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I don't think the vibe significantly shifted in a positive way. It seemed like it was going to with Ternus' opening statements, but then it was back to the same

I don't think the vibe significantly shifted in a positive way. It seemed like it was going to with Ternus' opening statements, but then it was back to the same vibe. Hard to put into words, but kind of a droning boring safe microsoft-y vibe. Craig Federighi brought more energy for his segment but he sounded almost sarcastic at times. John Srouji is a breath of fresh air. I liked Dr. Desai's vibe in the health section more than the average segment. A real vibe shift might not even be possible if they don't bring back in-person live presentations. Can't believe they flew all these people in to play them a video. Though seeing how John Ternus' hands were shaking during his demo with ishowspeed, I don't know if they have it in them to go back to live presentations. And what was the surprise in "surprise and shine" anyway? The name of it?

inatreecrown2 8d ago
It feels like Apple is a company on autopilot, a well oiled money making machine, nothing else.
- brookst 8d ago
  Remind me if AVP is proof that they have no creative spark or proof that they only do boring stuff that will sell 20m units?
  - Melatonic 8d ago
    The AVP I thought looked like amazing hardware. It was just bizarre they didn't also go all in on making it useable for gaming.
    - lbourdages 8d ago
      They failed to come up with a strong selling point. Health is the big seller for Apple Watch. But AVP, at its price point, needs something better than "well you can watch movies on a big screen or work in a café while looking silly".
      - jandrese 8d ago
        It absolutely failed to justify its price point IMHO. If it were affordable people would be finding uses for it, but when it is that expensive you basically need a business justification for buying one. That means you won't have a hobbyist community finding new and interesting things to do with it. This leaves Apple and maybe a handful of subsidized third parties as the only people making applications for it, which is pretty much a guarantee that it will remain a tiny niche industry.
        brookst 7d ago
        Agree, it’s basically the Apple Lisa all over again. Innovative, but not mass market. But I think Apple learned some things from the Lisa, even though it barely sold.
        grensley 7d ago
        The Apple Vision Pro is basically a developer kit.
        ToucanLoucan 7d ago
        This, 100%. The only other headset I was aware of even remotely in AVP's price zip code was the Valve Index, priced at $999 and the AVP was three times that. And even then I proooobably would've been able to justify it? But no external connectivity at all just sank it for me. Like if it had a DP port on it so I could hook it up to a gaming PC, I would've probably at least picked one up second-hand, possibly even new when my bonus hit but 3 large for... what? Email in my house? Movies shown in a way that makes it damn hard to eat popcorn?
        brookst 7d ago
        As someone else said, it’s a developer kit. It was supply constrained and priced accordingly. IMO it was a mistake to not just call it a developer’s kit, abd promoting it as a consumer product was just weird. But I guess the downside of the DK approach is it means telling developers when the “real” device will ship, which I’m not sure anyone knows.
    - alex43578 8d ago
      I think the lack of a AppleVision non-pro that was just some really good screens and a battery, hooked up to your iPhone/MBA/MBP for use as an immersive display was a miss. I tried the AVP but realized I didn't want/need to strap a Macbook to my face: I have a computing device, I just wanted the display. Scrap the passthrough cameras, the LCD eyes, and all that complexity.
      - brookst 7d ago
        Yikes. I can’t imagine it without passthrough. You have to take it off to move around at all?
        alex43578 7d ago
        Yeah? It's just a display for sitting on the couch or in an airplane, watching videos or viewing a huge virtual desktop. Scrapping the cameras would save a ton on size, BOM, and complexity. Basically a "Pimax Dream Air" formfactor. I'd love the ability to have AVP immersion with my MBP on a flight, and combined with Airpods, you'd be able to block out everything. I don't need to walk around and wouldn't need to interact through it. It's like transparency for Airpods: an overengineered alternative to just taking an airpod out (or in this case, lifting the headset up).
        wooger 7d ago
        I can't imagine wanting to walk anywhere with massive clownish goggles on, and while tethered to the power box & various peripherals. Still, a small camera is an odd thing to cut.
      - whywhywhywhy 7d ago
        For “just a display” you need a computer in there anyway.
        alex43578 7d ago
        Not if you’re driving it from your iPhone or MacBook. You’ll still need chips, but certainly not a M series processor, coprocessor, tons of storage, etc.
