But that's almost a harder decision - you can certainly buy a bland colored skin to put stickers on, but if you're going to the effort of skinning your laptop, why not pick an interesting skin?
I think that might work for certain popular brands - Dell XPSs certainly crossed my mind, as well as the Lenovo Thinkpads. Both are likely to have a vinyl equivalent available that could be used, although I'd want to thoroughly QC how the Thinkpad lid holds-up with the residue on removal.
A similar system, I'm sure, but he got the material specifically to match the metal of the MacBook and is gauging if other people are interested in it.
You could just use a clear vinyl and trim it to size before sticker bombing your laptop. Matte or gloss depending on your taste, and stick to the automotive ones for UV-resistance and lasting quality. I’ve been doing this for years on work laptops using a 3M clear vinyl wrap.
I think there's a large overlap between image-conscious Mac users and image-conscious developers, for whom laptops are an expression of self or something like that.
There is a brand that makes screen (or body) protectors for phones, tablets and laptops. I have used their phone protectors and have always been happy. I don't agree with the downsides listed for this approach, they offer matte finish, I have never had an issue with the protectors yellowing, and I can source (buy) them right now.
I had one of these on a 2008 MacBook, and it started yellowing and flaking around 2–3 years later, most noticeably on parts that had considerable heat (like the bottom case and removable battery).
If it was just used for the top case, I think it should be fine. Mine has yellowed, but was autographed by my favourite author. :)
Love this. My old MacBook was covered in stickers but I grew out of most of them and removing them was a giant pain. Plus, like you mentioned, resale value took a hit. On my new MacBook, I've kept it sticker-free due to my past experience. This would give me the freedom to slap some new stickers on there knowing they're easily removable down the line.
As a couple others have mentioned, if you keep the stickers carefully contained to the aluminum surfaces of the computer, acetone will take them right off and will not damage the metal.
> * Resale - By putting stickers on my laptop, I am either going to have to try to remove them again once I come to selling it, lowering my resale price because the laptop isn’t in near pristine condition.
> * Damage - There is a worry that some stickers may leave a horrible hard-to-remove residue, or maybe leave a discolouration to the aluminium.
To which may be added a third - your Mac gets sent off for repair, but repair nowadays means "we take the hard drive out and put it in another Mac because even we can't fix them"
I bet Louis Rossman would have some thoughts on this. He had a customer who became a local meme after having a tantrum about sticker residue. These things can be trivial or impossible to remove depending how much you know about the adhesive and removal methods.
May be we need to fix the gums in stickers to peel off easily - then it could work for all laptops/devices. Another option could be put an easily peelable tape and then sticker on top of it.
The technology already exists, but not all stickers you might want to stick to a laptop has that good type of sticky chemistry. So the implication is that the achieve such a "fix" would require regulation to limit the types of stickers that are generally available. It would potentially be global as well, since people travel and put stickers from travel on their gear. Also, sometimes people put bumper stickers on laptops. Should we limit the chemistry of bumper stickers? Obviously this leads to madness, and I would not want such burdensome regulation.
I use a hard case on my work laptop for similar reasons - it's not my laptop, and when I give it back I want to keep the stickers! (I get a bit attached after using a stickered-up machine for a while.)
The framed set of stickers at the bottom is kinda what I have in mind.
3M adhesive remover is amazing stuff. It beats Goo Gone by a wide margin, I recently used it to remove PETG residue from my 3D printer bed and that stuff is gnarly.
Goo Gone isn't all that strong, are you sure you're not thinking of Goof Off? Goo Gone is a fairly average citrus-based cleaner, where as Goof Off is based on acetone. It'll melt many paint and plastics on contact. Certainly has it's moments, though, and it's far stronger than Goo Gone.
Yeah that’s a good point. It’s pretty strong stuff. I’ve used it to remove decals from cars and it hasn’t damaged the clearcoat but modern clearcoat is an epoxy anyway so it’s not all that surprising. It will destroy polystyrene based plastics and I’d be careful around others.
Having said that it works fine applied via a rag so you can avoid overspray issues.
Helpful tip, thanks. Here's the Safety Data Sheet (SDS) in case anyone is curious what's in 3M 38983 General Purpose Adhesive Remover[1]: Mostly methyl acetate, with some naptha, xylene, and a small amount of ethylbenzene. Definitely worth heeding the precautionary statements...
For contrast, "Goo Gone" is mostly naptha-like light petroleum distillate with small fractions of limonene and orange extract[2].
Yeah it worth trying Goo Gone first and reserve this for the really tough adhesives. There can’t be many laptop stickers that can’t be removed with Goo Gone plus patience (which BTW also works wonders for removing road tar from car paint).
3M adhesive remover will not remove paint. I used gallons on cars to remove plastidip. It says right on the container, safe for car paint and clear coat. Advertised to remove bumper stickers.
For dealing with milder adhesives, try peanut butter or vegetable oil. Let it sit overnight, then wipe off. The only reason for considering peanut butter is that it doesn't drip off while the oil does its work.
I'm not averse to "chemicals" per se, but I like to minimize the number of different specialty liquids I have to find a place for in my house.
