The biggest news this week comes from Apple. There’s a new Mac Mini (the press copy says it makes a great digital signage platform but we’ll stick to our Raspberry Pis), a gigantic iPad that costs $1900, and the MacBook Air gets a display with more than 900 pixels of horizontal resolution. It’s big news, but this isn’t the biggest news from Cupertino. [Aki-Baidya] reports Apple is bringing back the old-school rainbow logo to t-shirts sold in the Apple Park visitor center. The move follows Apple’s trademark renewal of the rainbow logo earlier this year.
The O.G. rainbow Apple logo was not Apple’s first logo — this honor belongs to the ‘Newton woodcut’ logo designed by [Jobs] and [Ronald Wayne] in 1976. [Wayne] is best known for selling his 10% stake in Apple for $800. The ‘rainbow Apple’ appeared in 1977 after [Jobs] commissioned [Rob Janoff] to design a logo based on the Apple itself. Newton is of course missing from this logo but his contributions to the sciences — the laws of motion and optics — are alluded to with the rainbow apple.
The rainbow Apple logo was phased out in 1998 with the release of the original Bondi Blue iMac and gradually replaced the logo on all four of Apple’s computer lines. The rainbow logo was last seen on Apple laptops with the Wall Street II / PDQ Powerbook, replaced by the Lombard PowerBook in May, 1999. On desktops, the last rainbow logo was found on the beige G3 tower, replaced with the Blue and White G3 in January, 1999.
Despite being discontinued twenty years ago, the rainbow Apple logo has remained one of the most loved corporate logos of all time. To this day, you can still find rainbow Apple logo stickers on the back of old Volvos and pinned to the windows of offices. It is a staple of 80s and 90s-era design. The Rainbow Apple logo t-shirt is available exclusively at the Apple Park Visitor Center gift shop, price is $40.
Not a hack!
Could’ve done it with a 555!
Arduino would’ve worked better
They should have done it the way that I would have done it, because I could have done it better!
Where’s the build-log?
If you think its so bad wheres the video of you doing it better?!
Couldn’t even get the colors of the rainbow right.
This is HackADay. Therefor they are staying true to their name if they publish just one hack per day. On the 30th we got more than just one, we got headphones, assembly, MIDI, etc.
I’m glad that my original meme still has some traction.
I still have my Mac Centris 610 with the rainbow sticker on the front.
I still have a sheet of these in 4 sizes. Guess they are not worth much anymore. :(
Oh sheet!
I was wondering the same. I think my dad still has some kicking around from when he bought his Apple II.
One day they will introduce a “Big Mac”
If apple ever sponsors a boxer, please let his name be Little Mac …
It will immediately go into the Trash Can.
The Mac Mini has a headphone jack!
They had to think of something to do with their overstocked headphone jacks that they weren’t using on the iPhones.
If they paid me to wear their advertising, I’d consider it, but I used my last Apple 20 years ago.
I much prefer the sweet apples you can eat.
I believe the 900 pixel limitation on the Air was the vertical, not horizontal. Not a huge Apple fan any longer but I’m in the process of restoring a prototype Apple ][ (not +, not e, not c, not gs … an OG ][). Woz’s designs were stunning!
Maybe it is like airplanes, isn’t the wing that is called the Vertical Stabilizer oriented horizontally, vice versa?
B^)
Touche … and there’s been a number of times when I’ve wanted to test the hand-launched aerodynamic properties of Apple equipment.
No, they’re not.
My collection of rainbow stickers (picked up at conventions from roughly 1979 to 1990) disappeared circa 1994 with an ex-girlfriend (as well as a number of other things, like my original diploma and my Zappa vinyl collection…. Grrrr.) This won’t fix the hurt, but might assuage it.
UR better off w/o her!
how do people use a rasp pi for digital signage?
https://hackaday.com/2017/08/17/multiple-monitors-with-multiple-pis/
Thanks Truth, we are looking for signage that can do transitions between images too – one link mentions https://www.screenly.io/ but we are looking for free version. It might not actually be so tough to code such a thing- just an app that dissolves between jpgs.
They hot glue lots of them to a foam board to form characters.
B^)
How much do tee shirts usually cost in the states?
Much less than what Apple is charging.
Typically between $5 and $20 depending on brand, design and material. Your run of the mill synthetic cotton shirt with a phrase or logo on it tends to cost around $10.
Synthetic cotton?
This is not at all what I’ve been waiting for. So your statement is false.
Languages are imprecise, and “we” is especially tricky. When someone says “we’re going to Supercon”, are you going along as well? Or is the speaker talking about a group of people that includes the speaker but _not_ you? How would you know? English is ambiguous here.