    - johnnyanmac 7d ago
      Apple never goes all in for gaming. They are more than happy to base most of its software revrnue on Skinner boxes, but otherwise it feels like it wants little to do with games. Every 4-5 years they need something to show off their tech and they begrudgingly look to gaming studios to provide some demos for them. They get the demos, get some hype, then put it straight back into the box. Devs move on because they know their audience isn't there anyway. Rinse and repeat. This last time was to help show off their unified architecture with AAA games running on an IPad.
    - wooger 7d ago
      Seriously, this (and pron) is the only use case that will appeal to the mass market for a single user, un-shareable, stupid looking, immersive thing like this. For nice hardware with hardly any content, not making huge strides to get existing VR content on it was a terrible strategy. And Apple can afford to just buy one of the bigger players to get content too.
  - comfysocks 7d ago
    Here’s my theory about AVP. Apple’s strategic position is to be the main device by which apps and AI can gain access to end users. This puts them in a nice position to charge a toll on everything that passes through their device. Now if someone were to come out with a new type of device and a new paradigm that could disrupt iPhone as the main device, Apple would be in trouble. Not long ago, Zuck seemed really confident about metaverse/AR/VR. Apple took the disruption threat seriously and countered with AVP. Now it looks like metaverse flopped. I suspect the priority of AVP has gone down inside Apple accordingly.
    - theodric 7d ago
      Hadn't the Metaverse already well and truly flopped before the AVP came out? It's a cool device, but when it was released I felt like Apple was a couple years late and 3499 dollars short.
    - gorgoiler 7d ago
      Are smart glasses not the modern, practical implementation of the metaverse. I don’t think Meta were banking on games and low-poly avatars for their next generation of revenue, it was more about building (and then — hold onto your lunch please — monetizing) new forms of social connectivity. The only difference is that your permanent social camera went from being in-game to in-reality.
    - TheOtherHobbes 7d ago
      Interesting view, but not quite. The Big Changes in computing happen when both the mode of access, the demographic, and the primary use case change. So historically computing evolved from corporate server + batch -> real time "personal" scientific and technical -> mass market commodified PC for business and gaming -> social media, entertainment, and 'personal bureaucracy' (tickets, bank statements, and such) on mobile. At each step the tech gets smaller and more physically accessible, the use case gets more interactive and less demanding and serious, and the demographic gets wider and less technically educated. Apple owned a huge part of the last change with the iPhone. What's the next step in the series? Clearly it's not a huge device you strap to your face. But it's also not an easy question to answer. What is the next step after social media? From a software POV it's AI, but where's the matching hardware? The next gen has to be even smaller, multimodal, but still physically interactive, likely always on. Glasses are the closest, but not there yet. So I think we're still in the early Nokia mobile stage. The concept exists and the current tech is beginning to be workable, but the gamechanger refinement and perfection of the concept is still a way off.
  - jorisw 7d ago
    Apple Vision Pro Abbreviations waste people’s time
    - swiftcoder 7d ago
      Here I thought we were discussing a return of the Aliens vs Predator franchise
      - port11 7d ago
        I’d rather have that than a really wide phone. Do a whole series on the Predators, please.
    - vr46 7d ago
      And some of them take even longer to say than the original words, e.g. WWW
      - swiftcoder 7d ago
        FB's main monorepo was named WWW, and you needed to refer to it every 5 minutes, so everyone pronounced it "dub-dub-dub". A surprisingly hard habit to break once you leave their employment
        jorisw 6d ago
        Facebook.
- rayiner 8d ago
  It's incredibly how long an era of good decisions can allow a company to coast.
  - RattlesnakeJake 7d ago
    Especially when combined with competitors' bad decisions. A lot of the stuff Microsoft pulled with Windows 10 and 11 made the Mac platform look attractive.
- ralusek 7d ago
  Apple silicon was not an autopilot decision, kind of an insanely cool decision.
  - inatreecrown2 7d ago
    Apple bought P.A. Semi in 2008, 18 years ago.
    - alsetmusic 7d ago
      > Apple bought P.A. Semi in 2008, 18 years ago. That undercuts the work how?
  - kmeisthax 7d ago
