We’ve long been fond of Cape Town company Houdt and its range of beautiful, wooden covers and tech accessories. In the early days, the company focused its efforts on phone covers almost exclusively, and limited itself to the big two: Apple and Samsung. We hadn’t checked in with Houdt for a while, and when we popped over to its site recently we were pleased to find it now offers covers for Huawei handsets and for our day-to-day workhorses, Apple’s MacBook laptops.
Houdt offered to send us one of its MacBook Pro Retina veneers to take for a spin. We asked for one in the walnut that would fit a 13-inch Retina model. A few days later, a preposterously thin envelope arrived containing a sliver of walnut with the Apple logo laser cut out of the centre (because, you know, if you can’t see its a MacBook it’s not really a MacBook), a Houdt logo engraved near the bottom, and a few lines scored near the edges to allow the wood to bend to match the curvature of our MacTop.
Application was as simple as peeling off a backing sheet, very slowly and carefully applying the cover to one side of our Mac’s lid, and ensuring it was properly aligned before flattening it out with a dishtowel. Being the tail-end of Joburg winter, we found it also helped to apply a little oil to the cover, which not only darkened the colour a little, but made the edges of the cover — which kept curling up — more willing to stay put.
Houdt offers the covers in three types of wood (bamboo, cherrywood or walnut) and makes them for the whole range of MacBook laptops, from the 11-inch air, through the non-Retina devices, right up to the 15-in Pro Retina. Each cover includes the Houdt logo… unless you’re willing to splurge and get a custom-engraved cover, something Houdt’s only recently begun offering (so no “Stuff” branded cover for us).
Prices range from R450 for an 11-inch, non-custom cover up to R750 for a customised 15-inch version. Check out the full range here.
Despite Houdt’s claims that its covers will protect your MacBook, we’re not convinced. This is no plastic shell. It might save your device’s lid from the odd scratch, but it’s not going to defend against bumps or drops. But then, that’s not really why you’d invest in one, is it?
When it comes to laptops decals and other adornments are purely aesthetic, and on that front, Houdt’s covers are superb. We’ve had an awful lot of (often bearded) strangers complimenting us on our choice of Mac accoutrement. And if that’s not an endorsement, we don’t know what is.
