Not to be all Marie Kondo about it, but my Mac Studio sparks joy in me every day, and it\u2019s not because it\u2019s the fastest computer I\u2019ve ever owned. It\u2019s also not strictly about the front-facing ports Apple gave it, nor is it the village of ports that live in the back.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
See, I found this mustache sticker in the back of a drawer in my house. I don\u2019t know where it came from, only that it was there, and the moment I found it, I knew immediately where to put it: smack-dab in the middle of my Mac Studio. I\u2019d been thinking for awhile that the Studio has this goofy face on the front, and slapping a curly \u2018stache on it just drove that home. It delights me, and recently, I\u2019ve been thinking about why this goofy twee addition to my computer makes me so happy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
When my partner and I sold our old home to relocate to another state a few years ago, we wanted to sell it as is. We\u2019d painted it pink, and on the inside, we\u2019d covered some of the walls with murals \u2014 a desert scene I\u2019d painted in the dining room and a geometric pattern my partner had painstakingly covered our bedroom wall with, for instance. When one of our realtor\u2019s colleagues did a walkthrough to give us recommendations, he told us we have to paint everything over with something neutral, like gray or white.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
People want to envision themselves in the space, he said, and they aren\u2019t always imaginative enough to see past an already-colorful wall.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
He told us a prospective buyer might be otherwise in love with the house, then walk into the bedroom, see the intricate linework on the wall, and say, \u201cOhhhh no,\u201d and decide not to buy just because of that. People want to envision themselves in the space, he said, and they aren\u2019t always imaginative enough to see past an already-colorful wall. They need a blank canvas. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
It\u2019s since occurred to me that this same idea is at play, at least for some people (myself included), in Apple\u2019s product design, and by extension, the design of so many other tech products from companies that hit the same notes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
So many of Apple\u2019s devices \u2014 its laptops, desktops, phones, and so forth \u2014 are characterized by these expanses of flat nothingness. Their featureless planes are often only broken when they have to be; by a keyboard or a USB-C port, for example. These days the company no longer even prints \u201cMacBook\u201d under the screen. It\u2019s easy to call that boring, but I disagree.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
I\u2019d argue that simplicity gives it far more personality than some of the one-note looks sported by, for instance, basically every gaming router, which often overwhelm you with their thing,<\/em> whatever it may be. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Some people like that sort of thing \u2014 and that\u2019s okay! I do too. But as the saying goes, it takes all kinds to make a world, and design, from my lay perspective, isn\u2019t always about what\u2019s there, but sometimes what isn\u2019t. Where one person sees a big, uncreative flat space in the back of a MacBook Air\u2019s display, another person may see a canvas they can fill to truly reflect who they are, using stickers, a Sharpie, or even paint.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n