The headset was cradled in a minimalist apple transparent box to shoo away the entanglement moments of the cord.
I remember in flashback the bio of Steve, he mentioned that unboxing an Apple device must create "impute".
I myself has to open a Merriam-Webster to define that word. Impute is a transitive verb defined to put responsibility of righteousness and delight to a certain thing or emotion.
Now connect the dots. I was awed not only when I was unboxing this hottest masterpiece of Apple, I was actually having a jaw-drop moment when I saw how thin/slim the phone is, and most surprisingly, the packaging of the headset.
-mac
I remember in flashback the bio of Steve, he mentioned that unboxing an Apple device must create "impute".
I myself has to open a Merriam-Webster to define that word. Impute is a transitive verb defined to put responsibility of righteousness and delight to a certain thing or emotion.
Now connect the dots. I was awed not only when I was unboxing this hottest masterpiece of Apple, I was actually having a jaw-drop moment when I saw how thin/slim the phone is, and most surprisingly, the packaging of the headset.
The iPhone 5’s headset felt oddly ceremonial for something so small. It wasn’t just tucked inside the box—it was cradled. Resting within a minimalist, transparent casing, designed not merely to protect but to preempt frustration. No tangled wires. No unnecessary struggle. Even inconvenience, it seemed, had been engineered out.
It felt posh, yes—but more than that, it felt considered.
As shared above, about Steve Jobs' biography, and his insistence that the act of unboxing should matter. That it should carry emotional weight. That opening a product should impute something—an idea, a feeling, a standard—to the user.
In that moment, standing over a freshly opened Apple box, the definition shifted. This wasn’t about responsibility. It was about transfer.
The care embedded in the packaging transferred a sense of worth to the object—and subtly, to the person holding it.
I wasn’t just impressed by the phone’s impossibly slim profile or the symmetry of the components. I was experiencing a kind of quiet awe. A realization that someone, somewhere, had thought deeply about how this moment would feel. Not how it would function—but how it would land.
The headset, neatly arranged and deliberately isolated, became a small but powerful signal: this product expected your attention. It asked you to slow down. To notice. To appreciate design not as excess, but as respect.
It’s easy to dismiss this, as clever marketing. But that would miss the point. What made the experience linger wasn’t the novelty—it was the intentionality. The sense that even the most ordinary accessory had been granted dignity.
That kind of design philosophy is rare now. We live in an age of acceleration, where devices arrive faster than we can care for them, where unboxing is performed for content rather than contemplation. Efficiency has replaced ceremony. Speed has replaced wonder.
And that, more than any feature or spec, is what truly made it unforgettable.
-mac