I used to put stickers on my laptop, but I lost them all when I had to bring them to the genius bar for some work. Would this be re-aplicable? I would think no, right?
So it remains sticky when removed, but I certainly wouldn't expect it to fit quite as snuggly the second time around. Interesting idea though, but my initial reaction would be no, not re-applicable.
This is nifty, but I don't really see why this beats using a case. I've been switching laptop cases for a while (actually need to get a new one) and I put them up on my wall when I'm done.
They're like $15 on Amazon and I honestly don't mind that people can see them since the laptop is going to be covered in stickers and won't be looking like something off the shelf anyway.'
Were you in the HH facebook group back around 2016? When I read this article I was thinking of some guy there who said he got a new case every year and preserved the old ones as a memento.
I miss MagSafe from a practical standpoint but the non-lit new MacBooks pro was a real heartbreaker. It looked great / was iconic on its own but there were great mods over the years
I think the case he's talking about adds about 150g or so. If you're an ultralight hiker who's counting the grams, there are probably better options on the market. Otherwise I don't think many would notice during their daily routines.
Why do you need a case for your laptop? I've never dropped a laptop in my life (I have tripped over cords before but the magsafe has saved me every time). Shit, I bought the very first iphone the day it came out and I haven't used a cased on any of my phones either and still have never broken anything despite dropping my phones every once in a while.
I'm also a no case person. I don't remember ever dropping my iPhones. But it is not for everyone. Once a friend took my phone to look at something and he dropped it, shattering the glass. I was more amazed that in its entirety of 3+ years, I never dropped the phone once but it slipped my friend's hand in just that few minutes. :-)
LOL. He is a really really good friend, a really good person and someone doing a lot to help curb climate change. We were both nervous after YC Interview that day in Mountain View (2018).
He insisted paying for the screen replacement but I didn't let him. I got the battery and screen replaced and my iPhone is on to its 4th year. :-)
I’ve broken several iPhones including one the same day I got it. The breaks always seemed to happen randomly. Relatively low impact. But once I dropped one, tried to grab it, and ended up flinging it up and across the room where it hit the wall about ten feet up then fell anyway... it was fine. Another time I was hiking and stupidly had my phone out. I fell, landed with the screen side down beneath my hand onto pebbles... not a scratch.
My case on my 6s finally broke a few months ago after 3.5 years of (ab)use. In the whole time I had it, I dropped it maybe 5 times. In the week after the case broke and I took it off, I dropped it hard at least 3 times.
Suffice it to say, I got a replacement case real quick after that.
I have a ThinkPad, so I need to protect whatever else is in my bag...
Seriously though, I often carry my laptop in a sachle bag. It doesn't have a dedicated laptop pocket, and often I like to ram it full of stuff. If I didn't my devices would end up scratched easily, and probably full of dust from whatever is lurking at the bottom of my bag.
Personally, I don't have any kids to worry about, and I never drop my laptop; maybe I'm just careful with it.
My phone, however, gets dropped somewhat frequently, since by the nature of its use, it's exposed to much rougher handling than my laptop (which generally stays at home, or in my padded laptop backpack if I'm traveling). So I have an Otterbox Defender on that, which I'm sure has saved those phones many times. I would never go caseless on a phone; that just seems like signaling "I'm so rich, I can afford to be reckless with a $1000 phone".
Those are cool looking cases; makes for an interesting wallpaper. The problem I have with laptop cases, and phone cases too, is that it simply ruins the slick look and feel and makes the device feel clunky, and I don't really care about scratches either here and there. But if there was a skin tight case then I'd consider it.
Has anyone ever tried this with ThinkPads, with the rubberized matte coating?
I was looking at the skins sold on eBay, and wondering whether they'd mar the coating. The old coatings hold up very nicely for over a decade, and I don't want the skin to react with the coating, nor to later leave behind an adhesive that can't be removed without ruining the coating.
I'm also wondering whether the skins could be transplanted, like if one laptop breaks in a hard-to-repair way, so you move your SSD and skin full of decals to the replacement laptop.
(I have an unapplied backlog of nerdy decals, to make the perfect social nerd cafe laptop out of a spare Coreboot X200. So long as being social doesn't mar the coating, because priorities.)
I've pretty much had a ThinkPad with me since the mid '90s, and, and used to carry them everywhere with me, usually one or more trips a day. One of them I got a custom printed skin, it wasn't that expensive, maybe $50... I peeled that skin of ~3 years later when I got a new laptop, and the top looked PRISTINE. I realized at that time: While the normal finish wears pretty well, it does wear. The skin totally protected it.
I used a flat white Dbrand skin and put my stickers on top. My stickers have 100% coverage: https://twitter.com/rxcs/status/888214143097987072. No problems after 2 years aside from some slight fading of the colors on the reflective stickers.
If OP is in this thread, check out 3M 1080 (or newer) series. It is used on cars, designed to not bubble or leave residue, and comes in clear.
3M 1080 is great stuff - I avoided clear vinyls however as i found they lost the metallic look due to them being a little too glossy, even with the matte ones.
