Air name hidden in MBA 15" wallpaper graphic

[Purrific]

I've been lurking here for years. I finally joined, just to share that I noticed the word "AIR" is hidden in the new wallpaper for the MBA 15"! I haven't seen anyone else reporting this.

I noticed it as I was struggling with myself over whether to trade in my MBP M1 14 for the new MBA 15", and after having read thread after thread about the same thing. I was also having problems squinting at my MBP M1 14 screen, and had to disable the various XDR, proMotion etc. to get it to my liking. (Aside - yesterday I got a new glasses prescription after my eye exam - for computer glasses, and I can now view the screen perfectly, with no fuzziness or upset/queasy feeling - so I no longer feel the need to update to the MBA 15" with the LCD screen and no PWM.)

Anyway, while I was reading thread after thread on here, and review after review online, one time I was reading in bed with night mode on, but on one website, the photos were inverted so they looked like negatives - and it just jumped out at me. It is almost like an optical illusion.

I'm including the regular picture of the wallpaper together with a negative image - see if you can see the word "AIR". (One image from notebookcheck.net, another from appleinsider.com

I thought this was so fun 😊

 

[Miicat_47]

Wow, how I didn’t notice that!

Now I gotta definitely use that wallpaper, when I get mine (my first MacBook)

 

[sniffies]

That is one helluvan easter egg! *applauds your incisive eye*

 

[ovbacon]

It was mentioned on Reddit two weeks orso ago

 

[Purrific]

It was mentioned on Reddit two weeks orso ago

View attachment 2223138

Oh! I did not see that at all - oh well, I spotted it by myself at least. It definitely looks a lot more obvious in those pictures!

It's the kind of thing that once you see it, you can't unsee it.

 

[Saturn007]

It was mentioned on Reddit two weeks orso ago…

Many of us now avoid Reddit in solidarity with the moderators….

Until Reddit CEO comes to his senses and proposes reasonable charges for the 3rd party apps and their developers, we'll continue to boycott it!

So, Purrific gets credit in my book for having spotted this.

It takes a moment to see it or figure it out — the Reddit poster rotated the images to make it more obvious. I prefer the challenge of the original!

 

[ovbacon]

Many of us now avoid Reddit in solidarity with the moderators….

Until Reddit CEO comes to his senses and proposes reasonable charges for the 3rd party apps and their developers, we'll continue to boycott it!

So, Purrific gets credit in my book for having spotted this.

It takes a moment to see it or figure it out — the Reddit poster rotated the images to make it more obvious. I prefer the challenge of the original!

Ha ha.... First off I don't care about anyone's credit for finding an easter egg. I think it is great that Purrific noticed it and posted about it but to say that someone else's "discovery" is invalid because you disagree with the platform it was posted on is just a bit weird.

And I don't know but the yellow one in OP's post is pretty obvious once it has been mentioned.... so not really a challenge when you know.

Btw, I do not care about Reddit or the whole hullabaloo around it so please do not take my reply as an opening for a reddit discussion.

 

[JayMysterio]

Yeah, I learned this a couple of weeks ago from a YouTuber who broke into her Air video to throw that bit of info in...

 

[Purrific]

I haven't watched any of the videos yet. I'll need to watch that one soon.

 

[Saturn007]

but to say that someone else's "discovery" is invalid because you disagree with the platform it was posted on is just a bit weird.

LOL! You misread my post. Where did I say that the Reddit “discovery“ was “invalid”?!

My point was that Purrific deserves credit for having spotted this — and for sharing it with us here at Macrumors. Now, had I written, “Purrific deserves the credit — or, the sole credit — for making this discovery” that would have been different.

You may not have meant it that way, but your original comment came off as dismissive of Purrific's wonderful post about what he found.

It was mentioned on Reddit two weeks orso [sic] ago

That’s what I was responding to. Just because a random poster on Reddit “discovered” something earlier doesn't mean Purrific's images and engaging comments (including about eyeglasses and the 14” vs. 15” displays) were not valuable in their own right. For many of us, his post was the first time we had heard of the optical illusion and the hidden AIR. He certainly didn't claim to have been “first” — nor did I claim he was!

As Jay has shown, others discovered this even earlier than that Reddit poster!

