Apple’s CEO Tim Cook often promotes the company’s green initiatives and socially progressive policies, but if look at what the company is putting in front of consumers in recent months, the message isn’t touchy-feely and green — it’s razor-sharp and gold. It began with the gold iPhone 5S, continued with the gold iPad and has arguably reached its culmination in the gold MacBook.

There's a clear message here, and that message is luxury. But does that mean America has suddenly been swept back into the '80s, when gaudy layers of gold jewelry served as a symbol of opulence for the well-heeled and street hustler alike? Hardly.

Although the first gold iPhone 5S sold out in the U.S. shortly after launch, you’re most likely to find that version in the hands of novelty buyers and the nouveau riche, not style-conscious luxury consumers.

"[Gold-colored products in the U.S.] may not be the most fashionable thing at the moment," says Jeff Carvalho, the New York-based executive editor at Highsnobiety, an international site that tracks fashion and consumers trends, adding that, among his own peers, particularly with regard to watches, "You're certainly seeing a lot of stainless steel, but you don’t see as much gold."

So why is Apple suddenly diving so deep into the gold end of the design pool?

For a clue to what Apple’s new gold obsession truly means, we must look East.

A brief history of Apple colors

Prior to the emergence of gold, Apple products typically came in one of three palettes: a dual light-dark affair (iPhone/iPad), silver (MacBook) or multicolor (iPhone 5C/many iPods/iMac). The new MacBook, however, all but solidifies the trifecta of silver, "space" gray and gold as the one and only Apple motif.

As mentioned, the iPhone 5S was the first foray into golden territory, and it came in 2013. For many, the appearance of the device was shocking, and not in a good way. Still others gave Apple the benefit of the doubt, chalking up the company’s gold iPhone as another example of its history of bold design experimentation. But really, neither view seemed to explain why a color often considered ostentatious in the U.S., where Apple is headquartered, was suddenly slathered on its leading product.

Image: Mashable, Christina Ascani

Not long after, in 2014, Apple debuted more gold-laden products: the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3, alongside the space gray and silver models. With them, a pattern came into focus: Like the iPhone 5S before it, the iPad was now offered in silver, space gray and gold.

Meanwhile, Apple fans on a budget were served up the rest of the rainbow. Fruity colors, reminiscent of Apple’s wild iMac colors from the late '90s, wrapped the company’s iPhone 5C (blue, green, pink, yellow and white), iPod Touch (pink, yellow, blue, silver, space gray and red), iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle (space gray, silver, pink, yellow, green, blue, purple and red).

At the low end, the $49 iPod Shuffle and $149 iPod Nano offer eight colors; the iPod Touch, at $199, offers six; and the iPhone 5C (the cheapest iPhone Apple sells) comes in five colors. Notice that as the products get more expensive, the color options decrease.

Apple's gold Macbook, revealed to the public on March 9, 2015. Image: Kay Nietfeld/Associated Press

Apple doesn’t directly explain the color philosophy behind its product lineups, but given what we’ve seen in recent months, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine an overly frank Apple Store worker espousing a viewpoint that seems apparent: If you’re serious about your Apple products, you’ll pick one of these silver, gray or gold models. Tourist in these parts? Go play with one of those cheaper, fruit-colored devices.

"I think it’s totally ass-backwards, because gold is already kind of on its way out, so I don’t understand it," says Hans Neubert, the chief creative officer at Frog, the design firm behind the look of some of the earliest Apple computers in the '80s.

The recent New Yorker profile of Apple design chief Jony Ive "kind of paints him like he’s this guy who has this chauffeur and driver, who has really expensive watches and who loves bling," Neubert says. "Then they come out with the [gold] Apple Watch, and a golden computer, and I’m thinking, ‘Has the marketing team taken over and just wants to now paint Apple as this luxury company?’”

Neubert’s instincts, despite his distaste for Apple's recent choices, may be on the right track.

The golden compass points East

Although Apple’s latest color palette may appear to be a new strategy, a look back at the iMac's transition from color-wheel party machine to solid-colored museum piece over a decade ago shows us the company’s early experimentation with using color to fit different markets.

Apple design chief Jony Ive, left, with the early iMac alongside Apple vp of engineering Jon Rubinstein in March 1999. Image: Susan Ragan/Associated Press

When the relatively affordable, colorful iMac transformed into the iMac G3 in 2001, in “snow” (white) and “graphite” (black), Apple was finally hewing toward what numerous studies have shown are the most popular colors for consumers in the U.S.: white and black. Between the two, white remains the most popular color with U.S. car buyers, according to the DuPont Automotive Color Popularity Report.

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs introduces the flat-panel iMac at the MacWorld Expo in January 2002 in San Francisco, California. Image: JOHN G. MABANGLO, AFP

Fittingly, the next iMac, in 2002, was the all-white, flat-panel iMac with an eye-popping (at the time, for an iMac) price of $1,800.

(In China, the color white is often associated with death and mourning. But more on that later.)

Many years have passed since the iMac was Apple’s flagship product, but the company’s use of color is still guided by market forces. The only difference this time, aside from mobile products dominating Apple’s sales, is that the target market is Asia, where the colors most popular with consumers are quite different, particularly when it comes to luxury items. What are those colors? Take a wild guess.

That’s right: gold, black and silver — the new colors of the iPhone, the iPad and now the MacBook and Apple Watch.

