I Miss The Lighted Apple Logo

Delete the magic, replace it with metal

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Every time I see an older MacBook with the bright white lighted Apple logo…I get envious.

I imagine that was exactly the point of the logo light in the first place.

In an era where Apple has killed MagSafe, the Startup Sound, Skeuomorphic design, and the iPhone’s headphone jack, among other things…I realize that it’s weird to focus on the silly little white light that used to be on the back of their laptops. A light that you can’t even see while you’re using the computer.

But it was fun and cool. Sometimes that’s enough.

The MacBook Air was the last holdout, and now that it’s been 12-inch-MacBooked, the light is effectively dead.

I do a lot of writing in coffee shops, and over the last four years I’ve watched the screen landscape transform. It used to be a field of soft glowing white Apple logos, which stood in stark contrast to the occasional black PC monolith.

Now, one by one, the lights are vanishing as the laptops are upgraded, replaced by cold metallic mirrors of aluminum.

I never had the pleasure of personally owning a MacBook with the lighted Apple logo. My first MacBook was a 2016 12-inch model, which I still use from time to time in spite of…