From: ldo@nz.invalid   
      
   On 20 Sep 2025 14:01:48 +0100 (BST), Theo wrote:   
      
   > Surely that's the point - 'boring beige' is novel, amongst the   
   > endless variations of cases with glass sides and RGB lighting, which   
   > are pretty tiresome at this point. Of course you can still buy a   
   > featureless black cuboid, which is arguably the modern version of   
   > dullness. (look at a modern office PC)   
      
   I don’t know from “featureless black cuboid”. I used to be an Apple   
   Mac man for about a decade and a half, so I was exposed to *some*   
   design sensibilities. My first non-Apple machine was a Shuttle box.   
   And then I bought another one. “Featureless black cuboids” they were   
   not.   
      
   My current main machine is in a “Be Quiet” case. That’s black. It’s   
   got panels with two different textured finishes, and bevelled edges   
   with grillework -- “understated elegance” is how I would describe it.   
   )   
      
   > I suppose they might look dull if you haven't been paying attention   
   > to case design over the last 10+ years, but the point is they're   
   > different to what currently exists in the market. And for a lot of   
   > people who build PCs they're novel because they weren't born when   
   > this design was last in vogue.   
      
   It was *never* in any kind of “vogue”. It was what the PC makers came   
   up with because they didn’t know any better. When Steve Jobs rejoined   
   Apple and came up with the first iMacs and iBooks, that was when the   
   rest of the PC industry woke up to the idea that, just maybe, it was   
   time to put some decent industrial design into their products.   
      
   Some of those early efforts were hilariously tasteless.   
      
   > PS: the Morris Minor is now cool again now that everything is a   
   > same-looking crossover/SUV.   
      
   The Morris Minor is a horrible design to look at now.   
      
   The timeless designs are the ones that combine looks with functional   
   efficiency. That is, hatchbacks and station wagons (aka “estates” or   
   “shooting brakes”). Modern estates look remarkably good, once   
   designers figured out how to come up with a more smoothly integrated   
   body design, instead of simply tacking an extension onto the basic   
   sedan shape.   
      
   I guess people movers also offer functional efficiency.   
      
   Did you know a single car company pioneered both hatchbacks and people   
   movers? The first hatchback was the Renault 16, and the first people   
   mover was the Renault Espace.   
      
   Renault was also the company that employed Pierre Bézier, he of the   
   eponymous curves so well-known in computer graphics.   
      
   Another French car company, Citroën, was the workplace of Paul de   
   Casteljau, who came up with an algorithm for efficiently drawing   
   Bézier curves.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)