Rendered at 07:55:42 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
barbacoa 5 hours ago [-]
What's ironic is that Apple does all their mechanical CAD work for their products in Siemens NX running in Windows VMs.
leohonexus 4 hours ago [-]
I understand the need for it to be in Siemens NX, but do they really run it in Windows VMs? As far as I know NX isn't certified to run in VMs without Nvidia GPU passthrough (aka Macs). It seems more sensible to maintain a fleet of Windows desktops specifically for CAD and industrial control.
zarzavat 3 hours ago [-]
More sensible, yes... but less ideologically pure.
bayindirh 15 minutes ago [-]
Considering their backend (iCloud, etc.) runs on Linux fleets, I believe they are more pragmatic than idealists.
I'd love to see a full fleet of Mac servers (XServe was a handsome piece of kit), but I believe one shall choose their battles.
steve1977 3 hours ago [-]
It could be VDIs, i.e. VMs running on another system, potentially x86 with GPU
zdc1 56 minutes ago [-]
You would think this is a great opportunity for Apple to fill a gap in the market (and dogfood their solution too). Guess not...
asdfsa32 10 minutes ago [-]
This is the typical thinking of the toolmaker. It is not useful in markets. Apple is not in the business of engineering software, their in the business of consumer hardware.
brcmthrowaway 4 hours ago [-]
This is insane. Is there no great first party CAD solution on Mac?
zokier 1 hours ago [-]
NX supported macos and Linux until 2019. The situation is kinda sad/ironic considering that many big CAD packages have their roots in classic UNIX workstations, and afaik that was one of the major usecases for RedHat desktop. With the general decline of MS and Windows I imagine CAD companies must be reconsidering their platform choices. But of course big ships turn slowly so who knows when anything concrete might happen
starky 2 hours ago [-]
Professional 3D CAD software is pretty much Windows only. Especially with a company like Apple where you have complex models with many designers working on it you aren't going to risk using anything other than the likes of NX, Catia, Creo, or SolidWorks (though I shudder at how frustrating SolidWorks would be in that use case).
nikitaga 3 hours ago [-]
Tons of industrial software is Windows only, whether it's design, operations, or configuration & control apps for industrial hardware.
MacOS versions are more commonly found in the low end of the market, e.g. Fusion 360.
anon291 2 hours ago [-]
Which is kind of insane when you think about it considering what a cluster fuck the win32 API is
PorciiVorbesc 20 minutes ago [-]
Why is it a cluster fuck? When it's been virtually unchanged and stable for the past 30 or so years, which is how Winamp 2.95 can run on WIndows 11 today and how Wine can so easily run Windows games. Way better than Linux and Mac have historically provided for compatibility.
zwirbl 36 minutes ago [-]
Still the most stable API on Linux
dijit 31 minutes ago [-]
I still think that it’s one of the great ironies of our time.
Linux itself bends over backwards to avoid breaking userland, to the point where there is a substantial amount of cruft when interacting directly with the kernel.
Only for GNU to say “fuck that” and create a widely mockable situation, one of the worst targets of modern programs for stability… to the point where people start using alternative libc’s specifically to statically link them.
What a monumental failure.
jbl0ndie 2 hours ago [-]
Vectorworks. Popular with smaller architecture firms but not the biggest ones.
left-struck 2 hours ago [-]
Nothing that CAD and engineering students would be familiar with.
There are some open source options but those aren’t taught at school afaik.
culturestate 2 hours ago [-]
Not that it's necessarily suited for Apple's use case, but Autodesk's Fusion runs natively on Mac.
steve1977 3 hours ago [-]
I guess not for this use case. There are many industrial use cases for which there are no macOS versions. In fact, Siemens NX was once available on macOS AFAIK, but isn't anymore.
thechao 4 hours ago [-]
I wish overhead (cut away to passenger layout) and side scale drawings of all cars existed. That way you could directly compare the vehicles. You'd think such information would be needed (in the U.S.) by the NTSB; and, thus, be freely available.
toasty228 23 minutes ago [-]
Same, I recently upgraded to a similar car but slightly different segment, same brand. I couldn't find any data about it, I asked llms and they all told me given the available data the cabin size should be basically the same in term of passenger comfort. Completely wrong, there is much more space for both front and back passengers
That's not the same thing as those are photos with perspective distortion.
weinzierl 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
JeremyHerrman 4 hours ago [-]
Seems like this URL has only been live (at least first archived [0]) around May 2026, originally with only 13 products. Great to see them add more since then, now close to 90.
I'd love to see them go back all the way to the Apple I eventually.
tippa123 35 minutes ago [-]
Oh my word, have a look at the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and the level of detail.
Now imagine you’re the manufacturer and this is the spec you have to meet. Of course, they will have tolerances but still this is incredible. I wonder what the accepted rejection rate is?
I'm also curious how Apple handles surface roughness? The dimensions only give you part of the picture.
MBCook 5 hours ago [-]
I had no idea they published this to the general public.
darknavi 5 hours ago [-]
A huge ecosystem of third party accessories, cases, skins, etc.
The openness is easily worth it.