An Apple Watch display in luxury goods store Isetan on March 20, 2015, Tokyo, Japan. Image: Rodrigo Reyes Marin, Corbis

“I always associated Apple with playfulness, with edginess, like a company that was a bit irreverent, that kind of had a cooky guy running the company, who had a vision for something that I didn’t quite understand,” Neubert says. “Now they’re coming back with these ideas that I feel like everybody else is trying. They might as well be Samsung. They might as well be everybody else. As a consumer I’m not attracted to that because it’s not surprising in any way.”

But the surprises many longtime Apple consumers have become accustomed to may, in this case, have nothing to do with innovation and everything to do with larger markets more suited to Apple’s role as the richest company on the planet.

When Cook indicated during a 2013 earnings call that China, the most populous and richest nation in Asia, was a big priority for the company, he wasn’t making a diplomatic gesture. He was asserting Apple’s mission to capture a major portion of the country’s 1.3 billion consumers.

China is Apple’s fastest growing market, with over $16 billion in revenue in its first fiscal quarter reported in January, and financial analysts expect China to soon surpass Europe as the company’s second-largest market.

After China, the wealthiest nation in East Asia is Japan. What colors do consumers most associate with luxury in that country? Not surprisingly, it's gold, black and silver.

According to a 2013 survey by Japan’s Intage and the Nippon Color & Design Research Institute, those three colors are the colors of luxury for consumers in China, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam. The institute confirmed to Mashable that the survey was evenly distributed among men and women in those countries, removing any notions that the color choices might somehow be reflective of one gender’s preference over the other’s (or geek vs. chic). Those are the mainstream shades of luxury in those countries, regardless of gender.

The results of that survey will come as no surprise to those well acquainted with living or doing business in East Asia, where gold is frequently associated with wealth, while white evokes the funereal. It’s not an accident that the holiday periods set aside for travel and shopping in both China and Japan are called "Golden Week."

Customers in China walk on a walkway comprised of 606 gold bricks at a shopping mall to promote Golden Week in September 2014.

Some U.S. consumers may think these new, gold devices are too flashy, but Apple’s color choice is already a hit in its fastest growing market. Following the release of the iPhone 5S in 2013, The Wall Street Journal reported, “Demand for the gold-colored 5S was so strong in China and Hong Kong that Apple has already asked its suppliers to increase production of that model.”

Although some might ignore business stories chirping about how “the Asian century is upon us,” such skepticism isn’t shared by Apple, whose new focus is embodied in the colors of its top-tier products.

The color of luxury

A recent report from HSBC titled “Globe-Trotting Shopper” estimates that China alone makes up nearly a third of all luxury sales on the planet, and that portion is expected to grow in the coming years. Along those lines, Apple clearly believes that the key to its growth in the future is in catering to the luxury aspirants in Asia, and that future just happens to be silver, space gray and gold.

"Apple has entered into the 'Golden Age' of retailing in China and will strike gold in their new dominance against all the other domestic players," Savio S. Chan, co-author of China's Super Consumers, said when I asked him about Apple's new gold fetish. "The two most auspicious colors for the Chinese are red and gold. But it would be a little funny for a successful Chinese man to carry a red iPhone 6, hence gold would be the best color for a high-end smartphone like Apple's."

And while the gold-is-good-in-China strategy may account for Apple’s new obsession with the color, some observers still seem fairly surprised by Apple’s $10,000 gold smartwatch. They shouldn’t be. According to the the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, in 2011, Chinese consumers purchased nearly 30% of all Swiss watches, accounting for $5.9 billion in sales. Apple wants a piece of that pie — all the better with a gold premium (Apple Watch Edition) attached. And China’s focus on gold isn’t just a passing fancy: A few years ago, one company even set up a gold ATM machine in Beijing that dispensed gold bars and gold coins.

The truth about China's gold frenzy was made even more apparent in 2013 when the country passed India to become the No. 1 consumer of gold products on the planet (although India recently snatched that title back). And gold demand in China is set to increase by 20% by 2017, according to the World Gold Council.

From the color of its products to the materials housing its latest creation, Apple is making gold a part of its central design narrative, and loyal customers will need to get used to it.

Golden iPhone accessories in Qingdao, China in 2011. Image: ChinaFotoPress

Neubert wears a minimalist Junghans analog watch, designed by Max Bill, which typically sells for over $1,000. He believes the Apple Watch will be a success, but is concerned about what the company's color shift will mean for its future.

“Surprise is what people want from Apple,” says Neubert. “I sound like I’ve lost my belief in [the brand], but I still like Apple products. [But] I think when you attract people on one hand saying ‘we’re a luxury product’ and ‘look we make gold things,’ you’re going to lose exactly those type of people [looking for surprise] as a customer, because you’re doing things that are expected.”

Image: Kay Nietfeld/Associated Press

That may be true. The powerful mystique of Apple, as led by the late Steve Jobs, with his penchant for making new products seem almost magical, may be a thing of the past. Cook and Ive are tasked with keeping Apple relevant and profitable after the death of its co-founder. But for all their business and design savvy, they may be unable to replicate Jobs’ intangible ability to surprise us.

Jobs had his own version of the Midas touch, consistently tapping into our sense of wonder as technology inexorably pierced the mainstream over the last few decades. Now, with that story largely told, the company hopes a more literal "golden age" might lead to greater success as a global brand. In today's market, it seems, it doesn't hurt to flash a little bling.