Apple just brought back the one design feature that an entire generation of MacBook users never stopped asking for.
The glowing Apple logo is back.
After 10 years of a flat, lifeless, polished metal logo on the lid the new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display features a glowing, illuminated Apple logo on the back of the screen. The crowd at Apple’s Los Angeles launch event lost their minds when CEO John Ternus said three words:
“The logo is back.”
The glowing logo was the most recognizable laptop feature in the history of personal computing. In coffee shops, libraries, and lecture halls around the world you knew which laptop was a Mac without seeing the screen. The glow. The Apple. The silhouette shining through the lid. Iconic.
Apple killed it in 2015. The 12-inch MacBook was the first to go dark. The 2016 MacBook Pro followed. For the last decade every MacBook shipped with a dead, non-illuminated Apple logo.
Now it’s back. And the way it works on the new OLED MacBook Pro raises a question nobody at Apple has answered yet:
If the logo has its own dedicated light source separate from the display could Apple eventually make it customizable? Different colors? Animated? Notification-enabled?
The glowing logo didn’t just return. It might have returned as something more than it ever was.
Here’s the full story why it disappeared, how it works now, and what it could become 🧵