Discussion

On filing the corners off my MacBooks

abujazar: Yea, that's ugly. I'm sure it could've been done more gracefully with 15 minutes more effort. But judging from the general wear and tear on this poor Mac I guess they don't even consider the resale value.

windowsrookie: Seriously, I have several mac laptops dating back to 2004 and they all have less wear than that.

supliminal: > Don't be scared. Fuck around a bit.Preach.

patsplat: Physical objects should be rounded, virtual windows should be square. I will die on this hill.

porphyra: > windows should be squarefound the Windows 8 enthusiast! haha, I kid. (I myself use a tiling window manager , i3, with completely square windows without any gaps or rounding)

doubled112: Haha, Windows had square windows long before 8.If I could run the Windows 2000 UI on a modern OS I would but any recent clone/theme/etc feels too uncanny valley.

bloody-crow: Doing this to a work computer seem a bit questionable from the ethical standpoint.Totally fine to do whatever you want to your personal belongings though.

html5cat: Not all heroes wear capes. This is excellent and can't wait to get aluminium mac next to try it – don't think Space Black is a good way to go.Author's another post on "The Seasons are Wrong" [0] is excellent too and I fully support both approaches.[0] https://kentwalters.com/posts/seasons/

powvans: Nitpicky, but he’s rounding the edges, not the corners.And yes, why are they so sharp?I seem to recall my wife having the plastic MacBook that came out circa 2006 and the edges on that thing were legitimately painful.I always marvel at how sharp the points are on the notch of the lid on my current MacBook. Very very pointy.

forrestthewoods: why? Because Apple hates you and wants you to suffer.Alternatively, because they care about aesthetics more than utility and comfort.

dwg: Wish I had the courage to do this too.

loloquwowndueo: As a bonus the machine looks like crap so it’s far less likely to get stolen.

margalabargala: I think it looks nice.Though you're right that machines whose exteriors are customized and unusual are less likely to get stolen.

proee: The Apple Watch Ultra also has an aggressively sharp screen edge. It's kept me from upgrading from my current watch (Model 8). But maybe I would get use to it?

ribosometronome: >it is uncomfortable on my wristsAre your wrists supposed to be coming into contact with that? I suspect many of us have bad posture and do rest our wrists like that, but if your concern is wrist comfort, you probably want to consider that you're going out of your way to enable harmful posture.

andreybaskov: Finally, now I know I'm not the only one! These sharp edges constantly cut into my wrists to the point I was thinking of doing the same, or glueing some kind of kind soft padding to the edges. Great someone did it. I wonder how far can you cut them?

kvuj: Maybe I'm autistic, but I loooove the sharp edges near the opening. They've become almost a nervous tick of playing with them with my fingers.I've got no idea why, but the sharp feeling is amazing.

normanvalentine: I actually agree with this too — playing with the sharp edge is kind of satisfying. Like having something in your teeth that you're working on.

kibwen: Tim Cook here, we've heard you loud and clear, the next Macbook will have a perfectly circular screen with square windows.

christophilus: Jony Ive here. I’ll come back and help make your new keyboard perfectly flat and seamless- touchpad based, and we’ll remove all ports. Bluetooth devices only.

paulddraper: Not having i3 is truly the worst part about Macs.(Yes, please tell me about some buggy half-compatible tiling window manager for my Mac.)

bee_rider: Surely MacOS has some nice virtual machine that you could run Linux in?

Yhippa: As I'm typing on mine right now, I wonder why they made these so sharp. It hasn't cut me yet, but they are decidedly uncomfortable.

gruez: >I wonder why they made these so sharpSo the seam looks neat when the macbook is closed, eg. https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/MacBo...

guelo: Form over function

teaearlgraycold: This seems like a reasonable choice, but man you really need to do this with a CNC mill. The craftsmanship is not there.

krackers: There's a more thorough version of this at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSaJAAqSAMw and the end-result doesn't look as tacky

convolvatron: if you want to do this, there is a better technique than shown in this video.get a single-cut fine file, maybe with a little more weight than the one in the video. single cut file has diagonal slots and allows firm and continuous contact with the piece. most files are double cut, have two sets of slots and look like bumpy diamonds. they remove more material but tend to bounce.use long even strokes with firm pressure, only during the fore stroke.you can make a pretty even-looking chamfer that way.

neom: I am autistic and I also enjoy the sharp edges, I rub my wrists up and down them sometimes and generally play with them, I find it very satisfying. I also suspect the laptop might not be as easy to carry around when open if edges were rounded?

layer8: Eizo made a square 1920 x 1920 monitor which was quite nice: https://www.eizo.com/products/flexscan/ev2730q/

lostlogin: UTM.

