Correlation Of Color With Openness?


lulzfish

Pandora Defense Squad
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Sitwon mentioned this in another thread:

Sitwon said:
Also, I don't know if other people have notice it or not, but it seems to me that there is a correlation between the color of electronic devices and their "openness". Closed platforms tend to be white, open platforms tend to be black. I wonder why that is...

Examples:

iPhone <- White (sort of)
Android phones <- mostly Black
Freerunner <- Black

MacBook <- White (usually)
ThinkPad <- Black (Reasoning for calling them "open": They publish the full maintenance manuals and sell almost every part as an FRU, offer Linux on some systems)

iPod <- Mostly White
Sansa <- Black (Reasoning for calling them "open": They somewhat cooperated with Rockbox, and they sell user-replaceable battery kits for their PMP)

Nintendo DS <- White (originally)
GP2X/GP2X Wiz/Dingoo/Pandora (soon) <- Black

Nokia N770 (Linux-powered tablet) <- Black

Linksys routers (at least the GL) <- Black
Netgear routers <- White

Amazon Kindle <- White
B&N Nook (Android) <- It's got more black than white if you include the back side.


Anyways, it's not perfect (there are lots of exceptions) but it seems like a trend. I have a lot of linux devices and most of them are black(-ish) compared to the more popular closed-platform counter part.


This might be way off topic...
And it was way off-topic, so I thought I might fork it here.
My original DS is actually silver, and my laptop is silver with white trim and black metal on the bottom.
And my badass laser printer is black, but I can't really program it.

My Palm is closed at the operating system level, about as open as a stock iDevice, and has a white bezel with a blue back.

Thoughts?
 
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Hmm, lets see if this holds true...
A list of some of things I have/had
I take it as open = you can make your own stuff for it (public SDK available) not that the whole thing(os, kernel, whatever) must be open source

Open
HTC Hero - White
Gp2x - Black
Gp2x Wiz - Black
Nokia 5800 - Black

Not Open
Wii - White
N64 - Black
Xbox360 - White
NDS - White
Mp3 player Cowon something - Black
DVD player - Black


Uncertain
PS3(You can install linux on it) - Black

Thats all I can think of that is black or white.

Conclusion: I don't own enough open stuff! Oh, and colour seem irrelevant.
 
Silver is sort of white-like.


Silver reflects all colors of light. White reflects all colors of light. <-- Similar? I think so.
 
Well, I've got a white friend, and she claims to be a virgin. On the other hand, my black friend has admitted to sleeping with quite a few people.
Seems to work to me.
 
For what it's worth, I've noticed that hacker websites tend to have black backgrounds.

But for the devices I currently own, the trend seems to be the other way:

Open:
GP32 - white
PC - white
Laptop - grey

Kinda-open:
Dreamcast - white

Closed:
Game Gear - black
Game Boy - grey
GBC - blue
NDS - blue
Sega Nomad - black
SNES - grey
 
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