    Apple Silicon was autopilot. Or more specifically the insanely cool decision happened under Jobs, and everything else is just coasting (i.e. repeating the same business success again and again without taking very many risks). Their first custom core design was the A6 in 2012, a year after his death, but they bought the team that made the design (P.A. Semi) in 2008. It took the team about a decade and change to scale up to something that could power a laptop, but the decision was made very early on and was specifically part of the same set of decisions that Apple has been coasting off of ever since. If Apple hadn't bought its own chip design firm they likely wouldn't have remained competitive long-term, in the same way that their computers got really uncompetitive for a few years before every major architectural transition. Unless by "Apple Silicon" you specifically meant "the decision to transition from x86 to ARM". There is actual work there, but not a lot of risk. Apple famously maintained an internal x86 port of Mac OS X for years after Rhapsody was shitcanned and renamed "Mac OS X Server", so doing the same with ARM isn't that worse. iOS was derived from OSX; and just having iOS already up and running on ARM is already a good deal of the way towards a macOS port to ARM. In fact, it got easier as iOS got more technology hand-me-downs from macOS.
    - pjmlp 7d ago
      OpenSTEP was already multi-architecture when the merge happened, as NeXT was going cross platform to try the rescue the company at the time.
- pjmlp 7d ago
  Short reminder to the younger folks that 30 years ago it felt just like that for Apple, and then they almost went bankrupt.
  - cedilla 7d ago
    Did it? At that time, I felt like they were an expensive boutique manufacturer that basically catered to a niche audience of media professionals. At the time, they weren't even among the biggest tech companies. Today, they are one of the largest companies in the world.
    - wooger 7d ago
      Seriously? They were tiny, media production niche, crazily priced machines 30 years ago. Almost zero marketshare or mindshare, and most people (in e.g. EU) didn't even know anyone who owned a Mac.
      - pjmlp 7d ago
        Yes, it was pretty much Atari, Commodore, Acorn and PC over here, plus some lesser known brands, like MSX on Netherlands. However even today, if you go to the European countries less fortunate with their economies, having anything Apple is usually obtained via credit, or some contract bundling, for example with the cable or Internet operator, naturally bound to a minimal duration of 24 to 36 months contract. Not something like in US and countries with similar economies where most people don't think twice to get Apple gear, and quickly pre-order new gear after each couple of new product announcements.
        TeMPOraL 7d ago
        > However even today, if you go to the European countries less fortunate with their economies, having anything Apple is usually obtained via credit, or some contract bundling Given how many iPhones I've noticed suddenly showed up in hands of regular people, including teenagers, in the last couple years in Poland, I imagine there's healthy second-hand/used devices market going too. iPhones have reputation of being long lasting devices (battery shenanigans notwithstanding), maybe the reputation is true.
- luxuryballs 7d ago
  The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
- Danox 7d ago
  If that’s true, then someone else should catch up real quick is gonna have to have Apple Silicon and at least two operating systems in house I do believe one other company will come up, but you’re not gonna like the part of the world they come from.
gkanai 8d ago
> Can't believe they flew all these people in to play them a video. Apple can't afford to have demo problems or presentation glitches anymore. Hence the system that they have now.
- Dban1 8d ago
  Peak state of technology in 2026
- pazimzadeh 8d ago
  says who?
  - Tempest1981 7d ago
    True, I remember years ago, the presenter was doing a demo and ran into a problem. He quickly transitioned to another identical device nearby, and continued almost seamlessly. Didn't seem like much of an issue. Although that might have been WWDC, which is a different crowd.
    - marcelo-earth 7d ago
      Interesting, do you remember which WWDC was that?
      - ChrisMarshallNY 7d ago
        I’ve seen that happen a couple of times. I know there was an infamous Microsoft one, where the demo BSOD’d on Bill Gates (Not WWDC. I wasn’t there, but I’m sure there’s video). Microsoft used to demo real unstable stuff. I remember one WWDC, where Ian Diery was giving a demo with a young man, and asked “Where’s the beef?” The kid looked down at his pants, and the crowd burst into laughter. Diery did not laugh. He was a fairly serious chap, with no discernible sense of humor, so I expect his assistant was sanctioned for that. I think the last DuDub I went to, was around 2005 (pre-iPhone). I know it was at Moscone. Jobs led that. He was one of the best presenters I’ve ever seen. He could recover from curveballs almost imperceptibly. The first, was in 1987, or 1988. One of the first.
Melatonic 8d ago
Does he have a problem with his hands shaking ? Or you just mean he's nervous
- pazimzadeh 8d ago
  not sure, he doesn't have shaky hands in the videos though so I assume nerves
avazhi 8d ago
