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Black anodized things have a bad problem with scratching and showing fingerprints (my black Razer laptop looks very smudgy unless you wipe it down regularly), so I think Apple has intentionally decided to go with a bit of a lighter color to try and avoid some of this. Maybe if they could come up with some kind of other material or coating (similar to the Jet Black iPhone a while back) then it could work.

I don't see them going back to a plastic and polycarbonate portable again, and for the record those black MacBooks had terrible problems with the plastic on the wrist rest cracking.

They did, but 18 screws later you could replace it with another top case... 😂
 
The black MacBook was really nice, the 2008 revision with updated coating was also much easier to keep clean. I would've purchased one if I didn't already have a PBG4 and White MacBook.

The MacBook lineup at that time was actually quite a ripoff for consumers. Plastic MacBook starts at $1,099, and has a terrible display with viewing angles so narrow you cannot see the same black throughout the whole screen. Colors and speakers were also not good. If you want a better display you need to go up to MBA at around $1,500 (massively underpowered at the time) or the MBP which was a 15" starting at $2,000. You can get a 24" iMac with some upgrades for less than $2,000.

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They showed this image on the MB page, I dare you to see the screen that well at such an angle.
 
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The black MacBook was really nice, the 2008 revision with updated coating was also much easier to keep clean. I would've purchased one if I didn't already have a PBG4 and White MacBook.

The MacBook lineup at that time was actually quite a ripoff for consumers. Plastic MacBook starts at $1,099, and has a terrible display with viewing angles so narrow you cannot see the same black throughout the whole screen. Colors and speakers were also not good. If you want a better display you need to go up to MBA at around $1,500 (massively underpowered at the time) or the MBP which was a 15" starting at $2,000. You can get a 24" iMac with some upgrades for less than $2,000.

View attachment 888843
They showed this image on the MB page, I dare you to see the screen that well at such an angle.

Then theres this... When you have a white and black one, and the black one looks better but the white one has a better logic board.

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You can switch more than that! It’s always been a goal of mine to someday get a 2009 white one and a 2008 black one and modify the black housing to fit the 2009 internals.

That's what I did. with slight modifications to the standoffs, the 2008 black MacBook has a 2009 MacBook logic board. You have to keep the nutserts from the standoffs and use them to mount the heatsink to after removing the 2 or 3 standoffs. I was hoping to just keep it all black with white keys, but the i busted the ribbon cable and went to town making it look the way it does. It surely is neat, and I was also considering putting Elementary OS on it to retain all trackpad features and have an up to date system. I don't really need another Mac kicking around. lol! My only hurdle with any Linux distro... the WiFi card. I have a dell card I was going to put in, I just didn't feel like tearing it apart again, and I can get this one to work with the right driver.
 
I got one of the black MacBooks a few months back (had a white one back in the day, but never a black one). And I will say that despite the cracking problems I mentioned, they are still pretty nice looking. And even though mine can't go beyond Lion, it is very usable with an SSD upgrade and max RAM. I wish they had made a black version of the white unibody Macbook that came a bit later.
 
I got one of the black MacBooks a few months back (had a white one back in the day, but never a black one). And I will say that despite the cracking problems I mentioned, they are still pretty nice looking. And even though mine can't go beyond Lion, it is very usable with an SSD upgrade and max RAM. I wish they had made a black version of the white unibody Macbook that came a bit later.

That would have been a nice Mac. They didn't sell a lot of the black ones due to the huge price increase and the very minor upgrades... At least that is what I heard. They probably would have sold them in the later version though if they kept the specs and prices in line with the white models.
 
That's what I did. with slight modifications to the standoffs, the 2008 black MacBook has a 2009 MacBook logic board. You have to keep the nutserts from the standoffs and use them to mount the heatsink to after removing the 2 or 3 standoffs. I was hoping to just keep it all black with white keys, but the i busted the ribbon cable and went to town making it look the way it does. It surely is neat, and I was also considering putting Elementary OS on it to retain all trackpad features and have an up to date system. I don't really need another Mac kicking around. lol! My only hurdle with any Linux distro... the WiFi card. I have a dell card I was going to put in, I just didn't feel like tearing it apart again, and I can get this one to work with the right driver.


Nice. I've got to do one with a black LCD bezel and macOS Catalina patcher. That would be pretty neat too.
 
For the majority of the time the Black MacBook was sold, the only difference was color. Specs were the same. Last few revisions gave a larger hard drive when you bought black.
 
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Nice. I've got to do one with a black LCD bezel and macOS Catalina patcher. That would be pretty neat too.

I tried Catalina on it, and while it worked great I really hated not having the touchpad features as the touchpad on these machines are recognized as a standard mouse. Do it up and lets see the results though.
 
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