The Colors of Apple

c. 1987–1998Macintosh II, SE, LC, Performa — most of the era

Before Bondi, there was beige. For most of the 1980s and ’90s, Apple — like the whole industry — sold machines in shades of warm off-white with names like “Platinum,” a grey that yellowed with age and sun. It was the color of the serious, the professional, the safe: a computer was an appliance you tolerated, not an object you loved. The entire argument of what came next was a rejection of this — the radical claim that a computer’s color could be a reason to want it. The rest of this page is that argument, told one finish at a time, beginning with the shade of blue that ended the beige years for good.

1999–2001iMac G3, iBook Clamshell, Power Mac G3 (B&W)

In January 1999 Apple retired Bondi Blue and replaced it with five fruit flavors, turning a computer into a color choice. Blueberry was the coolest of the set — a deep translucent blue that leaned closer to Bondi’s ancestor than any of its siblings. It became something of a house color: it wore the clamshell iBook, appeared across the Power Mac line, and read as the “default” flavor in Apple’s own lineups. If Bondi was the accident that worked, Blueberry was the deliberate follow-through — proof that Apple could pick a palette and commit to it across an entire product family. It’s the flavor most people still picture when they remember the candy-colored era.

See it in the archive: iMac G3 · iBook G3 · Power Mac G3 (B&W)

1999–2000iMac G3

Grape was the quiet one. A muted purple that photographed almost grey under bad lighting and came alive under good. Where Tangerine and Lime shouted, Grape murmured — the flavor for people who wanted the translucent iMac without the full assault of color, and it has aged more gracefully than its louder siblings for exactly that reason. Apple’s marketing leaned hard on the fruit metaphor here: the entire point of five flavors was that a computer had become a lifestyle pick, chosen like a jelly bean off a shelf. Grape was the sophisticated jelly bean.

See it in the archive: iMac G3

1999–2000iMac G3, iBook Clamshell

Tangerine looked the most like candy — a hot, saturated orange that Apple also chose for the original clamshell iBook, where it gave the machine its nickname. On the iBook the color wrapped a handled shell that looked like a toilet seat to critics and a toy to everyone else, in the best possible way. It was aggressively cheerful, unmistakable across a classroom, and it signalled a computer with nothing to prove and nothing to hide. Of all five flavors, Tangerine has aged into the one that best captures the sheer optimism of turn-of-the-millennium Apple.

See it in the archive: iMac G3 · iBook G3

1999–2000iMac G3

Lime was the most translucent-looking of the flavors — a bright, faintly acidic green that made the most of the see-through shell, framing the machinery within as if the color were mostly there to show off the engineering. It’s the flavor that best explains why the iMac worked: you weren’t just buying a color, you were buying the idea that the inside of a computer could be beautiful and worth seeing. Lime made that argument loudest. It never became a house color the way Blueberry did, which is part of why a Lime iMac today reads as the most purely of-its-moment of the set.

See it in the archive: iMac G3

1999–2000iMac G3

Strawberry was the pink-red flavor, and the one Apple most clearly aimed at the buyers the beige-box industry had spent two decades ignoring. It was a deliberately un-corporate color — nobody’s IT department ever ordered a Strawberry iMac — and that was precisely the point. The five flavors were an argument that a computer could be a personal object, chosen the way you’d choose a bike or a pair of sneakers, and Strawberry made that argument most pointedly of all. It read as warm and just a little defiant: a rebuke to every grey tower that came before it.

See it in the archive: iMac G3

2001iMac G3

In early 2001 Apple did something it has never really done since: it printed patterns onto the iMac. Flower Power scattered blue, pink, and green blossoms across the translucent shell; Blue Dalmatian speckled it with blue blobs on white. Jobs reportedly loved them; much of the public did not, and both were gone within the year. They are the strangest entries in Apple’s entire color history — the moment the translucent experiment tipped from confident into indulgent — and precisely because they failed, they mark the outer edge of how far Apple was ever willing to push the idea that a computer could be a decorative object. After the Dalmatian, Apple never patterned a Mac again.

See it in the archive: iMac G3

1999–2001iMac G3 SE, iBook SE, Power Mac G4

Graphite was Apple growing up. Introduced with the iMac Special Edition and carried onto the Power Mac G4, it was a smoked translucent grey — still see-through, but sober; the color of a company that had proven it could sell joy and now wanted to sell seriousness too. It bridged the fruit-flavor iMac and the aluminum years to come, the first hint that the palette was drifting from candy toward metal. On the Power Mac G4 it read as professional in a way none of the flavors could. Graphite is where the party started, quietly, to wind down.

See it in the archive: iMac G3 · Power Mac G4

2000–2001iMac G3, iBook

Indigo arrived in the iMac’s second color rotation — a deeper, more grown-up blue than Blueberry — and quietly became one of Apple’s most-used shades of the era. It carried onto the redesigned “Dual USB” iBook and read as calmer and more deliberate than the original five: less jelly bean, more considered choice. By the time Indigo appeared, the novelty of a colored computer had worn off and the palette was maturing accordingly. It’s a color that says the translucent era was no longer a stunt — it was simply how Apple made things now, at least until the aluminum arrived.