MBCook 4 hours ago [-]
That’s obviously the people who are really using it, but I assumed you had to pay Apple to get it.
So either you made your own measurements or if you were doing Made For iPhone and they would give it to you as part of that program which surely you must have to pay for.
gertlex 4 hours ago [-]
I assume there's NDAs in place with some vendors pre-release, since my understanding is some accessory vendors get the needed info before new models are released, so they can spin up their lines and have accessories ready to go when the new model hits the market.
(but I could be wrong; NDAs w/China? no idea what the time between announced/released/shipped is typically; I last bought Apple product in 2009...)
tonyedgecombe 2 hours ago [-]
I've heard that they are busy bribing people in Apple's manufacturers for dimensions before products are released.
p0ckets 4 hours ago [-]
Commoditize Your Complement - Apple wants accessories to be cheap.
You might want to pay for the Made For iPhone certification for some things, but I doubt most cases have it.
eloisius 4 hours ago [-]
I always imagined shops in China got out the calipers and made measurements from scratch every time a new iPhone was released. Never knew Apple made it this easy to manufacture Minion iPhone cases
userbinator 2 hours ago [-]
They probably still do, if they have the device, because you definitely want to make sure before creating the not-cheap-even-in-China tooling.
As others have mentioned, these are more useful for when they don't, i.e. before the actual release.
Maxion 2 hours ago [-]
The big manufactureres pay or just simple acquire the leaks.
SoftTalker 4 hours ago [-]
Commoditize your complements. Wide choice and availability of accessories benefits hardware sales.
enoch2090 5 hours ago [-]
For accessory manufacturers?
duskwuff 3 hours ago [-]
Yes. These drawings are a companion to Apple's accessory design guidelines, which include a lot of other interesting design considerations:
It's nice but lots of companies do this if their equipment is meant to be used with other equipment from third parties. Frankly I'm surprised they only provide it in 2D PDFs.
What font is used in the technical drawing part? It's very cool.
tobyjsullivan 41 minutes ago [-]
ISOCP, maybe?
Edit: close, but not quite
djfergus 3 hours ago [-]
Curious why the Macbook Neo is the only Macbook included?
mrcwinn 5 hours ago [-]
Even the drawing of the Vision Pro feels heavy.
sysguest 4 hours ago [-]
idk maybe apple can release fbx or blender files?
I mean these seem nice for print-decorations...
LiamPowell 3 hours ago [-]
No decent engineering firm is going to want to work with FBX or Blender files. In fact they probably wouldn't even know what to do with them. Even proper model formats such as STEP files don't give you the details that are on a drawing that you actually need to do anything useful with these.
spockz 2 hours ago [-]
I’ve only dabbled with cad for 3d modelling in Onshape. It seems that there all kinds of ways to add measurements in the render files. Not sure about blender.
LiamPowell 2 hours ago [-]
MBD is a thing, however that doesn't really matter here, for making accessories you can more or less just assume all dimensions are perfect since you need some compliance for the accessory to be installable. What I'm talking about that can't be encoded in a model easily are things like the keepout area for the camera.
The reason you don't want Blender files at all in any sort of engineering is because it's a mesh. You can't pull any useful information, even something simple like a radius, from a mesh.
ggm 2 hours ago [-]
Roll your own?
fnord77 1 hours ago [-]
wow, looks like the spent a lot of effort on the corners of the Neo. Too bad the software team didn't spend 1/10th that effort on the corners of the windows with liquid ~~gl~~ass
amelius 1 hours ago [-]
Of what use is this if you cannot reasonably use an Apple consumer product in any industrial solution.
I'd love to see a full fleet of Mac servers (XServe was a handsome piece of kit), but I believe one shall choose their battles.
MacOS versions are more commonly found in the low end of the market, e.g. Fusion 360.
Linux itself bends over backwards to avoid breaking userland, to the point where there is a substantial amount of cruft when interacting directly with the kernel.
Only for GNU to say “fuck that” and create a widely mockable situation, one of the worst targets of modern programs for stability… to the point where people start using alternative libc’s specifically to statically link them.
What a monumental failure.
There are some open source options but those aren’t taught at school afaik.
0: https://web.archive.org/web/20260512182718/https://developer...
Now imagine you’re the manufacturer and this is the spec you have to meet. Of course, they will have tolerances but still this is incredible. I wonder what the accepted rejection rate is?
I'm also curious how Apple handles surface roughness? The dimensions only give you part of the picture.
The openness is easily worth it.
So either you made your own measurements or if you were doing Made For iPhone and they would give it to you as part of that program which surely you must have to pay for.
(but I could be wrong; NDAs w/China? no idea what the time between announced/released/shipped is typically; I last bought Apple product in 2009...)
You might want to pay for the Made For iPhone certification for some things, but I doubt most cases have it.
As others have mentioned, these are more useful for when they don't, i.e. before the actual release.
https://developer.apple.com/accessories/Accessory-Design-Gui...
Edit: close, but not quite
I mean these seem nice for print-decorations...
The reason you don't want Blender files at all in any sort of engineering is because it's a mesh. You can't pull any useful information, even something simple like a radius, from a mesh.