Loughla: My work computer is missing two keys and has been since they signed it out to me.I'm betting they don't notice if I file down the corners. Hell they probably wouldn't notice if I just cut the corners off with a fret saw. But God forbid I try to install an ad blocker or use Firefox.

chatmasta: I promise you they’re claiming taxes on the depreciation of that machine every year. If anything they’ll be upset you didn’t tell them sooner so they could have claimed more.

nickpinkston: It was oddly satisfying taking a file to my MacBook when a drop lifted a nasty burr on the edge.Very minor "you can just do things" collides with the "infallible object" presence that Apple wants for its products - almost feels "wrong", but it's a nice norm to break.(and I'm not a "Cult of Mac" guy)

kibwen: I can't even imagine prioritizing resale value here over one's own comfort. The purpose of a tool is to be used, not to serve as an asset class.

abujazar: Sure, but comfort != abuse :D Apart from the filing, I can't think of ways to make such a recent Mac look like this. Did it suffer a plane crash? Acid attack? Thermite fire?I appreciate the customization, but would probably make an effort to make it not look like (another) accident.

layer8: The glass part of the iPhone 4(s) had relatively sharp edges: https://www.techspot.com/articles-info/459/images/2025-01-23...I rounded them off using a glass nail file for a smoother hand feel.

nickvec: > This was on my work computer.Bold move to do this on your work Macbook. I'd be too worried of getting chased down with a bill when returning the laptop eventually.

kokanee: The seasons idea is interesting -- to me, both proposals feel wrong. I think it's because the weather changes that I perceive seem to lag behind the changes to daylight length by a few weeks.I would propose boundaries that align partly with how I perceive the weather, and partly with how we plan our year (by months): Summer starts June 1st, Fall starts September 1st, Winter starts December 1st, and Spring starts March 1st.

somat: I had a blackberry passport and it had a lot going for it(best keyboard ever on a phone) but one thing I really liked for reasons I don't understand is it had a square screen and took square photos.

phamilton: I dropped my MBA on concrete and the edges got dinged up and sharp.A bit of 220 grit sandpaper and all the sharp edges are smooth and it actually looks pretty cool. I was grimacing at first but now I like the feel.

orliesaurus: You don't dock your MacBook for long sesh?

dsr_: My custom XFWM theme has square corners on windows without focus and large-radius rounded corners on the one window with focus.The square corners are part of a 2 pixel wide border (one black, one white) because who needs to waste space on handling things we aren't manipulating? But the title bar is high-contrast, because you'll go looking for it when you want to switch windows.The round corners go with a fairly thick border in a customizable color, usually something very bright in the yellow, orange or cyan ranges. When you sit down, you should immediately know what is active.

culi: I too find the sharp corners incredibly uncomfortable for my weak sensitive baby wrists but I chose to overcome this by wearing a wrist band. Two very different approaches

vvpan: I just came into Mac world for work and struggle to understand the choices Apple makes:- Sharp edges eat into my forearms.- Glossy screen makes it hard to see when it's light out.- The keys have a real hard stop when you press on them which tires out my hands.- An arrogant desire to obsolete ports.I don't understand the appeal of the machine, it feels like style over function everywhere.

LtWorf: I don't think apple computers are meant for people who do use computers. I used to have marks on my wrists (I no longer have an apple computer now).

nine_k: Apple computers are made for those who purchases a computer. They are engineered to look great on a demo shelf.«During the first Jobsian era at Apple, I used to joke that Steve Jobs cared deeply about Apple customers from the moment they first considered purchasing an Apple computer right up until the time their check cleared the bank.» (Bruce Tognazzini)

sublinear: Nope. Virtual windows are rectangular because the screen is also rectangular while being small enough to see the edges within our field of view.They don't have to be any particular shape or size. The property of being virtual overrides everything else when free of these self-imposed constraints.Even if you lose the GUI and go back to text, the ideal terminal is a plane of infinite columns of arbitrary cell size that dynamically fills your field of view.I'd further argue that the only reason VR/AR isn't more widely adopted is the lack of orthographic vs perspective modality per application (and uncomfortable headsets). In VR/AR, you don't want a window manager or even windows at all. What you want is a field manager (as in FOV "fields" of varying opacity that can be composited by the user). Shape and size is just an arbitrary region blended in with the environment.For the sake of ergonomics, you'd more often prefer to project an interface onto a surface if you had the choice. When you don't, you probably want the projection to be orthographic, but for the edges to be fuzzy if not invisible. You'd generally want to be able to layer these interfaces as well instead of having opaque rectangles always in your way.

imiric: I don't think GP was advocating for actually square windows. Rather that the corners should be right angles.This makes perfect sense considering that most LCD displays, and practically all computer displays, don't have rounded corners. This trend of rounding displays and GUI elements is purely an aesthetic choice. I also find this obnoxious since the only thing it does is rob me of a few pixels which are often useful.But considering Apple users have accepted living without a large block of missing pixels dead center at the top of the screen, which they've been sold as a "feature", the rounded corners are likely even less of an issue.

jareklupinski: > why are they so sharp?they intentionally ship them sharp so you can file them down to your desired filletthe design is very human

eightysixfour: The author seems to not realize the season are about temperature not about sunlight. If you align the season to northern hemisphere temperatures, where the first week of August is usually the hottest, they make sense.