Everybody is nervous their first few times. Hell, I’d rather see that somebody’s nervous and actually human at this point lol. Apple’s post-COVID keynotes have been like watching plastic people try to out virtue signal one another as they do their best Zuckerberg imitations. Nervousness and humanity anytime, please.
- busymom0 7d ago
  The first few years of recorded presentation was okay because they were showing the Apple Park building which was pretty unique and the transitions were super cool. But now, it's the same old stuff again and again. It's the same building, same transitions. Live presentations would be so much more authentic.
  - brandon272 7d ago
    There is also an uncanny valley aspect to the videos. Outside of the formulaic transitions, I find the scenes where they are standing in various parts of the building distracting, because everything looks fake, as if they are standing in front of a green screen and a CGI version of some internal space is added behind them.
- WesolyKubeczek 7d ago
  In the later presentations, presenters definitely looked like Autons of the Doctor Who, from the first episode of the Ninth Doctor, where they were CGI.
trymas 7d ago
I saw ~20 year old presentation where Craig Federighi presented (for first time??) - dude was shaking like leaf and could hardly do the demo. It turned out fine and now he’s one of more charming presenters.
unsupp0rted 7d ago
A live presentation fail could take 5~15% off their stock price in minutes, for no good reason at all. People’s life savings are at stake.
- neuroticnews25 7d ago
  "We must protect the AAPL stockholders from the irrationality of the AAPL stockholders"?
  - TeMPOraL 7d ago
    Protecting people from themselves, 21st century edition.
  - PowerElectronix 7d ago
    Halt the trading!!!
- qingcharles 7d ago
  I coded one of these for whatever was the latest Nokia handset ~2005. Live on-stage reveal and demo to the world's press by CEO IIRC. The software on the phone was supposed to run off our co-host server, but bugfixing down to the wire, so nobody knew but the demo was running off a half-built PC in my buddy's closet connected to his janky cable modem with us watching and sweating and praying. It would have been really, really bad if that demo had failed on-stage.
  - watt 7d ago
    You had a closet? Luxury! Our demo ran out of a disused lavatory, and there was a leopard around.
    - qingcharles 7d ago
      I hope you had a warning sign that said "Beware of the leopard".
- 7d ago
jonplackett 7d ago
I really miss the live presentations. They had a lot more humanity. But I miss the Steve jobs presentations the most. I was watching one of his old presentations the other day from when he was in his 20s - he’s just so engaged and present and speaks from the heart compared to the polished media trained drivel of modern ceos
minimeow 7d ago
Yeah I was never the biggest fan of Craig Federighi previously but contrasted against the new generation of usual suspects being fielded by Apple, he actually stands out as having character. But yes the format of the Apple Event was formulaic and way too scripted/produced. Sure there's a place for some scripted content but losing the live unscripted element makes it like a corporate event from Microsoft or IBM. In fact those guys probably do more live unscripted stuff nowadays. The iPhone Duo is a nice change from formulaic iPhone designs but it's long overdue and is at best a sideways step not a forward step by an Apple that seems increasingly out of touch and driven by cloud service KPI-targets over all other metrics. I wonder how long it will be before the customer revolt manifests, not because I dislike Apple (I loved their products for years) but because I believe that their current business focus leads them to erode trust and play it safe which ultimately alienates the very demographics that made Apple cool and then persuaded all those wanting to emulate that demographic to join the Apple bandwagon. Many of those power users are increasingly moving to Linux or using Mac/Apple ecosystems tactically. It won't be many release cycles for Apple to become the new Microsoft - something you have to use for certain tasks in certain industries but increasingly something you would choose to avoid.
- deleted 7d ago
  [deleted]
- dimitrios1 7d ago
  We've been with Apple long enough now to know exactly what their playbook is, and much to the dismay of their competition, they do it well. They let other tech companies break the ground, release something new and truly innovative and unique -- say a folding phone (it's basically a solidified meme amongst the IT crowd now - "Oh Apple will get all of samsungs features from 2 years ago finally!" -- not realizing that this is intentional), and they will let them front all the risk of whether or not it has staying power -- then they will come in and innovate at the margins and bring it into the Apple ecosystem, which is an advantage in of itself at this point.
  - nirga 7d ago
    I think both the iPhone itself and things like AirPods form recent years are truly innovative so I wouldn’t say that

