Where Can I Find Hidden Details In Apple’s Event Invitations?
Apple, Every detail available about Apple’s next announcement is being compared to rumors and speculations. Ultimately, the anticipation of what Apple might do pervades the world, making it one of the most anticipated events in history.
The long held belief is that Apple hides secrets on their invitations when they have an event or other announcement. You wonder whether these hints ever produce something, and it happens – if the habits of Apple do indeed hold deep insights into what’s to come.
We found out by reviewing every invitation issued since 1997 and comparing the various products to these events that were announced afterward.
Apple has a habit of leaving hints in their products. But it’s not so easy to anticipate their meaning. Apple appears to use different approaches when hiding clues in their work, with some more obvious than others.
To get anything out of the invitations, we have to learn how to follow the trail of breadcrumbs.
READ MORE:
Rick And Morty: Season 6, Episode 1
Around 2013, Apple began to be less clear with how it marketed its products. Instead of issuing a paper invitation for an upcoming product launch, the company encouraged people to visit a website, which ended up crashing during the event.
No subtlety. The first-generation iPod was soon after.
Like the iPhone software roadmap invite, there are exciting new enterprise features created for iPhones that consumers and developers want to know more about.
Warning!
Nonetheless, that broad era still featured some antics from Apple. Look at the invite they sent out in September 2005 which depicted their founder Steve Jobs holding a pair of jeans with text that said, “1,000 songs in your pocket changed everything. Here we go again.”
The tagline leads you to believe that a music announcement is coming with the image, but there are multiple other clues hidden in the photo. It was just the right size to tuck into the coin pocket of Steve Jone’s jeans and it also appears that he pulled it from his pocket.
And Mix-Up, Switch to Intel Macs, and other card invites were not as playful, but were typically straightforward.
READ MORE:
What Makes American Tennis Star Frances Tiafoe’s Victory So Impressive?
“MacBook” and the spotlight both appeared on screen. It was strange that they’d pair these words. Another sentence then followed, “If you’re wondering which computer would be predicted to generate the most buzz in 2011.” The image on screen is of an iPad. You may wonder why 2010 was the year of laptops and not tablets.
This new era changed everything, as Apple started giving more suggestive invitations.
The subtly vague hints Apple provides for what’s to come are often difficult to decipher. We can make sense of five main approaches used by Apple with relative ease.
One of the most prominent clues is the color drops across invites. These are prominent in invites from September 2013, like the “This should brighten everyone’s day” event invite with many colorful polka-dots on the background.
The circles turned into shades of the iPhone 5C lineup announced.
This past year, Apple brought out a new iPhone with rose gold and gold shades which reflected the color of the logo. The whole time, we were right in front of it.
A list of various hints that represent Apple’s new colors and products. “Gather round” indicates the iPhone XS will be available in black and white, while “By invitation only” implies there may be a new iPhone this year. “Time flies” suggests Apple is moving to faster processors on other devices as well.
However, invitations to early events often included images of products or the date of the event. But later years got more mischievous. For example, invitations to its September 2016 event asked “See you on the 7th.”
Some vague circles hinting at new features and designs for the iPhone X hinted at its release.
Not only did the September 2015 event invitation highlight Siri’s new hill-and-valley, brightly colored waveform, it also showed how the Siri remote that would soon be released for Apple TV looked like.
When we embedded images in the invitation to the keynotes, they almost always translated into specific pictures during the keynote presentation.
These options showcase the kinds of customized content one can make at the touch of their fingertips with AI-generated invites and emojis, as well as how Apple has implemented new visual cues.
In the single-style category, the iPhone 5C invite is a great example.
READ MORE:
Freddie Mercury would have celebrated his 76th birthday today
The colourful dots that were used to reference the new phone models also referenced the cases which provided protection for the phones.
An “Hi, speed” invitation in which Apple was centered looked like a circle with an apple on the bottom. This led to the realization that Touch ID was about to be released on the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max.
And one of my favourite items of the time, the September 2014 event invitation included a subtle shadow casting off the leaf of the Apple logo, evoking a sundial and alluding to Apple’s eventual Watch announcement. When it works, it is effective.
Some fun Apple Watch hints to consider: “Spring ahead” (Apple Watch digital crown); “Am I on camera?” (Apple Watch bands); “We love to gather around” (new Apple campus).
The announcement for the “Let’s take a field trip” event at Apple Pencils happened in March 2018 and the announcement for the “There’s more in the making” event happened in October 2018 with only two handwritten typeface invites.
Apple’s only repeated taglines: “It’s showtime,” released in 2006, and “It’s showtime,” released in 2019, refer to the announcement of the original Apple TV and Apple TV Plus.
With the iPhone 8 in the Siri era, consumers have started to ask for more from the digital assistant and we all know what that means: 5G iPhones.
READ MORE:
AEW might attain new levels with MJF vs. CM Punk
Some new taglines to ponder: “This should brighten everyone’s day” (iPhone 5C); “Spring forward” (Apple Watch); “Let us loop you in” (Apple Watch bands); “Hello again” (MacBook with Touch Bar); “Time flies” (Apple Watch Series 6); “Peek performance” (M1 Ultra).
The first augmented reality invite for the September 2020 event appeared for what appears to be “Time flies” and followed a similar pattern of events, portraying a multihued open mouth blue Apple logo unravelling to become the date before reforming into the event once again.
The colors in the sky blue graphic reference the soon-to-be-released iPad Air . The best use of this new layer of invite is the November 2020 “One more thing” event invite.
The AR data provided an outline of the next generation Apple laptop, with image streaming like a liquid is pen-drawn where pixels used to be.
Then there is the distracting (and admittedly unproven and not really believable) April 2021 “Spring loaded” invite.
AirTags are a way to track lost items, as they use AR on your phone to bring them into the real world.
With Apple’s iPhone 8 treasure hunt now underway, it seems that this is worth the hype and speculation. Only time will tell just how much of a phenomenon it becomes.
Some invites hint at larger features such as 5G and others mainly consist of new wallpapers.
Many of these announcements either never come or are nearly impossible to predict even in the lead-up to them due to the rampant speculation that surrounds each conference.
It seems that this year the “Far out” invitation is introducing features that are both physically and culturally distant. The cheeky text may mean this is a new feature from the past, and it’s truly “far out.”
READ MORE:
The Whale review: Could it be Brendan Fraser’s comeback?
Another word for the AR interface is a visual representation of all the breadcrumbs that make up your digital life; an outer space environment. Given how much breadcrumbs can be found in your digital life, it should come as no surprise that many are speculating about astrophotography.
With all the rumors out there, I keep predicting that it might point to an Apple-made iPhone with or without a cellular connection.
