the best thing about my mac studio is its mustache

It’s not just a Marie Kondo thing about it, but my Mac studio makes me happy every day, and it’s not just because it’s the fastest computer I’ve ever owned. It’s not exactly about the ports on the front that Apple gave it, nor is it about the village of ports that reside on the back.

Look, I found this mustache sticker on the back of a drawer in my house. I don’t know where it came from, only that it was there, and the moment I found it, I immediately knew where to put it: smack-dab in the middle of my Mac studio. I’ve been wondering for a while about this weird face in front of the studio, and slapping a curly ‘stache on him drove it home. It pleases me, and lately, I’ve been thinking about why this weird addition of Twi to my computer makes me so happy.

When my partner and I sold our old house to move to another state a few years ago, we wanted to sell it that way. We painted it pink, and on the inside, we covered some of the walls with graffiti—a desert scene I painted in the dining room and a geometric pattern my partner painstakingly painted on our bedroom wall. was covered, for example. When one of our realtor colleagues did a walkthrough to give us recommendations, she told us that we needed to paint everything a neutral color, like gray or white.

He told us that a potential buyer might otherwise love a home, then walk into a bedroom, see the intricate linework on the wall, and say, “Oh no,” and decide not to buy just because. People want to imagine themselves in space, he said, and they’re not always imaginative enough to see through an already colored wall. They need a blank canvas.

It has since occurred to me that this same idea is, at least for some people (myself included), at work in Apple’s product design, and by extension, in the design of many other tech products from companies that do similar things. Those with notes are in circulation.

Many of Apple’s devices — its laptops, desktops, phones, etc. — feature these expanses of flat nothingness. His featureless planes are often broken only when they have to be broken; For example, by keyboard or USB-C port. These days the company doesn’t even print “MacBook” under the screen. It’s easy to call it boring, but I disagree.

I’d argue that the simplicity gives it far more personality than some of the one-note looks, for example, on basically every gaming router, which often overwhelm you with them. thing, whatever it may be.

Some people like this sort of thing – and that’s okay! I do too But as the saying goes, building a world takes all kinds, and design, from my general point of view, isn’t always about what’s there, but sometimes what’s not. Where one person sees a large, non-creative flat space on the back of the MacBook Air’s display, another person may see a canvas that they can actually reflect on using stickers, Sharpies, or even paint. can do who they are.

Or, you know, a mustache.