The rose gold color option has spread pretty rapidly through Apple’s product lines since it was introduced with the Apple Watch early last year. So, it seems a no-brainer that it will spread even further across the Cupertino firm’s roster… or will it? We look closely at where rose gold has gone so far in a bid to discern where it could realistically end up next.
Everything’s looking rosy… or rose goldy?
The rising popularity of rose gold could be largely attributed to its prestige look. Indeed, Apple’s 18-carat rose gold Apple Watch certainly isn’t for the casual buyer! However, having since also appeared in the iPhone 6S series, the iPhone SE, the 9.7-inch iPad Pro and even Beats headphones, it’s well on its way to mainstream acceptance. And even critics of the color could be surprised by how sumptuous it looks up close, as the following video attests.
It all makes us pretty excited to speculate where Apple could choose to put rose gold next. So, we’ve taken what we consider obvious candidates for this luxurious finish and carefully assessed the chances of Apple thinking along similar lines.
iPad Mini 5
This seems practically a dead cert. In February, 9to5Mac writer Marc Gurman, one of the most accurate sources of predictions about future Apple products, reported that Apple was thinking of bringing rose gold to the next version of the iPad Mini. Considering that, in the same article, Gurman also correctly predicted the then as-yet-unannounced iPhone SE, 9.7-inch iPad Pro and 12-inch MacBook to come in rose gold models, the signs are looking good.
12.9-inch iPad Pro
This is pretty much guaranteed, surely? With Apple having just added rose gold to the 9.7-inch model, why wouldn’t the 12.9-inch variant swiftly follow? While there have been no concrete reports from any reliable sources that this will be the case, or that Apple is even working on any follow-up to the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, we would concur on this point.
iMac and MacBook Pro
Last month, Apple released its first rose gold Mac: the second generation 12-inch MacBook. It doesn’t naturally follow that the desktop iMac and high-end notebook MacBook Pro are now also in line; after all, Apple might consider rose gold an overly eccentric color to feature in machines largely put to professional and productive uses. Still, with the smaller iPad Pro having recently been marketed for such uses, it’s not entirely out of the question.
Next year’s glass iPhone
With next year’s iPhone widely believed to come with a glass enclosure, it’s less obvious how Apple could incorporate rose gold into it. Though some analysts have suggested that the handset’s casing could be “all-glass”, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has predicted the inclusion of a metal frame for which rose gold could be easily adopted. Still, with dramatic design changes apparently on the way, who really knows what could happen?