See it in the archive: iMac G3 · iBook G3

2000iMac G3 DV

Ruby was part of the iMac DV’s late rotation — a deep translucent red, richer and more jewel-like than Strawberry’s candy pink; the difference between a gummy and a gemstone. It belonged to a set (with Sage and Graphite) that showed Apple moving from fruit-stand brightness toward something more like a curated jewelry case. Ruby is comparatively rare today, which has made it a collector’s favorite, and it points squarely at where the whole translucent project was heading: away from the playful five flavors and toward a smaller, more refined palette of names that sounded less like snacks and more like precious stones.

See it in the archive: iMac G3

2000iMac G3 DV

Sage was the most unexpected of the late iMac colors — a muted, dusty green with nothing of Lime’s acidic brightness about it. It was almost a designer’s color, the shade you’d find on a mid-century kitchen appliance, and it showed how far Apple’s confidence had grown: the company could now sell a computer in a color that was quiet, sophisticated, and faintly retro, and trust buyers to get it. Paired with Ruby and Graphite in the DV lineup, Sage helped close out the fruit-flavor era on a grown-up, muted note — a preview of the restrained palettes Apple would eventually build its whole identity around.

See it in the archive: iMac G3

2000–2001iBook SE

Key Lime was a rare special-edition flavor of the clamshell iBook — a pale, pastel yellow-green, softer and more translucent than the aggressive Lime of the iMac. It shipped in limited numbers toward the end of the clamshell’s life, which has made it one of the most sought-after colors of the entire translucent era; collectors prize it precisely because Apple made so few. It’s a fitting near-final note for the clamshell: a color that was beautiful, a little obscure, and gone almost as soon as it arrived.

Especially uncertain: Key Lime is a verified Apple colorway, but no community-vetted hex exists for it. This chip is a best-guess, more so than the others on this page.

See it in the archive: iBook G3

2006–presentiPod, iPhone, Apple Watch, cases & bands

(PRODUCT)RED isn’t really one color — it’s a cause wearing a color. Launched in 2006 as part of Bono and Bobby Shriver’s (RED) initiative, the finish sends a share of every sale to the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS; Apple has been the program’s single largest contributor. The red has since migrated across nearly every product line — the iPod nano and shuffle, many iPhones, the Apple Watch, silicone cases and bands. The exact shade drifts by generation and material: brighter and warmer on aluminum, deeper and more crimson on glass and silicone, which is why you’ll see a range here rather than one hex. It’s the rare Apple color defined less by how it looks than by what buying it does.

See it in the archive: iPhone 7

2016–2017 onlyiPhone 7

Jet Black was Apple at its most gloriously stubborn. The iPhone 7’s high-gloss black was achieved through a nine-step anodize-and-polish process that left it looking less like metal than like liquid obsidian. It was gorgeous — and it scratched if you looked at it wrong. Apple shipped a warning in its own store, advising that the finish “may show fine micro-abrasions with use,” an almost unheard-of admission that a product would visibly wear. It was offered only on the higher-capacity models, sold out constantly, and then vanished after a single generation, replaced by the durable matte blacks that followed. Jet Black is the enthusiast’s favorite precisely because it was a beautiful mistake Apple made exactly once.

See it in the archive: iPhone 7

2013–presentiPhone 5s onward, Apple Watch, iPad

Gold arrived with the iPhone 5s in 2013 and instantly became shorthand for a certain kind of status — the “champagne” phone. Rose Gold followed on the iPhone 6s in 2015 and, despite the predictable snickering, sold enormously; it turned out a great many people wanted a pink phone and were relieved to be handed a more marketable name for it. Gold has since become a permanent fixture, reappearing across iPhones, iPads, and the Watch in shades that shift constantly — paler here, pinker there, warmer on stainless steel than on aluminum. There is no single “Apple gold,” which is why this entry is a family rather than a chip. It’s the color Apple reaches for whenever it wants to say luxury without saying it aloud.

See it in the archive: iPhone 5s · iPhone 6s

2023–presentiPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro

With the iPhone 15 Pro in 2023, Apple swapped the Pro line’s surgical-stainless frame for grade-5 titanium — lighter, stronger, and finished with a bead-blasted, brushed texture that catches light rather than reflecting it. The launch colors leaned deliberately muted: Natural (a raw, brushed grey), Blue, White, and Black, all so restrained they read almost as shades of metal rather than colors. That was the point. After a decade of glossy, saturated Pro finishes, titanium signalled a more industrial, tool-like confidence — a phone that looked engineered rather than decorated. It renders poorly as a flat chip, because the whole appeal is the way the anodized surface shifts under light, so the swatches here are gradients standing in for something that really has to be held.

See it in the archive: iPhone 15 Pro · iPhone 16 Pro

2021–presentiPhone, iPad, MacBook Air

Starlight and Midnight are the colors of Apple’s mature, muted era. Introduced on the iPhone 13 in 2021 and now spread across the iPad and MacBook Air, they replaced the old plain “silver” and “space grey” with something warmer and more considered. Starlight is a soft off-white with faint gold undertones — not quite silver, not quite champagne. Midnight is a deep, near-black navy that reads as black until light hits it and reveals the blue. Neither shouts. Together they mark where Apple’s palette landed after twenty-five years — away from Bondi’s ocean and the fruit-stand flavors, toward finishes so restrained they barely register as color at all. The candy-colored company grew up into one that sells shades of almost-white and almost-black, and somehow makes them feel every bit as deliberate.

See it in the archive: iPhone 13 · MacBook Air M1