It probably wouldn’t be an overstatement that most of our readers already know Love Hulten. Mostly known as quizz_kid, this Swedish craftsman and modding enthusiast created numerous cool modding projects of exceptional quality, with wood being his main material of choice. And while most of his well known works (such as Sputnik 0667, R-Kaid-6, M4, Revelation and R-KAID-Я, just to name a few) feature computers in enclosures with either fully custom design or design that was inspired by other pieces of vintage technology, his new project is different. The main difference being the fact that the inspiration source in itself is a computer — the vintage Macintosh 128k from more than thirty years ago, which was meticulously recreated by quizz_kid in his signature Art Deco style as a luxurious one-off-a-kind replica, with the resulting project getting the name The Golden Apple.

The overall setup of The Golden Apple

Released by Apple in January 24, 1984, the original Macintosh (which was retroactively rebranded as Macintosh 128k upon the release of its successor, the Macintosh 512K) took the world by storm, forever changing personal computing and instantly becoming a classic. Many of the core features from Macintosh 128k can still be found in modern Apple devices, like the focus on compactness, integration, ease of use and sleek simple design. Being the first among the so called “compact Macs”, the original Macintosh was incredibly small for such a sophisticated and high-performance computer: measuring at just 34.5 x 24.4 x 27.7 cm, it featured a 512 x 342 pixels 9″ monochrome CRT display, a Motorola 68000 cpu running at 7.8336 MHz, 128 KB or RAM and a 400 KB, single-sided 3.5-inch floppy disk drive.

The original Macintosh from 1984

Quizz_kid didn’t try to reinvent the wheel and recreated the original enclosure design by hand, utilising American walnut instead of plastic, keeping the original dimensions unaltered. Keeping the overall design as close as possible to the original, quizz_kid’s replica even features a special handle, which is built-in into the top of the case for easier lifting and transportation. Among the notable design changes, is the widened floppy drive slot, which was remodeled as an optical disk drive slot. The insides of The Golden Apple project consist of a modern Mac Mini, which is mounted inside the overall wooden enclosure.

Love Hulten didn’t stop his work after completing the overall computer — he has also recreated the original peripherals, which were bundled with Apple’s Macintosh 128k: a small keyboard and mouse. To achieve his ambitious goal, quizz_kid crafted a custom keyboard that replicates the original design, while using walnut as the base enclosure material and mechanical cherry MX blue switches for key mechanisms. The mechanical switches in the keyboard are covered by gold plated zink key caps. The mouse was also made from walnut, but quizz_kid decided to make it wireless.