If your desk is crying out for something that screams "I know my computing history AND I'm living in the future," designer Alisher Ashimov may have just built your new favorite object. Meet Kira - a fully functional, open-source AI voice assistant living inside a 3D-printed miniature replica of the iconic 1984 Macintosh. Yes, the original one. The beige one. The one your parents maybe used to write very important documents on.
Small but mighty (and extremely cute)
Don't let the pocket-sized form factor fool you. Under that nostalgic shell, Kira runs on a Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32-S3 Sense microcontroller, packs a 1.5-inch OLED display, a built-in microphone, and a 3W speaker. The display isn't just showing raw data either - it renders animated facial reactions during conversations, which means your tiny Mac companion is basically expressing emotions at you. We are absolutely fine with this.
The chassis is printed in Light Khaki matte PLA, which is the closest a 3D printer can get to nailing that distinctive beige-grey of classic Apple hardware. The attention to detail here is genuinely impressive - this thing looks like someone shrunk an original Mac down to charm-bracelet territory.
Why does this actually matter?
Beyond the obvious "this is incredibly cool" factor, Kira represents something worth paying attention to. It's open-source, which means tinkerers, makers, and the terminally curious can build and customize their own. You're not locked into some corporate ecosystem - you're getting a little DIY AI companion that you actually own and can modify.
There's also something poetic about housing modern AI inside the shell of the machine that arguably kicked off the personal computing revolution. The 1984 Mac was supposed to be the friendly face of technology - approachable, human-scaled, not intimidating. Kira is doing exactly that, just with a few decades of hardware improvements stuffed inside.
The verdict
Is Kira going to replace your smartphone assistant? Probably not. Is it going to become the most talked-about object on your desk and a genuine conversation starter that also happens to be a functional piece of tech? Absolutely. According to Hypebeast, who first spotted Ashimov's build, this little machine manages to be both a love letter to computing history and a genuinely usable gadget - and that's a harder trick to pull off than it sounds.
Now someone please make one in the original Bondi Blue iMac colorway. We're begging.
