Is this the secret message hidden in Apple’s “Spring Loaded” event invitation?

Take a look at this really intriguing theory about what Apple’s event invite may mean and why it could be really significant.

Michael Simon, writing at Macworld:

We’re not sure it actually means anything, but people more conspiratorially minded than us have noticed that if you rotate and resize the squiggly drawing of the rainbow Apple logo on the invitation, it looks a lot like the cursive “hello” that appeared in the original Mac advertisement. We didn’t really believe it until we overlaid the two images on top of each other, and as you can see below, they match up quite well. Even the leaf fits on the top half of the “H”.

If this really was intentional, and it’s nearly impossible to think it couldn’t have been, this will go down as one of the greatest Easter eggs in Apple event invitation history. But is it just an Easter egg, or does it portend a really big announcement next week?

As many longtime Apple watchers may recall, Apple used the “hello” design in the advertising for the original Macintosh in 1984. Then in 1998 when it introduced the iMac to the world, it used “hello (again)” to evoke both the history of the Macintosh and the significance of the then newly announced iMac.

Could this “Spring Forward” event herald the debut of the first iMac powered by an Apple silicon processor? A new iMac was one of the unlikely but possible products I mentioned that Apple may have up their sleeve for Tuesday’s event. If so, returning to the “hello” reference could indicate that Apple expects this to be a significant product.

At this point I still wouldn’t say I’m expecting a new iMac to be unveiled at next week’s event. But based on this tantalizing theory alone, I’ll be somewhat disappointed if we don’t get one.