamshell iBook for a bit; the
| main things I remember were that it was kind of neat, and that it
| took less cpu to play music from my server via mpd and
| pulseaudio-over-network than it did to play the files directly on
| the iBook.
| halapro wrote:
| I'm struggling to come with why reasons why such a website
| should display that banner. Apple doesn't.
| Someone wrote:
| > I don't think I've seen a cookie banner pop up with a "please
| reconsider" on refusal ... ever, actually. Neat?
|
| On the subject of cookie banners, https://gdpr.eu/cookies/ says
|
| _"To comply with the regulations governing cookies under the
| GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive you must [...] Make it as easy
| for users to withdraw their consent as it was for them to give
| their consent in the first place."_
|
| I don't think I've ever seen a site with "withdraw cookie
| consent" functionality.
|
| The best you can get is that it is as easy to not consent as to
| consent (and this site doesn't even accomplish that. Not
| consenting requires two click, consenting only one)
| andai wrote:
| Does this mean those sites that require you to go to a
| "legitimate interests" page and manually uncheck all of them
| are breaking the law?
|
| https://xkcd.com/2432/
| SahAssar wrote:
| Yes.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Cool site.
|
| I always enjoyed the concept of the iBook, but never found it
| something that I wanted, personally.
|
| I used to refer to it as "the MacBook Toilet Seat."
| spankibalt wrote:
| Better known as "Barbie's electric toilet seat".
| ranger_danger wrote:
| I remember when it came out, John C. Dvorak called it a toilet
| seat.
| toddmorey wrote:
| It's interesting to remember Apple used to orient the logo so
| that it was upside down when opened.
|
| That looks right to you as you open the laptop, but wrong to
| everyone else. Now when you're in a coffee shop, all the little
| metal promotional billboards are correct.
| benatkin wrote:
| It also looks wrong to the owner as they return to their table
| without closing it. Which is quite common.
| twic wrote:
| A wise laptop manufacturer would choose a logo which looks the
| same both ways up.
| shawn_w wrote:
| Or put the logo on a pivot so it's always right side up no
| matter the orientation of the laptop.
| exitb wrote:
| It seems that other laptop manufacturers were doing the same
| thing around the turn of the century, although usually not as
| prominently.
| bluGill wrote:
| In the OJ Simpson trail IBM made a sbecial thinkpad for the
| judge so the logo would be right side up on tv.
| PetitPrince wrote:
| Classic Thinkpad use to do that as well. A reasoning I've read
| somewhere (here perhaps ?): the laptop is here to serve _you_ ,
| not be an advertisement.
| DANmode wrote:
| It used to be!
| 10729287 wrote:
| Check your local classifieds for << DY >> laptops, you'll find
| a lot of hp computers for this exact reason !
| accrual wrote:
| I've been thinking about getting into retro Apple laptops! I'm
| wanting to start with either a Tangerine iBook or the glossy
| white MacBook A1181.
| max8539 wrote:
| Power Mac G4 Cube design is something unique. I was thinking of
| getting a full set with a keyboard, mouse, speakers, and
| monitor.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Man do I love that old Apple typography, the tall serif'd
| letters.
|
| I'm sad everything's serifless these days...
| jeremyjacob wrote:
| It appears that style is making a comeback on some startups and
| tech products' marketing pages. The first time I saw it was for
| Orion[0]
|
| [0] https://orion.tube/
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Wow; never knew I needed this until now! What a great idea,
| cheap hdmi-to-usb c dongle to use an ipad as an external
| monitor
| al_borland wrote:
| If you're looking to use the iPad as a secondary display
| for a Mac, this functionality is built-in and wireless.
| nielsbot wrote:
| It's Apple Garamond
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography_of_Apple_Inc.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| Huh. All this time I thought it was Palatino.
