I believe I’ve seen every single Apple event over the past decade-plus. Today’s was without question the
weirdest I’ve ever seen. So weird that I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.
Twitter is helping me a bit, but jotting some notes down before I read others’ thoughts will help me more. Here goes.
First and foremost, I think the entire event was arranged in
the wrong order. While it was stacked to build up to the Apple TV+ unveil with all the celebrity fade-ins, this was by far
the least interesting thing Apple unveiled. Sure, if the shows are good, that’s nice. But who does all this pomp and circumstance for a fall lineup? Well, beyond the folks that are trying to sell advertising against said lineup, which Apple is not.
As expected, there was very little
technology in today’s marquee portion (well, beyond some existing technology and UI polish). It was just about content and star-power. Perhaps my time spent in Hollywood left me more cynical than most, but I found the whole thing silly. Appel unveiled the iFawn – Tim Cook was literally crying on stage with Oprah at one point? Come on. The fade-in to Steven Spielberg was a nice touch. The rest of it was far, far, far,
far too long and again, far too fawning. It’s as if tech people are enamored with celebrity – and vice versa! I love the audience shots of Aaron Paul going ballistic over Apple Card cash back – shocking, I know.
Look, whatever. It was mildly pathetic, but not quite as bad as
the finger touch. I hope the content is good because I like good content. But revolutionary, this was not. This is Apple using the biggest wallet of all to access great talent. Period. That doesn’t mean it will work, but it’s the gameplan. And
they do seem to have the right people to execute it. But enlisting Oprah to use the stage at the end to basically give a pitch to other talent to sign up with Apple was… weird. Really fucking weird.
I’m going to stop here because this is clearly going to be a long rant. I’ll fill in the rest tomorrow on
500ish. Warning, it may be more like 5000ish. I have a lot of notes. And many thoughts.