Apple made our tech boring, but Nothing is finally bringing the personality back

To misquote the great Miranda Priestly: "Pastels? For spring? Groundbreaking."

But when Nothing showed off a pale pink palette for the Nothing Phone (4a) , Nothing Phone (4a) Pro, and the Nothing Headphone (a) at MWC in Barcelona this week, it honestly felt that way.

Millennial pink is passé in most places, but it looked fresh on Nothing's offerings. The soft color made me long for the same look on all of the hard devices I tote around.

When dull became de rigueur

Personality has been missing from technology for a long while. And, let's face it, phone, tablet, and laptop designs are not going to fundamentally change anytime soon. We're stuck with variations on the slab for the foreseeable future.

Don't even get me started on earbuds, which have the opportunity to complement every single thing we wear but opt for blandness instead. Once Apple made white ubiquitous for anything we wore in our ears, wired or otherwise, we were doomed to looking like uniform (lowercase "a") androids.

While we're big fans of all things Android here, I have to note that it's ironic that Apple is most responsible for the shift to neutrals that has taken over our technology. It went from a rainbow of bubbly iMacs and shiny iPods to dull variations on black and white that were as inoffensive as a boxy, bleached wood-bedecked Apple Store.

A trend takes hold

There are signs of life over in Cupertino though and I hope it has started a trend. Everyone went wild over the iPhone 17 Pro's Cosmic Orange, and yesterday the MacBook Neo was announced in, of course, Silver, but also Indigo, Blush, and Citrus. The last, a vibrant hue, is especially welcome and echoes the limited-edition punch of yellow for the Nothing Headphone (a).

It's the end of fashion month, which reminds us that even in the bleakest of times, we deserve some expression of joy that we can carry with us. And what do we carry with us more reliably than our devices? So here's to a more colorful — in a literal way only please — season ahead.