Apple Finds Some Personality

Jason Snell, Six Colors:

Every five years when we hit an anniversary, I struggle to recontextualize the iPod. But this year, for the 25th anniversary, I’ve been thinking about Apple’s little music player a lot more.

Stephen Hackett:

This link — which you gotta manually open in your browser — is the best thing I’ve seen on the Internet in a long time.

This looks enough like my own iPod library circa twenty years ago that it threw me a little. I hope this is not appearing solely for the occasion of the iPod’s anniversary. It is a nice surprise.

Charlotte Gunn, Wallpaper:

Apple Music has enlisted British producer Fred Again.. to help turn sound into something tangible for its new visual identity. Built around the idea of being ‘made by sound’, the redesign takes an experimental approach, using musical frequencies to create rippling, liquid forms. The results were achieved by playing music into a shallow bath of mineral oil and filming the resulting vibrations.

There is a corresponding video illustrating the process alongside the mnemonic created by Mr. Again. While I am not sold on the six-note sequence — it sounds to my ears somehow both cramped and unsatisfied — it is a very cool visual effect. Apple is justifiably proud of what it has created; it is showcasing a version of the icon in its social media profile pictures.1

So why, then, does the updated icon in iOS 27.2 look nothing like that?

Apple employs plenty of creative people doing interesting and exciting work. I think the Apple Music rebrand is fantastic, and the iPod Easter egg shows a little personality from a largely sanitized company. A music app should display some kind of verve for life. Alas.

1. Check out those low, low, low TikTok view counts, too. ↥︎