[jetrink]

My guess is that they used that case from early on in the project and then just stuck with it even as the electronics inside shrunk. It's not like the software people would be fooled by the enormous size; they knew they were making a pocketable music player.

Interestingly, the holes for the screen and the buttons look like they were molded, but the holes for the jacks and wheel look like they were milled. I wonder if the boxes were custom-made or something off-the-shelf that happened to have the right screen size and number of buttons.

[samwillis]

It looks like a SLA 3d print to me. They go that distinctive yellow over time.

[ghostly_s]

In 2001?

[samwillis]

Absolutely, was already quite common back then. It was invented in the 80s after all.

[monocasa]

Yeah, SLA printing was totes used in prototyping back then. It was just really expensive because the patents hadn't expired yet. I'd expect that Apple's R&D lab would have had access to them.