> The implied criticism here of IRIX being low res, low contrast and in any way having rounded edges demonstrates some serious ignorance of the subject.

The criticism, "implications" (i. e. your speculations) aside, is that based on the screenshots of the desktop I've seen it's just not enough for me. Not even close.

But since I've never used an SGI workstation, I am indeed largely ignorant of its "hidden" UI/UX qualities. And who knows? Maybe you can pimp the desktop's visual design enough that even I fall in love with it.

Ahaha, no. You're conversing with someone who grew up in one of the grayest places in the known universe (an East German city) and considers himself allergic to many (novelty) color schemes and combinations of this world; most beiges, off-whites, and grays OTOH are are beautiful (and relaxing) to me. This, of course, manifests in certain biases with regards to all things industrial design, e. g. case desgns, UIs, and so on.

> Tja... that's the problem; images are almost nonexistant. Before today, I've only seen this particular machine in two German computer magazines.

The first source is the December 1989 issue of the Happy Computer, containing a report from the Munich tradeshow "Systems", which took place from 16th to 20th October 1989. You'll find a picture of the Snofru on pages 124 and 125. According to the description, its guts are a 386 with 25 MHz, 4 MB RAM, and an 80 MB HDD (12 ms). 1989 price: 35,000 DM. Meadata Technologies was a Munich outfit. Here, the machine is shown in a gold or sandy taupe livery. [1/2]

There is at least one other German magazine which reported on this very machine; it think it was the c't. Oddly enough, they showed a very small picture of an all-black machine. But maybe I just misremembered; I have to look that up. [3]

[1] Magazine online-view here: [https://reader.kultmags.com/Happy%20Computer%201989-12]

[2] Direct download of the archived mag here: [https://kultmags.com/Happy%20Computer/1989/Happy%20Computer%...]

[3] EDIT: After checking my archive I see I didn't misremember. The December 1989 issue of the c't has a picture of the Snofru on page 18. The styling is all-black with some red highlights. It also goes into a bit more detail on the specs: Intel motherboard, 64 KByte cache, 4 MByte RAM standard (expandable to 24 MByte; the below-referenced DOS International also mentions RAM expansion cards), a Plus (a Quantum subsidiary) Impulse hard disk system with a maximum of two internal HDDs (80 MB options were offered), as well as two controllers for connecting external storage for a combined maximum of ca. 2.6 GByte. Graphics card is a Video Seven. The PSU was located in the the top of the pyramid and has an "allegedly" very quiet fan, which was embedded in a dampening enclosure made of rubber. The envisioned application of the machine was to be that of a fast, networked file server.

[4] EDIT 2: The December '89 issue of DOS International IDs the machine as "Snofru XXV" and shows two small pictures: the all-black version on page 6, and a seethrough illustration on page 8. The magazine can be found here: [https://kultmags.com/DOS%20International/1989/DOS%20Internat...]. The text also makes note of "confidential" impartiations relating to orders by "high-ranking managers" of "well-known banks".

[5] Finnish mag Bitti shows the all-black machine on page 23 of issue 9/90 as well (photo repro only in bw). Price: 87,400 Suomen markka.