Get some
In case your smelling wrong
The scent of an unopened MacBook has been captured by a French perfume house which claims to have created a fragrance reminiscent of that accompanying the unboxing of an Apple gadget. No, it's not for commercial use; Apple has surely patented the smell of its products anyway. It's for an art project, but considerable effort …
Imagine it is those Darth Vader ("I felt your presents") days in the run up to Christmas.
The kids are vigorously shaking the mysterious parcels left beneath the tree. From one box comes the distinctive smell of an unopened XBox, Playstation or iPad.
This is surprising as the donor is their much insulted and tormented Aunt Bessie, whose lot unexpectedly improves in the following days.
On Christmas morning the wrappings are torn off the same present to reveal ... a pullover that even Noel Edmonds would decline to wear.
Aunt Bessie punches the air in a silent "Yes!".
Don't try to preserve our crappy 2012 smells: there will be new ones in the future that will be equally tantalising due to their novelty. I just hope they remain good, honest, unavoidable smells from the factory rather than engineered-in strawberry flavour that's been put in at the injection-moulding machine.
Failing that, we should have good meccano / mamod smells put in with our new shinies - that'll surely confuse people. Sewing-machine oil, anyone?
...if it was, it'd be the first perfume ever to come with its own Material Safety Data Sheet.
I bought a wired Apple keyboard recently, and the stink of volatile chemicals from it was so bad it actually gave me headaches - and I'm not sensitive to solvents generally. What it smelled like was electronic switch cleaner, which is hexane/pentane -- neither of which are at all pleasant to inhale.
'I remember seeing car fresheners being offered for sale... vanilla, pine, and 'new car smell'. This might have been before the scaremongering around the VOCs and other residual nasties left over from the rubbers, glues, foams etc used in making the car.
It is easy to imagine that sticking our nose into something we have just opened is a survival trait... 'is it fresh enough to eat?'. Many people like to savour the smell after breaking thee seal on a pack of coffee.
It's interesting for an art show.
The interesting part is actually that any smell, it doesn't even have to be related to Apple can remind you of a significant moment. In this case though opening up a new Apple product will of course give off a smell, like it or not, assuming most people experience opening up their apple gadgets as an exciting moment the smell is eventually associated with it.
I guess thats why people sometimes like a new car smell, doesn't smell great really, but it's a momentous occasion that linked to a scent.