inatreecrown2 8d ago

It feels like Apple is a company on autopilot, a well oiled money making machine, nothing else.

brookst 8d ago
Remind me if AVP is proof that they have no creative spark or proof that they only do boring stuff that will sell 20m units?
- Melatonic 8d ago
  The AVP I thought looked like amazing hardware. It was just bizarre they didn't also go all in on making it useable for gaming.
  - lbourdages 8d ago
    They failed to come up with a strong selling point. Health is the big seller for Apple Watch. But AVP, at its price point, needs something better than "well you can watch movies on a big screen or work in a café while looking silly".
    - jandrese 8d ago
      It absolutely failed to justify its price point IMHO. If it were affordable people would be finding uses for it, but when it is that expensive you basically need a business justification for buying one. That means you won't have a hobbyist community finding new and interesting things to do with it. This leaves Apple and maybe a handful of subsidized third parties as the only people making applications for it, which is pretty much a guarantee that it will remain a tiny niche industry.
      - brookst 7d ago
        Agree, it’s basically the Apple Lisa all over again. Innovative, but not mass market. But I think Apple learned some things from the Lisa, even though it barely sold.
      - grensley 7d ago
        The Apple Vision Pro is basically a developer kit.
      - ToucanLoucan 7d ago
        This, 100%. The only other headset I was aware of even remotely in AVP's price zip code was the Valve Index, priced at $999 and the AVP was three times that. And even then I proooobably would've been able to justify it? But no external connectivity at all just sank it for me. Like if it had a DP port on it so I could hook it up to a gaming PC, I would've probably at least picked one up second-hand, possibly even new when my bonus hit but 3 large for... what? Email in my house? Movies shown in a way that makes it damn hard to eat popcorn?
      - brookst 7d ago
        As someone else said, it’s a developer kit. It was supply constrained and priced accordingly. IMO it was a mistake to not just call it a developer’s kit, abd promoting it as a consumer product was just weird. But I guess the downside of the DK approach is it means telling developers when the “real” device will ship, which I’m not sure anyone knows.
  - alex43578 8d ago
    I think the lack of a AppleVision non-pro that was just some really good screens and a battery, hooked up to your iPhone/MBA/MBP for use as an immersive display was a miss. I tried the AVP but realized I didn't want/need to strap a Macbook to my face: I have a computing device, I just wanted the display. Scrap the passthrough cameras, the LCD eyes, and all that complexity.
    - brookst 7d ago
      Yikes. I can’t imagine it without passthrough. You have to take it off to move around at all?
      - alex43578 7d ago
        Yeah? It's just a display for sitting on the couch or in an airplane, watching videos or viewing a huge virtual desktop. Scrapping the cameras would save a ton on size, BOM, and complexity. Basically a "Pimax Dream Air" formfactor. I'd love the ability to have AVP immersion with my MBP on a flight, and combined with Airpods, you'd be able to block out everything. I don't need to walk around and wouldn't need to interact through it. It's like transparency for Airpods: an overengineered alternative to just taking an airpod out (or in this case, lifting the headset up).
      - wooger 7d ago
        I can't imagine wanting to walk anywhere with massive clownish goggles on, and while tethered to the power box & various peripherals. Still, a small camera is an odd thing to cut.
    - whywhywhywhy 7d ago
      For “just a display” you need a computer in there anyway.
      - alex43578 7d ago
        Not if you’re driving it from your iPhone or MacBook. You’ll still need chips, but certainly not a M series processor, coprocessor, tons of storage, etc.
  - johnnyanmac 7d ago
    Apple never goes all in for gaming. They are more than happy to base most of its software revrnue on Skinner boxes, but otherwise it feels like it wants little to do with games. Every 4-5 years they need something to show off their tech and they begrudgingly look to gaming studios to provide some demos for them. They get the demos, get some hype, then put it straight back into the box. Devs move on because they know their audience isn't there anyway. Rinse and repeat. This last time was to help show off their unified architecture with AAA games running on an IPad.
  - wooger 7d ago
    Seriously, this (and pron) is the only use case that will appeal to the mass market for a single user, un-shareable, stupid looking, immersive thing like this. For nice hardware with hardly any content, not making huge strides to get existing VR content on it was a terrible strategy. And Apple can afford to just buy one of the bigger players to get content too.
- comfysocks 7d ago
  Here’s my theory about AVP. Apple’s strategic position is to be the main device by which apps and AI can gain access to end users. This puts them in a nice position to charge a toll on everything that passes through their device. Now if someone were to come out with a new type of device and a new paradigm that could disrupt iPhone as the main device, Apple would be in trouble. Not long ago, Zuck seemed really confident about metaverse/AR/VR. Apple took the disruption threat seriously and countered with AVP. Now it looks like metaverse flopped. I suspect the priority of AVP has gone down inside Apple accordingly.
  - theodric 7d ago
    Hadn't the Metaverse already well and truly flopped before the AVP came out? It's a cool device, but when it was released I felt like Apple was a couple years late and 3499 dollars short.
  - gorgoiler 7d ago
    Are smart glasses not the modern, practical implementation of the metaverse. I don’t think Meta were banking on games and low-poly avatars for their next generation of revenue, it was more about building (and then — hold onto your lunch please — monetizing) new forms of social connectivity. The only difference is that your permanent social camera went from being in-game to in-reality.
