The perfume that smells like a Macbook Pro

Australian artists hire scent experts to recreate the distinctive aroma of a brand new Apple gadget. The question is: Why?

Macbook Pro
(Image credit: CC BY: William Brawley)

If you love the smell of a just-out-of-the-box Apple product, you're in luck. Now anyone willing to travel to Melbourne, Australia, can savor that aroma without having to shell out hundreds of dollars for a new Macbook, iPad, or iPhone. That's thanks to a group of young Australian artists called Greatest Hits, which has created a fragrance meant to capture the scent of a freshly minted Macbrook Pro. Here, a brief guide:

How do you put the scent of a Mac in a bottle?

The artists — eager to capture everything that wafts off of a box of Apple gadgetry the moment it's opened for the first time — enlisted the help of Air Aroma, a "pioneering scent solutions company." Greatest Hits sent a brand new Macbook Pro to Air Aroma's lab in France, which combined fragrance ingredients that evoked the scent of the box's plastic wrap, the ink on its sides, the paper and plastic packing material, and the aluminum laptop inside.

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Why do such a thing?

To create the perfect atmosphere in which to display art, specifically an exhibit called "De Facto Standard" that Greatest Hits is mounting in Melbourne starting this weekend. The fragrance Air Aroma produced will be dispersed throughout the gallery using a diffuser.

When will this scent be available in stores?

Sadly, never. According to Air Aroma, the fragrance — call it "Stink Different" or "Eau de Mac Unboxing" — was "created for use at this particular exhibition only and is not available for purchase on our online retail store for personal use." Oh, well, says Doug Aamoth at TIME. "Looks like it's back to rubbing Apple product packaging all over your neck, huh?" Don't give up hope so easily, says Chris Matyszczyk at CNET. I'm sure that "if enough fragrant fanboys were to pester the creators, it would soon be for sale at an Apple store near you. For $120 a bottle — small size."

Sources: Air Aroma, CNET, 9to5 Mac, TIME

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