When Apple released the cosmic orange iPhone 17 Pro last year, it did the unthinkable: It made the color orange both cool and commonplace.
Since then, a growing number of tech companies have embraced orange, producing a wide range of iPhone accessories and other gear in the surprisingly bold color. Now, the only question is, can Apple do it again … this time with dark cherry?
Even before Apple’s expected unveiling of the iPhone 18 Pro lineup during tomorrow’s Surprise and Shine event, it looks like the company might have another hit color on its hands.
Apple made orange cool for tech accessories
From the Golden Gate Bridge to hunters’ safety apparel, orange has been turning heads for decades. But electronics companies typically embraced bland colors when it came to both their main products and their accessories. Chargers, battery packs, stands and other products chiefly came in various shades of black, gray and silver. (Apple over the years favored a pristine white.)
Cupertino first shook things up, color-wise, in 1998 with the original iMac, the semi-translucent all-in-one computer with a bondi blue shell — a stark contrast to the dull look of other personal computers.
Photo: Michael GorzkaWikimedia Commons CC/Modified by Cult of Mac
An orange iMac arrived (called “tangerine”) the following year. However, after releasing a few increasingly wild color options, Apple eventually dialed things back. The iMac became a sleek, aluminum piece of high-end hardware, at home in professional settings as well as college dorms. (The most recent iMac makeover swung the pendulum back in the direction of fun.)
Apple toyed with orange via accents on the Apple Watch Ultra and released some boldly colored “regular” iPhones. But when it came to its iPhone Pro colors, Apple played it safe. The company stuck with boring, boardroom-ready colors. Sierra blue looked like a minivan. Deep purple barely was.
The first truly bold iPhone Pro color becomes a hit
Photo: Lewis Wallace/Cult of Mac
Some people, like me, were dying for Apple to shake things up and deliver an iPhone Pro with a truly bold color. The company finally answered our prayers with the cosmic orange iPhone 17 Pro in 2025.
Some people thought it looked garish and gaudy. But for Apple, it looked like cool green.
The first iPhone Pro ever to boast a bold color became a polarizing but incredibly popular choice — especially in China, an important market for Apple.
“Chinese consumers are snapping up Apple’s new iPhones, with a flashy “Hermès orange” premium model going viral and helping reverse a lengthy sales decline in one of the Silicon Valley company’s largest markets,” wrote the Financial Times.
Orange has a rich history
Photo: LaCie
As is typical for Cupertino, Apple wasn’t the first tech company to release an orange product. LaCie released a portable hard disk drive in a rugged orange bumper in 2005. And the Sony Ericsson W800 came in a distinctive white-and-burnt-orange case the same year.
The eye-catching orange choice by designer Neil Poulton became iconic for LaCie.
“Two decades after it first dropped, ‘rugged’ remains a timeless design statement,” the Neil Poulton Industrial Design website says. “Neil Poulton’s basketball-inspired design language, combining aesthetics, tactile ergonomics, and functionality, has proven to be as enduring as ‘rugged’ itself.”
Orange tech accessories are all the rage now
Image: Nomad
However, Poulton’s choice of an eye-catching orange for the device remained an outlier until Apple dropped a cosmic orange bomb on the tech industry. A year after the iPhone 17 Pro arrived, orange is everywhere.
Naturally, other smartphone makers copied Apple’s color choice. And now you can find orange USB-C cables, orange chargers, orange battery packs and more.
Popular iPhone accessory makers like Nomad released entire collections of orange gear. And while the arrival of color-coordinated iPhone 17 Pro accessories that complement the cosmic orange model shouldn’t have surprised anyone, the rise of orange gear in general seems like more than a coincidence.
Just last month, BMX released its GaNsta Pixel charger in orange (as well as more typical gray and blue shades).
Everything’s coming up orange … but for how long?
Photo: BMX
So, how did Apple come up with the cosmic orange color? Former Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly championed the color (possibly based on the signature color of his alma mater, Auburn University).
And, as usual, Apple’s timing proved perfect. Orange was making waves in other industries before Apple’s bold choice.
Industrial coatings maker Mankiewicz embraced orange as one of its three “colors of the year” in 2024, perfect for turbulent times.
“In times of exhaustion and uncertainty, the color orange comes just at the right time,” Mankiewicz wrote. “Orange brightens the mood, stands for sociability and togetherness, creativity and joie de vivre. The color, which jumps around between red and yellow, reminds us of orange soda and the 70’s groove. The color has a youthfulness and lightness as well as a fine aroma.”
Fashion and culture chronicler NOS3 Magazine noted Apple’s exquisite timing, releasing the cosmic orange iPhone 17 Pro at a time when orange was having a certified moment.
“Orange has been one of the undeniable stars of the year,” wrote the magazine. “We’ve seen it dominate international runways, interior design, marketing campaigns, and — most of all — pop culture. The appeal isn’t just about being eye-catching; orange embodies optimism, vitality, and freshness. It resonates with a generation that values authenticity and visual symbols that feel personal and meaningful. Apple got the memo and turned orange into both a design statement and a branding win: a phone that’s not just tech, but also a style accessory.”
Even Taylor Swift got in on the hot orange action, releasing The Life of a Showgirl on portofino orange glitter vinyl last year.
By this summer, massive Chinese wholesale platform Alibaba Group published a guide titled, “How to Choose Cool Orange Tech Accessories.”
Can Apple pull the same trick with a dark cherry iPhone 18 Pro?
Image: Apple/D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
With cosmic orange a genuine hit — and likely to disappear tomorrow, when Apple reportedly will unveil the iPhone 18 Pro in a new dark cherry hero color — the big question is, can Cupertino pull off the same color trick twice?
Google Gemini defines dark cherry as “a rich, deep red color with subtle purple, brown, or blue undertones, resembling a fully ripe, mature cherry at its juiciest stage. It sits close to burgundy, oxblood, and black cherry on the color spectrum.”
Advanced renders and dummy units show the supposed dark cherry color in tints that range from borderline pink to boring burgundy to a genuinely juicy purplish-red hue. If Apple delivers with yet another bold color choice, it could have another culture-shifting hit on its hands.
Photo: Baseus
Need further proof? Envato, a supplier of stock photos and other digital assets with more than 500,000 subscribers, named dark cherry red as its color of the year for 2025 (and Mankiewicz chose a similar color, called pulse, that year as one of its top three). So once again, Apple looks to be building on a color’s existing momentum.
And it’s already starting. Last week at the IFA electronics convention in Berlin, Baseus unveiled a line of juicy-looking dark cherry chargers designed for the iPhone 18 lineup.
Now all we need is millions of iPhones flooding the market to make dark cherry a dominating hue.
