A literary historical past of faux texts in Apple’s advertising and marketing supplies
Like numerous troubled younger males, I used to pay shut consideration to Apple’s developer conferences and particular bulletins, eagerly anticipating every new technology of iPhone and working system. Within the 2000s and 2010s these common public demonstrations had been full of suspense and anticipation What would the telephones appear to be this 12 months? Which government would Steve Jobs personally execute in a windowless room instantly following the presentation? Would the brand new iPhone lastly resolve my issues and make me glad?
Right here in 2023, that aura and expectation is gone. Each telephone seems the identical; each announcement has been extensively leaked. However there’s nonetheless an excellent cause to take care of Apple’s advertising and marketing extravaganzas: The pretend texts.
I’m speaking in regards to the mocked-up texts and emails Apple places collectively to exhibit new messaging options in its operating-system updates, presumably written by some well-paid professionals in Apple’s advertising and marketing division. These eerily cheery, aggressively punctuated messages counsel a alternate dimension through which well mannered, good-natured, rigorously various teams of mates and coworkers use Apple merchandise precisely how they’re designed for use, with out grievance or error. Listed here are a few of the more moderen examples of what I’m speaking about, used to tout this 12 months’s updates, iOS 17 and MacOS Sonoma:
Each new replace to Apple software program brings together with it advertising and marketing supplies populated by new casts of characters engaged in a brand new set of initiatives, however storylines are by no means elaborated, not to mention resolved, and campaigns go with none questions being answered. This 12 months we’ve texts between an oddly formal soapbox derby crew (???) and what appears to be a type of stuffed-pasta membership that’s by all proof annoyingly dominated by a person named Wealthy Dinh, taking suspiciously skilled pictures of his personal meals:
If there’s nonetheless thriller in Apple occasions, it’s positioned right here, within the uncanny fictional world advised in these photographs: Who’re these folks? And what’s improper with them that they textual content like this?
A correct literary examine of faux Apple texts has but to be undertaken, however with the assistance of the Wayback Machine, we are able to sift by means of greater than a decade’s work of selling supplies to establish sure tendencies and themes. For the sake of precision, let’s start our survey in 2011, with the launch of iMessage in iOS 5. Right here, as far as I can inform, is the first-ever pretend Apple iMessage dialog:
Right here, we see either side of a chat between “Elisa Rossi” and “Greg Apodaca”
through which Elisa sends Greg {a photograph} from her trip. It’s arduous to not respect the rigidly orthographically right banter between these … coworkers? Buddies? The true nature of their relationship stays unclear.
The primary factor to notice right here is the {photograph}. There’s nothing–nothing–that denizens of the Dimension Apple love greater than sharing pictures with one another. One of many only a few needs that individuals in these texts ever categorical is for his or her mates to share images; “ship images” is the “Come to Brazil” or “present ft” of the Dimension Apple:
Pictures of what, you ask? In Dimension Apple, everyone seems to be all the time spending the weekend collectively having enjoyable, like Ken, Angela, and Fritz in iOS 7
:
Or Ailish and Eden in iOS 8 (see the 9:27 a.m. electronic mail; word additionally the 8:17 a.m. electronic mail from Cory Quinn):
Or Paul, Natalia, Stefan, and the children in iOS 9:
Individuals are all the time taking journeys in Dimension Apple, seemingly for the only goal of making pictures to share through Apple software program. They like to plan canoe journeys and summer time getaways and informal weekends in Santa Cruz; they type group chats centered round journeys that just one participant was on:
Dimension Apple journey locations have turn out to be more and more imprecise, because the “Street Journey” group chat suggests, a part of an general and troubling vague-ening of the Dimension Apple. Are particular locations disappearing in Dimension Apple? Are the sides of the map softening? How far are you able to drive, and the place do you find yourself? The place did Nanditha and her buddy go on their many “enjoyable journeys”? We might by no means know:
The vagueness was not all the time the case. Within the early years, Dimension Appleites beloved to make the most of iMessage’s free worldwide messaging by, e.g. chatting with their mother and father whereas finding out overseas:
You would possibly surprise why this Dimension Apple daughter is sending her mom such an expert and staged-looking {photograph}, however the different factor to know about individuals who dwell in Dimension Apple is that they’re critical pictures hobbyists, and make frequent use of Apple software program to edit their images earlier than sharing them. No surprise Wealthy Dinh’s ravioli photograph seems so good:
The one factor that approaches “sharing pictures” as a key cultural observe in Dimension Apple is “planning events.” When they aren’t emailing or texting to plan journeys or share pictures, they’re planning events with each other:
Shock events specifically have enormous significance to Dimension Apple characters, and the shock occasion as a motif often re-occurs throughout iOS variations:
Whereas birthdays and highway journeys are nonetheless a cornerstone of the socio-cultural world of Dimension Appleites, we more and more get glimpses of their life exterior the fixed circle of events and weekend getaways. Latest seasons prominently function examples of intensely pleasant collaboration on imprecise initiatives and displays, all of which appear to exist in some nebulous zone between “work” and “volunteering,” just like the “Pantry Co-Op” deliberate by a Group Chat mysteriously known as “Foodies”:
Who is aware of what this presentation is about? Or why everyone seems to be so keen about it?
One rule of Dimension Apple is that there is no such thing as a cross-over: The individuals who populate any given replace are all new to that replace, and by no means seem once more in future advertising and marketing supplies. “Wealthy Dinh” and “Trev Smith” are distinctive to iOS 17; “Sarah Castellbanco” and “Eden Sears” to iOS 8; and many others.
With one exception: John Bishop.
Bishop–whose title appears to be borrowed from an Apple designer–first seems in iOS 10 as a contact auto-populated by Apple Mail. He’s probably a Cupertino-based contractor being advisable to an individual named Eric Townley.
Usually, this is able to be the final time we’d ever see John Bishop’s title. However a 12 months later, amidst the advertising and marketing supplies for iOS 11, who ought to seem once more however John himself?
Who’s John Bishop, the planeswalker who travels so casually from one iOS to the following? What different powers does he possess? And why does he hate Andrew a lot?
The denizens of Dimension Apple love the next issues: Punctuation, journeys, sharing pictures, utilizing emoji, taking pictures, shock events. You may be inclined to say that they hate roasts, bits, gossip, cynicism, textual content abbreviations like “LOL,” and different customary options of texting in our dimension–but it’s not in any respect clear to me that any of these items even exist in Dimension Apple to be hated. Like Android customers, irony merely doesn’t happen in Dimension Apple.
For a very long time I’ve loved the stilted, unbelievable cheeriness of faux Apple texts for his or her excessive distance from my very own texting habits and experiences. (As my buddy Emma put it to our group chat “if any of you texted me like this I might instantly name your important others to be sure you hadn’t been kidnapped.”) However within the final 12 months or so I’ve realized that Dimension Apple does exist–or no less than overlaps with our own–in one very particular place: The WhatsApp teams that the mother and father at my son’s daycare/faculty create to share info or arrange play dates. In these teams, and solely in these teams, do I encounter the identical type of earnest helpfulness and baffling ebullience that exists within the Dimension Apple. Naturally, I discover them completely alienating.
To help future examine of the Dimension Apple, I’m publishing all of the screenshots and pictures of faux Apple texts I used to be capable of pull from the Wayback Machine under. Please share any theories, particulars, theses, and many others. you develop from this corpus. Be aware that the Wayback Machine didn’t scrape any photographs from iOS 13, so we’re lacking that replace.