| Cockbrand wrote:
| The clamshell iBook had one very distinctive disadvantage: when
| the laptop world had finally arrived at a default display
| resolution of at least 1024x768, the iBook had an 800x600
| display. This forced web designers (in a time before widely
| supported CSS or even responsive design) to design for the
| smaller viewport of the iBook instead of being able to take
| advantage of the higher-res displays of the rest of the world.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Peter Gabriel gave me his in ~2000 because I needed a crappy
| Mac to test our music streaming and downloading on. I liked the
| design, but was very underwhelmed by the hardware and software.
| In that way, it was good for testing. I remember it quickly
| ended up in a closet with some big elastic bands pushing
| something onto the trackpad button, since there was an online
| game at the time called "Hold The Button" with a leaderboard
| and we wanted to be #1.
| pstuart wrote:
| Any more interesting tidbits to share about working with the
| man?
| qingcharles wrote:
| He used AOL (it was all still installed lol). He's a nice
| guy. His parties at his studio in Box were amazing. The
| studio is amazing because it's built on top of the mill
| pond and the floors are wood while it's in use, but then
| they pop off and it's glass above the water. I think his
| _Up_ album is massively underrated.
| schappim wrote:
| Ha! That 800x600 screen was the first thing I remembered about
| it, that the composite (or s-video) out...
| geerlingguy wrote:
| It had a weird/custom TRRS adapter, I believe, to get analog
| video out.
| schappim wrote:
| Composite video out like an early Raspberry Pi
| qgin wrote:
| I wanted one of these so much.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| I was in 8th grade and the school's computer lab was filled with
| iMacs and the library had iBooks students could check out. That
| was where I discovered Wikipedia, Yahoo Clubs, and Geocities. We
| had a PC at home but it was older and we could only get dial up
| at the time, so the higher speed connection at school and the
| faster hardware was great.
| schappim wrote:
| Oh memories! The iBook SE was the first Mac I had.
|
| This was pre-Mac OS X. The thing had a terrible 800x600px screen
| but still it was my gateway to decades of Macs.
|
| The switch to Unix in MacOS X cemented their place in my life.
|
| I will totally deny that the Macs in Independence Day and Mission
| Impossible were major influences on my juvenile mind to switch to
| the Mac.
| schappim wrote:
| I just remembered that it came with a Yo-Yo charger! Fun times!
| turbonaut wrote:
| Compare the prices vs a Neo...
|
| 1499 usd for the cheapest clamshell!
|
| https://www.ibook-clamshell.com/index.php/en/model-overview
| al_borland wrote:
| That would be $2,844 today.
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| They should resurrect that design for the Neo.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| I really don't know why people have such nostalgia for old Apple
| devices. Did people really enjoy clicking on some app, then
| waiting like 5 minutes while the cursor does the spinning thing
| as the ap opens?
|
| It used to be that you were looked down on if you used an Apple
| device, because it meant you were more concerned with aesthetics
| rather than actual usability.
| dmonitor wrote:
| The unique aesthetics give it immense nostalgia value. They
| literally don't make them like they used to.
| HauntingPin wrote:
| Those prices are _wild_. I forgot how much laptops cost at the
| time. On the other hand, I was just a kid, so maybe I was just
| never really that aware of it.
|
| Price USD Price DM Euro
|
| $ 1,599 DM 3749 EUR 1917
|
| $ 1,799 DM 4249 EUR 2172
|
| $ 1,499 DM 3999 EUR 2045
|
| $ 1,799 DM 4699 EUR 2403
|
| https://www.ibook-clamshell.com/index.php/en/model-overview
| SahAssar wrote:
| Yeah, that first ibook base model would have been around $3100
| today ($1599 then):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBook#iBook_G3_(%22Clamshell%2...
|
| Laptops used to be a premium product, even on the lower-ish
| end. I don't think that properly changed in the mass-market
| until the eee pc, but I might be misremembering.
| danielfoster wrote:
| What I find most interesting about this website is that even in
| 2026, Germany still requires website owners-- even hobbyists- to
| list their name and personal address in the Impressum. So much
| for anonymity.
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(page generated 2026-03-22 23:01 UTC)