LtWorf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Season

Topfi: I thought this was going to be on a softwarefix for the appalling inconsistency that are macOS Tahoe window corners. What I found deeply disturbed me, though I must agree, the edges are a bit more sharp then I'd like and a slight curvature could probably prevent them showing wear and tear [0]. Good on op for doing something they like, even if it's really out there and I could see more "pillowy" hardware becoming a thing now, after a few years of sharp edged devices.Since I mentioned Tahoe, it bears repeating, my spotlight is still broken.[0] https://ljpuk.net/2025/05/23/how-does-the-space-black-macboo...

sublinear: I don't think there's anything inherently autistic about that. We just finally have these technologies sufficiently mature that materials and design are no longer strictly dictated by their function.These objects are becoming more like clothing and less like unyielding industrial machines. It's to the point that I'd be genuinely disgusted to handle any used laptop regardless of how "clean" it is.

topato: Spoken like a true autist… perhaps with a side of obsession and compulsion syndrome

LtWorf: > materials and design are no longer strictly dictated by their function.Ok… but I don't like to injure my wrists…

jerlam: If you're a US employee being paid market wages, the cost of the Macbook is rather trivial compared to how much you cost the company, and how much it costs them for you to be not working. But some lower-level managers and employees don't seem to understand this.

anArbitraryOne: Try exfoliating your wrists with square virtual windows

animegolem: same, i really love it and i hove my hands typing so they've never caused pain anyway

cesarvarela: Tell that to the people responsible for the trackpads of any other computer maker.

zdw: LG sells a DualUp monitor that is 2560x2880, same size as two 2560x1440 displays stacked on top of each other: https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-28mq780-b-dualup-monitor

anArbitraryOne: It's great how apple makes everything so customizable

pastel8739: You were being sarcastic, but aerospace is100% worth setting up

GraceParkNYC: Mini Cooper redux.

topato: “DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA OF THE PRICE FOR THE PARTS AND LABOR TO REPLACE A SINGLE, GENUINE, APPLE-BRAND, 2021, MACBOOK PRO KEYCAP?!?! CALL THE ACCOUNTANTS, WE WONT BE PAYING TAXES FOR A FEW YEARS!!!”

LASR: It worked. Most people under 30 don't know Apple existed before the iPod / iPhone. ie: Before Jobs.

ProAm: Apple users always convincing themselves they are still using the best premium most thought after designs of all time.

randyrand: Square sensors ought to be more common because they maximize the field of view for a given lens. Well, apart from circular sensors.

donatj: There are definitely corners by the trackpad, at the gap for opening the lid.They are quite stabby and I hate them.https://www.cnet.com/a/img/resize/aca51a7051edc493b19cfd93da...

jcgrillo: you can just do things: https://ebay.us/m/vWMAUU

metrix: It's by design.

0xDEFACED: this can't be how i find out...

svnt: The past few generations I found I was not pleased with their performance, so now I take them weekly to the macbook sharpener at the saturday market.

jasonjmcghee: Depending on how I'm using the computer, I may definitely have deep marks after working laying down, but if I sit in a wood chair for a while it's the same thing- and my forearm is much tougher than behind my knee.I suppose I would prefer it nice and rounded and soft on my wrist - but I don't feel like it's quite as extreme as this thread would have you believe lol

baud9600: Brilliant. Love the tech-disrespect and the “right to repair”!

cwicklein: Sitting in a reclined position on the train, I’ve had a MacBook fly into my face when the car lurched and slice my nose open. Bled all over.

mememememememo: Well you wont die on that hardened steel cube :)

mememememememo: External keyboard and mouse too easy?Unless you fly/train travel alot I guess.

brudgers: [delayed]

Macha: On the seasons front, traditionally in Ireland winter starts on Halloween (at sunset if you want to be really specific), and so you get winter is November till January, spring is February to April, summer is May to July and autumn is August to October.That said being an English speaking country and absorbing a lot of media from other English speaking countries, there’s been a slow drift towards the American system making its way in, so younger generations are more likely to use American seasons and older people more likely to use traditional seasons, though you’ll find people of all age groups using either. Certainly they taught the traditional seasons in school when I was a kid, I wonder which they teach now.(Of course, you could make yet another system based on the weather where summer is approximately two weeks in July, winter is a thing that happens every few years and the rest is a sequence of mild weather with occasional wind and scattered showers)

sublinear: Yeah I don't think we disagree. I just think you all's preference for windows, tiles, etc. (anything rectangular and opaque) is rooted in an idealistic efficiency of pixels just as unergonomic and frustrating to everyone else.I'm saying that there is room for your arbitrary preference for opaque rectangles if we all abandon the notion of a "screen". We are well past the point where we can do this economically. It only persists because of consumer acceptance. Traditional screens are less efficient in every tangible way. They are less power efficient for their apparent brightness and require more material to construct.