The Apple logo is recessed enough that I could trace it easily with an x-acto knife. The stickers I used didn't stick to it very well, interestingly, and just peeled right off.
- orange peel refers to any paint layer, not just clearcoat. (almost all, if not all, cars today are shot with at least 2 stage, but older and maybe some cars may be a single paint coat, where orange peel can still be exhibited).
- it's not from spraying it improperly, which can be a cause, but more typically that the spraying conditions (from paint mix to atmospheric conditions, even inside a booth) aren't "ideal". most new cars are robot sprayed with perfect spray control, and almost all new cars exhibit a small degree of orange peel.
even ferraris have orange peel from the factory. this is why high dollar detailers do a "paint correction" as part of their work, even on a brand new car.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 296 ms ] threadhttps://dbrand.com/shop/apple-macbook-pro-13-skins-touch-bar
https://www.bestskinsever.com/laptop-skin
If it was just used for the top case, I think it should be fine. Mine has yellowed, but was autographed by my favourite author. :)
> * Damage - There is a worry that some stickers may leave a horrible hard-to-remove residue, or maybe leave a discolouration to the aluminium.
To which may be added a third - your Mac gets sent off for repair, but repair nowadays means "we take the hard drive out and put it in another Mac because even we can't fix them"
I guess the takeaway is that if you document everything and complain loudly when something goes wrong you might actually get decent customer service.
Rrr... We must extinguish this lie! It is illegal in the US for companies to do this.
Even the SSD is soldered in now
The framed set of stickers at the bottom is kinda what I have in mind.
3M 38983 General Purpose Adhesive Remover - 12 oz. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004EBNTYK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_cU...
Having said that it works fine applied via a rag so you can avoid overspray issues.
For contrast, "Goo Gone" is mostly naptha-like light petroleum distillate with small fractions of limonene and orange extract[2].
1. https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/mediawebserver?mwsId=SSSSSuUn_...
2. https://googone.com/mr_sds/data/2018-06-14%2013:44:51/GG_Ori...
edit: I misread xylene as toluene, whoops! It still isn't the most paint-friendly if you don't have a durable surface though.
I'm not averse to "chemicals" per se, but I like to minimize the number of different specialty liquids I have to find a place for in my house.
https://googone.com/
Even for the “bad” ones that leave residue there are plenty of products for this purpose that won’t damage the metal.
If you try to size it perfectly, you'll get lifting eventually.
Checkout a photo - https://imgur.com/a/nWz95Ex
They're like $15 on Amazon and I honestly don't mind that people can see them since the laptop is going to be covered in stickers and won't be looking like something off the shelf anyway.'
However, imo cases add too much bulk - hence why I've never used them. The whole point of the MacBook (especially the Air) is to be sleek.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N1M1WRU/
That's what's on the 11" MBAs my kids have. It's 8.3 ounces (235 grams) and quite noticeable. I guess you could use just the top shell.
He insisted paying for the screen replacement but I didn't let him. I got the battery and screen replaced and my iPhone is on to its 4th year. :-)
Anyway... I always buy a case now.
Suffice it to say, I got a replacement case real quick after that.
Seriously though, I often carry my laptop in a sachle bag. It doesn't have a dedicated laptop pocket, and often I like to ram it full of stuff. If I didn't my devices would end up scratched easily, and probably full of dust from whatever is lurking at the bottom of my bag.
My phone, however, gets dropped somewhat frequently, since by the nature of its use, it's exposed to much rougher handling than my laptop (which generally stays at home, or in my padded laptop backpack if I'm traveling). So I have an Otterbox Defender on that, which I'm sure has saved those phones many times. I would never go caseless on a phone; that just seems like signaling "I'm so rich, I can afford to be reckless with a $1000 phone".
I was looking at the skins sold on eBay, and wondering whether they'd mar the coating. The old coatings hold up very nicely for over a decade, and I don't want the skin to react with the coating, nor to later leave behind an adhesive that can't be removed without ruining the coating.
I'm also wondering whether the skins could be transplanted, like if one laptop breaks in a hard-to-repair way, so you move your SSD and skin full of decals to the replacement laptop.
(I have an unapplied backlog of nerdy decals, to make the perfect social nerd cafe laptop out of a spare Coreboot X200. So long as being social doesn't mar the coating, because priorities.)
If OP is in this thread, check out 3M 1080 (or newer) series. It is used on cars, designed to not bubble or leave residue, and comes in clear.
Example: https://cl.ly/f5e28bc2db85
- orange peel refers to any paint layer, not just clearcoat. (almost all, if not all, cars today are shot with at least 2 stage, but older and maybe some cars may be a single paint coat, where orange peel can still be exhibited).
- it's not from spraying it improperly, which can be a cause, but more typically that the spraying conditions (from paint mix to atmospheric conditions, even inside a booth) aren't "ideal". most new cars are robot sprayed with perfect spray control, and almost all new cars exhibit a small degree of orange peel.
even ferraris have orange peel from the factory. this is why high dollar detailers do a "paint correction" as part of their work, even on a brand new car.