  - TheOtherHobbes 7d ago
    Interesting view, but not quite. The Big Changes in computing happen when both the mode of access, the demographic, and the primary use case change. So historically computing evolved from corporate server + batch -> real time "personal" scientific and technical -> mass market commodified PC for business and gaming -> social media, entertainment, and 'personal bureaucracy' (tickets, bank statements, and such) on mobile. At each step the tech gets smaller and more physically accessible, the use case gets more interactive and less demanding and serious, and the demographic gets wider and less technically educated. Apple owned a huge part of the last change with the iPhone. What's the next step in the series? Clearly it's not a huge device you strap to your face. But it's also not an easy question to answer. What is the next step after social media? From a software POV it's AI, but where's the matching hardware? The next gen has to be even smaller, multimodal, but still physically interactive, likely always on. Glasses are the closest, but not there yet. So I think we're still in the early Nokia mobile stage. The concept exists and the current tech is beginning to be workable, but the gamechanger refinement and perfection of the concept is still a way off.
- jorisw 7d ago
  Apple Vision Pro Abbreviations waste people’s time
  - swiftcoder 7d ago
    Here I thought we were discussing a return of the Aliens vs Predator franchise
    - port11 7d ago
      I’d rather have that than a really wide phone. Do a whole series on the Predators, please.
  - vr46 7d ago
    And some of them take even longer to say than the original words, e.g. WWW
    - swiftcoder 7d ago
      FB's main monorepo was named WWW, and you needed to refer to it every 5 minutes, so everyone pronounced it "dub-dub-dub". A surprisingly hard habit to break once you leave their employment
      - jorisw 6d ago
        Facebook.
rayiner 8d ago
It's incredibly how long an era of good decisions can allow a company to coast.
- RattlesnakeJake 7d ago
  Especially when combined with competitors' bad decisions. A lot of the stuff Microsoft pulled with Windows 10 and 11 made the Mac platform look attractive.
ralusek 7d ago
Apple silicon was not an autopilot decision, kind of an insanely cool decision.
- inatreecrown2 7d ago
  Apple bought P.A. Semi in 2008, 18 years ago.
  - alsetmusic 7d ago
    > Apple bought P.A. Semi in 2008, 18 years ago. That undercuts the work how?
- kmeisthax 7d ago
  Apple Silicon was autopilot. Or more specifically the insanely cool decision happened under Jobs, and everything else is just coasting (i.e. repeating the same business success again and again without taking very many risks). Their first custom core design was the A6 in 2012, a year after his death, but they bought the team that made the design (P.A. Semi) in 2008. It took the team about a decade and change to scale up to something that could power a laptop, but the decision was made very early on and was specifically part of the same set of decisions that Apple has been coasting off of ever since. If Apple hadn't bought its own chip design firm they likely wouldn't have remained competitive long-term, in the same way that their computers got really uncompetitive for a few years before every major architectural transition. Unless by "Apple Silicon" you specifically meant "the decision to transition from x86 to ARM". There is actual work there, but not a lot of risk. Apple famously maintained an internal x86 port of Mac OS X for years after Rhapsody was shitcanned and renamed "Mac OS X Server", so doing the same with ARM isn't that worse. iOS was derived from OSX; and just having iOS already up and running on ARM is already a good deal of the way towards a macOS port to ARM. In fact, it got easier as iOS got more technology hand-me-downs from macOS.
  - pjmlp 7d ago
    OpenSTEP was already multi-architecture when the merge happened, as NeXT was going cross platform to try the rescue the company at the time.
pjmlp 7d ago
Short reminder to the younger folks that 30 years ago it felt just like that for Apple, and then they almost went bankrupt.
- cedilla 7d ago
  Did it? At that time, I felt like they were an expensive boutique manufacturer that basically catered to a niche audience of media professionals. At the time, they weren't even among the biggest tech companies. Today, they are one of the largest companies in the world.
  - wooger 7d ago
    Seriously? They were tiny, media production niche, crazily priced machines 30 years ago. Almost zero marketshare or mindshare, and most people (in e.g. EU) didn't even know anyone who owned a Mac.
    - pjmlp 7d ago
      Yes, it was pretty much Atari, Commodore, Acorn and PC over here, plus some lesser known brands, like MSX on Netherlands. However even today, if you go to the European countries less fortunate with their economies, having anything Apple is usually obtained via credit, or some contract bundling, for example with the cable or Internet operator, naturally bound to a minimal duration of 24 to 36 months contract. Not something like in US and countries with similar economies where most people don't think twice to get Apple gear, and quickly pre-order new gear after each couple of new product announcements.
      - TeMPOraL 7d ago
        > However even today, if you go to the European countries less fortunate with their economies, having anything Apple is usually obtained via credit, or some contract bundling Given how many iPhones I've noticed suddenly showed up in hands of regular people, including teenagers, in the last couple years in Poland, I imagine there's healthy second-hand/used devices market going too. iPhones have reputation of being long lasting devices (battery shenanigans notwithstanding), maybe the reputation is true.
luxuryballs 7d ago
The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
Danox 7d ago
If that’s true, then someone else should catch up real quick is gonna have to have Apple Silicon and at least two operating systems in house I do believe one other company will come up, but you’re not gonna like the part of the world they come from.

