> In the late 80s, you could even get a third party scanner in the shape ink cartridge called a Thunderscan for the Imagewriter.
That was indeed very cool. The much lower complexity of the technology involved is what made these kind of feats possible tho- there's no way you could pull off something like that in this age of hyper miniaturized, specialized hardware components- that's why something like Project Ara was doomed from the start.
Dunno if there are other fogeys like me who remember the days going back to the Imagewriters, Stylewriters and Laserwriters -- those were fantastic printers in the pre-USB era where third party printer pickings were quite slim for Apple users.
In the late 80s, you could even get a third party scanner in the shape ink cartridge called a Thunderscan for the Imagewriter.