MacBook
Teenie. Meanie. Mighty. Mac.
This is my third annual April Fools’ Day post. In 2022, I posted about the "Magic Button," a standalone TouchID button that people could purchase. To my surprise, people actually began creating Magic Button-type products by deconstructing the existing Apple keyboards. In 2023, I released a new iPod "with high-fidelity Spatial Audio and Apple Music streaming," using ChatGPT to create a presser that mimicked the tone of Apple's Newsroom.
The fictitious MacBooks in five vibrant duotone colours.
For this year's diabolical April Fools’ Day post, I pulled on the heartstrings of those still pining for the return of a 12-inch MacBook and those wanting to see Apple infuse a bit more colour into their product lineup and created a series of fake press/website images imagining a collection of colourful 12-inch MacBooks!
The image posted on social media announcing the new MacBooks for April Fools’ Day. (Link)
The post was a success, with people sharing their appreciation for my conniving handiwork: "I hate you sm," "Why are you so mean?!?!?!?", "DAMN YOU TO HELL…", "My heart skipped a beat, damn you.", "crying right now why would you do this to me?", "Don't play with my feelings…" and dozens upon dozens more.
Coming in Yellow, Purple, Blue, Pink, and Green.
But seriously, why hasn't Apple made a collection of colourful entry-level MacBooks? Before we saw the M2 MacBook Air redesign, rumours were swirling around the possibility of the MacBook getting colours similar to those of the M1/M3 iMacs. I see gold MacBooks and colourful iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches everywhere I go, so clearly, there's a market for colourful tech, but why that has yet to expand across the MacBook lineup is beyond me. Maybe some internal study at Apple shows that more people prefer the current neutral MacBook tones than a collection of loud and luscious Macs. Whatever the reason is, it's wrong because I would love a blue anodized Mac!
Felt the MacBook would look particularly stunning when paired with a white keyboard.
But, while we longingly wait for Apple to release the MacBook we all want one day, I wanted to give people the briefest morsel of dopamine on a groggy Monday morning by suggesting that Apple had indeed created a collection of colourful 12-inch MacBooks of our dreams.
The images were designed inside Pixelmator Pro to create a unique banner image of five progressively enclosed MacBooks using the current 13-inch M3 Air images as my base. The MacBook Air was spliced up into bottom, top, and hinge components so that the three could be independently manipulated. From there, each of the 5 MacBooks was given a duotone look with a more saturated colour anodization on the lid compared to the base of the laptop – a strategy employed by Apple on their current iMac lineup. I studied dozens of product banners from Apple to help inspire how I would position the Macs, and the type of tagline Apple might use (I'm particularly proud of the "Teenie. Meanie. Mighty. Mac." slogan I came up with), and even if it was acceptable to colourize the word "MacBook" (I decided it was after seeing a rainbow gradient used for "Adaptive Audio" when advertising the AirPods Pro 2). After creating the banner image, I overlaid it onto a screenshot of Apple's current website, sliced up a few more MacBook Air images to make the white keyboard top-down shot and the shot showing the five lids aligned in a row, and called it a day. I've been scheming on this idea through most of March, and biding my time until April Fools was definitely the most challenging part.
Happy April Fools to everyone! See you again next year!