vr46: Yeah, I had thin insulation strips running around these edges because my wrists were legit getting sore from these edges. And then Apple replaced the bottom case so they're back, as sharp as ever.

aculver: Love this! I did this in 2020 and until today I hadn't seen anyone else who had done it. If anyone is tempted, I recommend finishing the job with Micro-Mesh. IIRC, I went up to 12,000 grit and it results in a nicely polished look that catches the light beautifully.[1] I bet it would look even more striking on the actual black MacBooks we have today.[1] https://x.com/andrewculver/status/1297575768520716288/photo/...

TSiege: Black macbooks are anodized aluminum which are thin coatings that would be removed when filing. It might look cool but it’d be the silvery color of raw aluminum

saagarjha: I feel like this is only a problem if you’re keeping your wrists at an unergonomic angle. I’m not saying that everyone is perfect all the time but like this is barely an issue if you’re sitting at your desk?

golem14: Yes, the glass UI is the first step. Well done!

mgfist: Thanks, I hate it

marssaxman: That looks genuinely useful - I could see positioning a monitor like that on either side of my main monitor, at an angle, and using them for docs, reference material, slack, calendars, etc. All the screen space of a dual-monitor setup, without the separation right in the center! Ah well, shame they're no longer made.

ryandrake: Alan Dye here. I'm coming back to Apple, and the next versions of the operating systems will not even have visible controls or icons. You just have to click on the beautiful, clear windows and hope you're interacting with the right UI elements.

matthewmc3: Scott Forstall here. I’ll resign before I apologize for the choices we make at Apple. All our research shows you’re gonna love it, and if you say you don’t it’s because you’re wrong, not me.

delecti: Sounds kinda like pain stimming. I'm not personally a fan, but that's a thing some autistic people do. They make purpose-built toys for that, though you might already be set with your laptop.

dnmc: In response, I expect the open-source community to make an optimal square packing window manager. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_packing

sbaildon: The author has the same problem as myself; there’s a permanent imprint on the screen that sits right where the screen makes contact with the topside of the touchpad.It’s quite an annoying flaw, and i’ve only had this problem with the machines since the M1 redesign

ed_mercer: Goodbye resale value

jasonidol: One concern with doing this would be when you pack it in a bag and the screen would now flex more than usual, leading to excessive wear of the anti-reflective coating on these screens.Since the edge has been filed away, the rubber seal on the screen would no longer presses against the edge of the body protecting the screen.

StilesCrisis: This worked great for a home arcade machine. Kind of expensive, but worked equally well for both 4:3 games (Super Mario) and 3:4 games (Pac Man).

thegdsks: Not seriously... I too love the sharp edges but this is scary.. Lol

j45: Love it, this is the ultimate laptop sticker.

kokanee: I'm conflicted -- the author's rounded Mac looks more comfortable to use, but aesthetically it looks worse. He turned the track pad notch into an amorphous shape that looks like a mistake.

autoexec: There's certainly a % of mac users who prioritize aesthetics over function. I feel like there's got to be a way to do this in a way that's more attractive though. Maybe something more gradual or even.

Humphrey: Oh, I have never heard of seasons starting mid-month. My mind is blown!In Australia it's just split up by months, with each season being 3 months long:March 1 - Autumn starts June 1 - Winter starts Sept 1 - Spring starts Dec 1 - Summer startsOf cause, those in far northern Australia, only really have Dry and Wet seasons. I have no idea when those are.

nopassrecover: We were taught the same (Australian) - though it always felt slightly off as March often has major heatwaves, and December can be quite spring-like, often cool and wet.Adelaide’s climate anecdotally feels to be more humid in recent years (historically bone dry Mediterranean climate) and the seasons feel like they’ve shifted a few weeks forward.The Kaurna (Australian Aboriginal people of Adelaide, pronounced Gar-nuh) apparently mapped seasons a little differently, with a longer summer that resonates with my experience:https://www.bom.gov.au/resources/indigenous-weather-knowledg...The Noongar people of Western Australia have a 6 season model that also maps pretty well to my experience in South Australia.https://australiassouthwest.com/six-seasons-of-the-south-wes...

inatreecrown2: Lovely writing! And I think the understanding that one can and should modify their tools to their needs is rather rare and should be appreciated.

LoganDark: I looked at your posting history and if you're not diagnosed autistic you should be.

shermantanktop: Is there a DSM5 category for "diagnosing people on the internet"?

smallerize: And is it self-referential?