As to Reddit. How does one “disagree with the platform”?! ‼️ 🙈 I certainly don’t. My beef is with the CEO and his new fees, not the platform itself. It can be a great source of information on many topics. I certainly wasn't trying to open up a Reddit policy discussion (we agree on avoiding that!), but to note that many of us don’t follow Reddit at all (and for a good reason) and, so, whatever appears there doesn't discount what is posted here or make it redundant. Indeed, if that were the criterion, much of what is posted on MacRumors could be discounted and dismissed… and responded to, glibly, with “Oh, bother! That was already discussed on Reddit two weeks ago.” 😎

One other thing. This was Purrific's first post on MacRumors and he deserved to be welcomed, not rebutted!

So, welcome Purrific! I look forward to your future contributions...

 

[Miicat_47]

That’s what I was responding to. Just because a random poster on Reddit “discovered” something earlier doesn't mean Purrific's images and engaging comments (including about eyeglasses and the 14” vs. 15” displays) were not valuable in their own right.

I agree!

(I don’t use reddit anymore so this was my first time seeing post about it anyways)

 

[ovbacon]

LOL! You misread my post. Where did I say that the Reddit “discovery“ was “invalid”?!

My point was that Purrific deserves credit for having spotted this — and for sharing it with us here at Macrumors. Now, had I written, “Purrific deserves the credit — or, the sole credit — for making this discovery” that would have been different.

You may not have meant it that way, but your original comment came off as dismissive of Purrific's wonderful post about what he found.



That’s what I was responding to. Just because a random poster on Reddit “discovered” something earlier doesn't mean Purrific's images and engaging comments (including about eyeglasses and the 14” vs. 15” displays) were not valuable in their own right. For many of us, his post was the first time we had heard of the optical illusion and the hidden AIR. He certainly didn't claim to have been “first” — nor did I claim he was!

As Jay has shown, others discovered this even earlier than that Reddit poster!

As to Reddit. How does one “disagree with the platform”?! ‼️ 🙈 I certainly don’t. My beef is with the CEO and his new fees, not the platform itself. It can be a great source of information on many topics. I certainly wasn't trying to open up a Reddit policy discussion (we agree on avoiding that!), but to note that many of us don’t follow Reddit at all (and for a good reason) and, so, whatever appears there doesn't discount what is posted here or make it redundant. Indeed, if that were the criterion, much of what is posted on MacRumors could be discounted and dismissed… and responded to, glibly, with “Oh, bother! That was already discussed on Reddit two weeks ago.” 😎

One other thing. This was Purrific's first post on MacRumors and he deserved to be welcomed, not rebutted!

So, welcome Purrific! I look forward to your future contributions...

O my goodness..... of course this has the be a whole thing. Just let it go without feeling the need to be a knight for other people. I clearly "praised" purrific for finding it and you do not need to come to someone's defence when they are not actually being attacked.

 

[Purrific]

Thanks for the welcome! And - I didn't mean to start something here. I probably didn't find this on Reddit as most of the Apple Reddits were down over the past couple of weeks for obvious reasons.

 

[midkay]

Oh that's so cool. Of course now I'll never not see it. I wonder if I would have ever eventually noticed this myself. It does seem like it'd be easier to notice when viewed as small thumbnails, or at an angle like in that YouTube thumb.

 

[Makisupa Policeman]

That is really cool!

 

[Saturn007]

O my goodness..... of course this has the be a whole thing. Just let it go without feeling the need to be a knight for other people.

🙈

Oh, come on now! It can't be that hard to admit a mistake. Your first response threw cold water on the report and didn't “praise” Purrific at all! ‼️

The point remains. We should always welcome new users and their first contribution — and avoid being dismissive of anyone, new or old! ✅

As to that, I highlighted how badly you misread my comment. Branding my personal observation as “a bit weird” was over the top...

Oh, well. Clearly, I hit a nerve — sorry about that!

Back to our regularly scheduled programming…

The optical illusion or Easter Egg remains a tour de force and I'm glad Purrific pointed it out!

His observations about the role that proper eyeglass prescriptions play in our judgments of screen sharpness is also an important one. I wonder whether *some* of the critiques of laptop displays we see [no pun intended! 😎] aren't related to that.