Chinese, on the other hand, has two “we”s — one inclusive of the person spoken to and one that’s exclusive. This title certainly could have benefitted from something like that.
Hackaday makes things worse, of course, by writing as if we’re some Borg-like entity, even though some of its writers couldn’t possibly care less about the Apple corporation, even if they still harbor a fondness for the SE/30 that they had in college. But what color the apple logo is? Double-plus nope.
It’s called clusivity.
Cluesivity?
We could also do with a third variant, sometimes referred to as the “Royal We”. That’s usually used by bosses in the form of, “We are going to fix this problem” and we excludes the person making the comment…
+1
In English, you can be singular and plural, if that has any bearing on the converstaion.
When a politician says “we” in a campaign speech, he may be referring to himself and the frog in his pocket.
No.
Circa 1984, when there were endless small stores that existed to sell all the clone parts to make an Apple II , I saw Apple earrings. They were the rainbow apple with the bite out of it, with stud backing. I assumed they came from Apple. I was tempted, but didn’t, so maybe I didn’t have any holes in my ears at that point.
I stuck a white apple sticker on my Sandisk MP3 player. I do have a collection of unused stickers, I just find them in odd places like used books.
Michael
A mere $40 to be part of this ongoing 80s-90s nostalgia marketing trend
And to be part, in some small inconsequential way, of Apple’s colored apple trademade SOU (Statement Of Use) filing with the US Patent & Trademark office.
> the MacBook Air gets a display with more than 900 pixels of horizontal resolution
Huh?
900 x RGB?
The resolution shell game seems to have gone retrograde.
That’s not a rainbow logo. Look at the colors.. not a rainbow.
I have got one of the raised metal ones, I don’t know what it come off of.
Ja ist denn schon wieder Sommerloch?
Mehr so Altweibersommerloch. Keine Sorge. Ist ja schnell vorbei.
So they’re releasing an overpriced and otherwise useless fashion statement. Oh and this year there’s a shirt too!
hey, if they’re bringing the color back to the logo, maybe they’ll bring the color back to the GUI!
why is this on hackaday?
I guess ads aren’t cutting lately
Shut up and take my…condolences?
I was hoping to hear Apple removed the DRM chip from their new lineup and stopped trying to destroy the Right to Repair movement.
But no, the original logo is coming back. Whoopty-freaking-doo.
What we’ve all been waiting for? You mean not trying to ruin repair technicians and the ability to get proper parts? You mean actually making repairable hardware (*cough* iPhone X *cough*)?
Perhaps if the logo is back from when they weren’t as shitty that will unfuck the company itself? I mean image is everything.
Bitten apple in the logo – bitten apples just start rotting fast and can NOT be repaired in any way. :-) You can just take it as a hint or warning for planned obsolescence. So I stay away from this products.
I don’t blame the author that wrote this “sequence of words” and propose it to HaD, no, I don’t, because he has full right to propose whatever he wants.
But for sure I blame who in HaD approved to publish, because for sure it his duty to refuse this.
Aw c’mon Hackaday. People come here to find out about cool hacks, not disguised advertising. That post smells like sponsored content.
“To this day, you can still find rainbow Apple logo stickers on the back of old Volvos and pinned to the windows of offices.”
I guess that is because stickers were simply too difficult to remove?
But seeing the old logo being used again is perhaps a sign of the old hardware coming back also, because well… if they admit that the old logo was better… then the slightly admit that the old company was better…
For a state-of-the-art-cutting-edge-technology firm it’s slightly strange that they cling on to this nostalgia, many young users never even seen the systems that uses the old logo. So what are they trying to achieve here.
I suspect it to be a clever form of marketing, suggesting something about history to new users that the good old times was all about apple, which we all know, wasn’t… but seeing those T-shirts… well it makes people believe differently… “think differently” perhaps.
But then again… I would not be surprised if it was just the idea of a fan-boy (a true believer of the old products) that tossed this around in a meeting and for some reason all managers agreed or something. So I guess it’s cool… nahhh… it IS cool, because retro rules these days! Now perhaps Apple also wants a piece of this and perhaps they will decide to also jump onto the retro wagon and perhaps they will be selling tiny apple-II’s (another copyrighted emulator in an old case) around X-mas next year?
“and gradually [the rainbow apple logo] replaced the logo on all four of Apple’s computer lines.”
This sentence needs review. Probably replace “and” with “which”.
I’ve just picked up iPad Pro 11. Mac mini is going to be my next purchase. Love this small pc. Very appealing