gkanai 8d ago

> Can't believe they flew all these people in to play them a video. Apple can't afford to have demo problems or presentation glitches anymore. Hence the system that they have now.

Dban1 8d ago
Peak state of technology in 2026
pazimzadeh 8d ago
says who?
- Tempest1981 7d ago
  True, I remember years ago, the presenter was doing a demo and ran into a problem. He quickly transitioned to another identical device nearby, and continued almost seamlessly. Didn't seem like much of an issue. Although that might have been WWDC, which is a different crowd.
  - marcelo-earth 7d ago
    Interesting, do you remember which WWDC was that?
    - ChrisMarshallNY 7d ago
      I’ve seen that happen a couple of times. I know there was an infamous Microsoft one, where the demo BSOD’d on Bill Gates (Not WWDC. I wasn’t there, but I’m sure there’s video). Microsoft used to demo real unstable stuff. I remember one WWDC, where Ian Diery was giving a demo with a young man, and asked “Where’s the beef?” The kid looked down at his pants, and the crowd burst into laughter. Diery did not laugh. He was a fairly serious chap, with no discernible sense of humor, so I expect his assistant was sanctioned for that. I think the last DuDub I went to, was around 2005 (pre-iPhone). I know it was at Moscone. Jobs led that. He was one of the best presenters I’ve ever seen. He could recover from curveballs almost imperceptibly. The first, was in 1987, or 1988. One of the first.

