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Comment by DavidNielsen | Hacker News Reader

I like the wood, I think it is nice to see someone go a different route than copying Apple’s all metal, clean look. It’s a warm and organic look which feels fresh. I also suspect that the wood might help the machine dampen noise which would be welcome.

They also copied a page from Apple’s eco playbook and will plant a tree for every machine sold which is nice to see. A solid move given the company’s size and reach. I wish more IT companies would use that as a marketing move, it has good signaling value and helps drive change.

I’d like them to do even more with the wooden look and feel, but their cases are still not far removed from a typical desktop. I think it would be great to see them do something really small, in the Mac Mini style, but with that warm wood look. That would look great on any desk.

I’d also like to see someone Hackintosh those machines just for fun.

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> I like the wood, I think it is nice to see someone go a different route than copying Apple’s all metal, clean look. It’s a warm and organic look which feels fresh. I also suspect that the wood might help the machine dampen noise which would be welcome.

I disagree with the idea of creating "fresh" and "trendy" design. In all cases, except say Fashion, it creates substandard design to cater to originality & staying trendy. Timelessness cannot be realized if your design philosophy is to try to stay "fresh".

What is fundamentally wrong with metal & clean design? The answer shouldn't come from the fact that "Oh shit, someone is already doing that, let's do something different. May be wood?". The answer should come from fundamental understanding of materials, their use, durability, haptics & touch, engineering needs (bend radius, coefficient of thermal conductivity, flextural ridigity, etc.) and DFM aspects. Everything else is decoration, not design.

As Paul Rand said, "Don't try to be original. Just try to be good."

Given that the modern trend in desktop cases is slapping a piece of plexiglass on the side, I don't think materials engineering has much to do with this field. Anyways, they're trying to market to hip companies looking to buy workstations, for which this is a good design.

I was just trying to make a general point in terms of the ID thought process that you start from functional/engineering needs and work outwards from it.

In the case of System76, they had to bend wood vaneer (poor bend radius) which probably added additional expense to the manufacturing process.

System76 Engineer here, who did a lot of work on the ID for Thelio. The veneer actually has a pretty superb minimum radius, depending on which direction you bend it. Bending with the grain for our particular veneer lets you bend around a 1/8" radius (about 3mm) pretty reliably. That's reduced a bit in our case since the finish is applied first (part of a cost-reduction), which limits it a bit, but Thelio uses corners that are pretty close to a 20mm radius, so that's not really a limiting factor here.

You can actually cut the stuff with a normal pair of paper scissors. It's pretty wild stuff.

a convincing argument is that it sells, and with the profits they continue to make good machines. I agree that the machine should function first - and clearly they accomplished that - but it's not exclusive to the human needs as well.

Convincing argument would be long-term customer loyalty by delivering value year after year after year in presence of strong competitive pressure. I wish System76 the very best. They're trying and that's worthy of a huge applause.

I can appreciate that view generally, but desktop cases have always been a veneer, provided they provide a decent amount of circulation. So why not spend some time to make it look attractive?

And although this isn't strictly the point you were making, wood is an excellent material to house electronics - it absorbs moisture and heat well, is extremely durable, it is a renewable resource, and while it goes in and out of fashion through the decades, its consistently attractive when used judiciously. This desktop case probably just has a sliver of wood panel which exempts it from these benefits, but I hope in the future we will be able to use natural materials more effectively, perhaps even to make the computer hardware itself.

>What is fundamentally wrong with metal & clean design? >The answer shouldn't come from the fact that "Oh shit, someone is already doing that, let's do something different. May be wood?".

Nothing is "fundamentally" wrong with it. In fact we have gotten to a point that laptop chips can function just fine for many tasks in suboptimal chassis because they are fairly efficient, let alone desktops. The reasons to choose a different design as a customer at least are personal. In my opinion the minimalist industrial design is overused and interacts poorly with my brain. In the absence of any design elements on it I find the products bland and with little character. I have a hard time remembering another glass/metal phone or another bland-painted building with aluminum stairs. Apple knew that years ago and imo it's probably why they stuck with the iphone 6 design for so long, so the market floods with it and thus it becomes memorable. The iphone 10 has more glass and the notch, so in a way it's scaling back the minimalism, closer to the iphone 4/5 era when the phone had a few more geometric elements on it.

In my opinion what is missing from every modern design, be it the applesque industrial or google's kitsch "throw all the colors that don't mix together, remove all textures" material design are little things that make the product memorable. Ideally these come from quirks that add usability or from the materials used. In a different era with a more limited materials available choosing the right thing for the job meant more diverse products. A macbook today is not more memorable than a razer blade or some other copycat. The same goes for chinese phones and iphones. I've confused an iphone with a cheap android replica so many times. Industrial design works when you are the only player doing it. But apple is not.

Product design is a relatively new thing and it is going through the same phase that architecture did with modernism and brutalism( and post modernism probably too). But this endless streamlining and simplifying of devices is not as positive as designers want us to believe. At some point they'll run out of stuff to simplify that people will buy and will try to differentiate by going to the opposite direction or just stick with brand recognition. So while I don't think a wooden pc case is the end all be all of design I'm glad s76 is doing something different. And this kind of change always comes from the "alternative" underdog.

Timelessness cannot be realized if your design philosophy is to try to stay "fresh".

And has anyone achieved timelessness? Ever? I cannot immediately think of any industrial design which does not feel either "current" or "dated".

Craftsman homes, in my opinion are timelessly beautiful.

The problem is not the wood. The wood may be a good idea (or not).

Imho, it's just that the case does not feel nice. While reading the specs, you have the impression that they have good engineers, that they carefully select components and design the air flow... but the whole case is still not there. As if someone made a draft and stopped there, carrying a "good-enough" tag.

I agree with the GP: They would benefit from an outstanding designer, and that comes with CEO blessing and will.

> I’d also like to see someone Hackintosh those machines just for fun.

In fact, not sound as bad. Is necessary to get more details of the hardware to check compatibility, but could be a great option

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