Apple’s patented round pizza box makes a cameo appearance in a humorous short film

Apple yesterday released an awesome 3-minute film on YouTube that touts the benefits of using its products in the workplace, but in a humorous way that involves a cameo appearance of the patented round pizza box reserved for customers of its Caffè Macs cafeteria.

Titled “Apple At Work—The Underdogs,” the video does a terrific job highlighting some of Apple’s technologies and products to promote workplace synergy, like AirDrop, Hey Siri, group FaceTime, Continuity Camera, as well as iPad multitasking and drag and drop.

The short film invites the viewer to learn more about how Apple’s products help employees do their best work at apple.com/business, which features a brief explainer:

Apple products help employees work more simply and productively, solve problems creatively, and collaborate with a shared purpose. And they’re all designed to work together beautifully. When people have the power to work the way they want, with the tools they love, they can do their best work and change the future of their business.

So, Apple made a pizza box? Yes, and as Panic developer Cabel Sessar noted on Twitter, the company even owns a patent for the efficient pie protector.

As setteBIT noted on Twitter, many Apple employees signed the box as a way of paying tribute to the late CEO Steve Jobs. The container was designed exclusively for Apple employees.

Wired, The Outline and others reported back in May 2017 that the Cupertino tech giant had invented a round pizza box so that its employees could bring a crisp personal pizza back to their desks instead of winding up with a soggy crust.

From The Outline report:

The box is thin and round. This is because the pizzas that Apple provides are personal, round, thin-crust pizzas, approximately 14 inches in diameter, leaving an approximately .5-inch wide ring, or bezel, around the pizza as it lies within the box.

Here’s the relevant patent drawing.

Apple has a patent on this round pizza box rocking ventilation holes

And this is what it looks like in person.

The container lets air and moisture escape so the crust won’t get soggy

It’s got eight ventilation holes at the bottom—a simple, effective solution that helps separate moisture from the pizza, resulting in a crisp, fresh crust.

Before you dismiss this invention, keep in mind that Apple’s campus is 850,000 square feet so a simple walk to the cafeteria and back to an employee’s desk is quite a trek.

Isn’t this one of the funnier Apple ads you’ve seen in a while?

Share your thoughts in the comments down below.