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How to see the AR Easter egg hidden in Apple’s September 14 event invite

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How to see the AR Easter egg in Apple’s September 14 event invite
The Apple September event invite has a beautiful but hidden augmented-reality feature.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

Hidden in Tuesday’s invite to the Apple September event is an augmented reality Easter egg. It’s part of the company’s ongoing move to draw more attention to AR — and make its event invites cooler than anyone else’s.

The graphic for the event is the Apple logo floating over a lake in the evening. iPhone users can transfer that design to the real 3D world, and pass through it into a star-lit virtual space.

How to see the AR easter egg hidden in Apple’s Sept. 15 event invite

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Augmented reality could play a part in the September Apple Event
The logo for the September Apple Event is more than just a simple graphic. It’s an AR object.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

Hidden in Tuesday’s invite to the September Apple event is a clue that might confirm rumors that the company will make a major push into augmented reality.

The graphic for the invite is an apple sketched out with blue swirls. iPhone and iPad users can put that design in motion, with it seemingly appearing in the real world.

This Apple Store Easter egg is popping!

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The Apple Store app hit a milestone
The Apple Store app hit double digits, and you can join in the party.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

The Apple Store app debuted 10 years ago, and laid an Easter egg to recognize this milestone.

Type in the right words and you can join the celebration with balloons.

Check out this entertaining history of Easter Eggs in Apple products

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Easter Eggs
Take a walk through Easter Egg history.
Photo: Pamela Carls/Flickr CC

If you’re an Apple fan of a certain age, you may well remember the way the company (or, rather, its more enterprising engineers) used to pack the code of new Apple products with hidden Easter Eggs.

A practice that has largely been absent since the early 2000s, this allowed employees to find inventive ways of getting themselves credited on software they had worked on. An entertaining recent talk by Swift coder and former Apple employee James Thompson relives its history:

macOS Mojave easter egg scrambles your desktop with a single click

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macOS Mojave Mess Up easter egg
I swear, we didn't make this up. There really is a "Mess Up" feature in macOS Mojave.
Photo: Ian Fuchs/Cult of Mac

Surely you’ve said to yourself, “My Mac desktop is messy, but it could be messier.” No? Well, someone at Apple has, and built a tool into the macOS Mojave beta to disorganize everything on your desktop.

This easter egg is almost certainly a feature needed during testing, but it’s also a sign that the Apple developers are willing to have a bit of fun.

Google Maps loses its cool when asked, ‘Are we there yet?’

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post-330139-image-a875d568af50c605f2bfdf891d82298e-jpg

If you have young children, the last question you want to hear on any long journey is, “Are we there yet?” It’s never asked just once; it’s asked again and again and again until you angrily threaten to turn around and go home, or you plow into a tree.

The question is so infuriating that even Google Maps can’t take it. Ask the maddening question a few times while navigating and you’ll get the angry response you deserve.

Awesome iOS Easter egg discovered after two years, hiding in plain sight

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Say Apple into Voice Memos and you get its logo. Photo: Mike Rundle
Say "Apple" into Voice Memos and you get its logo. Photo: Mike Rundle

Apple is known for placing its fair share of Easter eggs into iOS and OS X, but this is the coolest one we’ve seen in a while.

You know the new Voice Memos icon Apple introduced in iOS 7 Beta 2? It turns out the icon is designed after the waveform representation of someone saying “Apple.”

Steve Jobs’ inspirational commencement speech is hidden in Pages for Mac

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Screen Shot 2014-08-21 at 4.09.34 PM

One of the most famous speeches by Steve Jobs is the commencement address he gave at Stanford University in 2005. The 22-minute speech is definitely worth watching if you’re an Apple fan.

Apple has made small and subtle references to Jobs in its software before, and now another easter egg has been discovered in Pages for Mac. Jobs’ entire commencement speech is hidden within a text file in Pages, and it’s easy to pull up.