Connected together here are two accessories from Steve Jobs-era Apple products: a standard AC cable shipped with Mac Minis and AirPort routers, and an iPod USB power brick. Since the very first iPod, Apple’s rounded-off white plastic power bricks have been maintained as a consistent and rarely discussed modular system, scaled up to laptop chargers and compact wireless devices.

The power bricks have an attached cable or a port depending on the device they go with, and the corner piece with the electrical prongs is always detachable to allow for use of different international plugs. This corner piece plugs into the brick with a 2-prong AC connector compatible with the IEC C7 standard used by power cables like the one seen here. So even though this brick and this cable were never sold as a set, they fit together and work normally.

But somehow, we have a near-perfect alignment between the end of the plug and the upper edge of the power brick. How did this happen? Was a junior industrial designer tasked with the shape of the plug either bored or meticulous enough to specifically account for this unlikely aftermarket combination? Is it an inconsequential payoff of an elaborate, proprietary system of dimensions employed across the 2000s Apple product line? Pure coincidence? What would it change? The attention to detail across this product line maybe makes me at least more likely to assign intent.