Aurora: Odyssey in Space?
February 11th, 2009 by Andre
Leopard Wallpaper Aurora
Scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey
What you see here is the well-known Apple Wallpaper Aurora, the standard background in Mac OS X Leopard. Yeah, it’s the first one, not the second. The second is a movie still from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick’s SciFi masterpiece from 1968, roundabout 40 years senior than the Apple wallpaper. I recently watched the movie for the 20th time and I came across this resemblance. (It’s of course the sequence where Dave Bowman “evolves”).
It’s not only the color scheme and the diffusion of light which is incredibly similar. Have a look at the ratios, e.g. the amount of blue. The lavender is more dominant in the movie still, but somehow is the point of flight of both pictures center with their white light.
The question: was the Apple wallpaper ment to be as a hommage or is it a sneaky copy-cat? Did Apple speak about the similarity anywhere, anytime? And what about those cheesy stars in the Apple version, anyway?