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[–] 54 points 2 years ago (1 child)
  • [–] 48 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Forget colour. That generation iMac was incredibly repairable compared to today's Apple stuff. Two screws on the back panel and the whole internal tray slides out. Every major component's immediately accessible. And all repair parts were available.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    Though, with the caveat that the computer stuff is integrated with the CRT which stores a potentially deadly high voltage for quite a while after being unplugged. Which doesn't mean it's not repairable, it certainly is especially by an independent shop with trained technicians, but it was still very clearly not meant to be repaired by the user with no prior experience. IIRC there were older Macs with integrated monitors that had the computer parts more or less separated from the monitor parts, which were comparatively safer.

    Mind you, this carried over to fairly recent iMac models, because up until the M1 iMacs, they had their power supply as just a bare PCB right beside the motherboard with no separate enclosure, and modern switched mode power supplies also have capacitors that store deadly voltages long after being unplugged (as in, higher voltages than from the wall, they step up the voltage before stepping it back down which allows them to use more energy efficient components). While there's a lot to dislike about discrete power adapters for everything, they are definitively safer especially for people doing repairs because all the dangerous high voltage stuff is self-contained and separate from the actual device itself (and allows you to very easily replace the power supply with zero disassembly).

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  • [–] 41 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Isn’t the 2DS from more than 10 years after most of these?

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    [+] 36 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (18 children)
  • [–] 40 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    Funtastic Grape you philistine

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  • [+] 19 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (6 children)
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    [–] 29 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    This was the only way to know if ants are living in your Nintendo and they’re going to fry a circuit somewhere.

    It’s a wasteful we moved away from this design.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I think that is more a problem that you need to clean up your room more and properly dispose of your candy wrappers. Gross.

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  • [–] 23 points 2 years ago (15 children)

    Unpopular opinion: Making shit out of translucent plastic was the single fugliest way to make a product, and I'm glad it's gone.

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    I hold a grudge against the translucent plastic fad.

    Once upon a time the Linux workstation at my desk at $CHIP_COMPANY was built into a noname transparent teal ATX case. For that reason I gave it the hostname "fugly".

    We had excessive field failures with some of our chips, and I was tasked with coming up with a way to identify those bad parts at customer sites. My solution was a bootable Linux CD that would run a test and tell the customer if they need to contact us for a recall. The test relied on a modified Linux kernel, so it couldn't be distributed as an application. I used "fugly" to develop and build the test, patched kernel, and CD image.

    The test was deployed, the first few customers were pleased, and I got a wood plaque and bonus for my efforts.

    A few weeks later, my manager called me into her office looking uncharacteristically pissed off. She asked why I put a message saying "fugly" into the CD. A customer complained about it, saying they saw "fugly" on the screen when the test was running, and while it did it's job it was unprofessional. A split second of confusion before I realized what happened: at boot time the Linux kernel prints the name of the machine it was compiled on, in this case fugly.team.company.com . It scrolls past quickly on boot, so neither I nor my collaborators ever noticed. Somehow the customer latched onto it.

    I ended up with a slap on the wrist, being put on PIP for 6 months and having to change the hostname because higher-ups needed their pound of flesh.

    Coincidentally, a week after this incident, Toyota posted a billboard at a major intersection near our office advertising the Scion xB that read "Funky? Or Fugly?".

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    A 6 month PIP for A NAME?!? Yes, we’re going to improve your naming conventions over the next 6 months. You better improve! Obviously it’s so a manager could tell another manager that “it won’t happen again.” But, fuck that.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    My manager was understanding after I explained that it was unintentional. But it made support and sales look bad in front of the customer, and in a cascade of finger pointing the director of our department decided that would convince everyone that justice had been done.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    Yeah, definitely just a bunch of fluff. Still ridiculous that we live in a world where that happens. Then the sales manager went to the customer and goes “LoOk ThE eMpLoYeE wAs RePrImAnDeD. Still give money?👉🏻👈🏻”

    Gross.

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    [–] 22 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Gotta love that prison aesthetic.

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    [–] 22 points 2 years ago

    This was Pavlov (or rather one of his many twins).

    He was in my friends' dorm room in college.

    His name was Pavlov because you had to respond to him when the bell rang.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I love the translucent vibe. It shows exactly what makes the device work which the nerd in me just can't get enough of. Nowadays it seems like tech companies are more and more trying to hide the actual electronics and technology aspect of their products and marketing them more as magic black boxes.

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    [–] 18 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    Yoooo shout-out to the new translucent purple 8bitdo controller I picked up recently!

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    [–] 17 points 2 years ago

    Be the change you want to see. I've stopped EVER buying black, dark gray, or silver colored stuff unless there is no other option. It's great. Harder to lose, easier to find, rarely gets confused with similar products owned by coworkers, etc....

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    A transparent PS2 is all the rage I wish I had one at the time.

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    [–] 14 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Colorful transparent plastic is nostalgic and tacky, like those object shaped rubber bands/bracelets. On one hand its a bit ugly and clashes with modern aesthetic, on the other the pop of color makes it stand out and seeing the insides of your electronics is kind of novel, dare I say radical

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    [–] 13 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    you can do that with steam deck

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  • [–] [S] 9 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I'm strongly considering it now...

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    You can, but as someone who just replaced his own screen, the process is daunting! Mostly sticking new adhesive on a screen and making sure the cables are secure. Upside, ifixit is an official partner and the whole thing was built with repairability in mind.

    If that process is worth a translucent case, that's up to you!

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    [–] 13 points 2 years ago

    Unihertz Jelly Star, baybee!

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago* (7 children)

    Now color is used as a marketing trick.

    "This generation of Iphones comes in new colours never before seen on an Iphone! So you better buy the latest one or people will think you are poor."

    "More features? Why you'd need that? You got different colours!"

    So in my eyes, it is yet an other good thing ruined by marketing.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Retro Handhelds are helping to bring it back.

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    [–] 11 points 2 years ago

    I loved those iMac colors. Our school computer lab had rows of them and it looked soo cool!

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    I believe that colorfulness directly correlates with happiness.

    Also, most of it was japanese AFAIK.

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    [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    I miss my transparent orange palm pilot. :(

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    Now we have colour in the form of RGB LEDs in everything instead.

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