The anime Serial Experiments Lain (or more commonly, just
Lain) is full of references to
Apple computers, as well as a few nods to
BeOS and
NeXT.
Exhibit 1: The Navi - This looks like it is based on the idea of a "
knowledge navigator" proposed by
John Sculley (former CEO of Apple). It would allow instant communication between people, and store vast amounts of information in a
hypertext database. (No word yet on wheter Scully's machine would allow communications with
the dead...) Some of his ideas for the knowledge navigator later ended up in the Apple
Newton, which looks suspiciously like the hand-held
Navi seen in the some of the classroom scenes.
Exhibit 2: Lain's first Navi - It's almost an exact replica of the
Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh. The only visible difference is that Lain's Navi was red, while the TAM is grey.
Exhibit 3: Alice's iMac - Mizuki Alice has a computer that looks just like an
iMac. Curved all-in-one styling,
bondi blue side panels and everything, it looks just like a first generation iMac.
Exhibit 4: Copland OS -
Copland is the
OS that Lain's new Navi (and her father's, too) run. Copland was also the codename for Apple's next-generation OS.
Exhibit 4: "Layer n" - The voice that reads the name of each episode is called "
whisper", and is part of Apple's
text-to-speech package
Exhibit 5: References to
NeXT and
Be - The end of each episode includes the line "to Be continued..." "Be" is colored red and blue, just like the
BeOS logo. Lain's father's navi looks like runs NeXT, you can tell by the icons and the look of the GUI elements. (well, it could also be linux with a good gtk theme, I suppose) The color scheme is reminiscant of IRIX or Sun CDE, too.
This used to be in it's own node, but was moved here at the request of
dem "dammit jim, I'm a god, not a doctor" bones
Sources: http://www.cjas.org/~leng/apple-lain.htm and my own interpretation of the series.