Melatonic 8d ago

Does he have a problem with his hands shaking ? Or you just mean he's nervous

pazimzadeh 8d ago
not sure, he doesn't have shaky hands in the videos though so I assume nerves

avazhi 8d ago

Everybody is nervous their first few times. Hell, I’d rather see that somebody’s nervous and actually human at this point lol. Apple’s post-COVID keynotes have been like watching plastic people try to out virtue signal one another as they do their best Zuckerberg imitations. Nervousness and humanity anytime, please.

busymom0 7d ago
The first few years of recorded presentation was okay because they were showing the Apple Park building which was pretty unique and the transitions were super cool. But now, it's the same old stuff again and again. It's the same building, same transitions. Live presentations would be so much more authentic.
- brandon272 7d ago
  There is also an uncanny valley aspect to the videos. Outside of the formulaic transitions, I find the scenes where they are standing in various parts of the building distracting, because everything looks fake, as if they are standing in front of a green screen and a CGI version of some internal space is added behind them.
WesolyKubeczek 7d ago
In the later presentations, presenters definitely looked like Autons of the Doctor Who, from the first episode of the Ninth Doctor, where they were CGI.

trymas 7d ago

I saw ~20 year old presentation where Craig Federighi presented (for first time??) - dude was shaking like leaf and could hardly do the demo. It turned out fine and now he’s one of more charming presenters.

unsupp0rted 7d ago

A live presentation fail could take 5~15% off their stock price in minutes, for no good reason at all. People’s life savings are at stake.

neuroticnews25 7d ago
"We must protect the AAPL stockholders from the irrationality of the AAPL stockholders"?
- TeMPOraL 7d ago
  Protecting people from themselves, 21st century edition.
- PowerElectronix 7d ago
  Halt the trading!!!
qingcharles 7d ago
I coded one of these for whatever was the latest Nokia handset ~2005. Live on-stage reveal and demo to the world's press by CEO IIRC. The software on the phone was supposed to run off our co-host server, but bugfixing down to the wire, so nobody knew but the demo was running off a half-built PC in my buddy's closet connected to his janky cable modem with us watching and sweating and praying. It would have been really, really bad if that demo had failed on-stage.
- watt 7d ago
  You had a closet? Luxury! Our demo ran out of a disused lavatory, and there was a leopard around.
  - qingcharles 7d ago
    I hope you had a warning sign that said "Beware of the leopard".
7d ago

jonplackett 7d ago

I really miss the live presentations. They had a lot more humanity. But I miss the Steve jobs presentations the most. I was watching one of his old presentations the other day from when he was in his 20s - he’s just so engaged and present and speaks from the heart compared to the polished media trained drivel of modern ceos

minimeow 7d ago

Yeah I was never the biggest fan of Craig Federighi previously but contrasted against the new generation of usual suspects being fielded by Apple, he actually stands out as having character. But yes the format of the Apple Event was formulaic and way too scripted/produced. Sure there's a place for some scripted content but losing the live unscripted element makes it like a corporate event from Microsoft or IBM. In fact those guys probably do more live unscripted stuff nowadays. The iPhone Duo is a nice change from formulaic iPhone designs but it's long overdue and is at best a sideways step not a forward step by an Apple that seems increasingly out of touch and driven by cloud service KPI-targets over all other metrics. I wonder how long it will be before the customer revolt manifests, not because I dislike Apple (I loved their products for years) but because I believe that their current business focus leads them to erode trust and play it safe which ultimately alienates the very demographics that made Apple cool and then persuaded all those wanting to emulate that demographic to join the Apple bandwagon. Many of those power users are increasingly moving to Linux or using Mac/Apple ecosystems tactically. It won't be many release cycles for Apple to become the new Microsoft - something you have to use for certain tasks in certain industries but increasingly something you would choose to avoid.

deleted 7d ago
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dimitrios1 7d ago
We've been with Apple long enough now to know exactly what their playbook is, and much to the dismay of their competition, they do it well. They let other tech companies break the ground, release something new and truly innovative and unique -- say a folding phone (it's basically a solidified meme amongst the IT crowd now - "Oh Apple will get all of samsungs features from 2 years ago finally!" -- not realizing that this is intentional), and they will let them front all the risk of whether or not it has staying power -- then they will come in and innovate at the margins and bring it into the Apple ecosystem, which is an advantage in of itself at this point.
- nirga 7d ago
  I think both the iPhone itself and things like AirPods form recent years are truly innovative so I wouldn’t say that