“Yesterday’s WWDC presentation started with Apple CEO Tim Cook asking for a moment of silence to honor the men and women killed in Sunday’s attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida,” Rick Tetzeli writes for Fast Company. “The keynote ended with Cook’s presentation of Swift Playgrounds, a way for Apple to encourage children to learn how to code. ”
“In between, Cook had exactly zero moments on the stage. This was definitely a case of ‘less is more,'” Tetzeli writes. “Cook ceded the stage to his team, and allowed them to present the most ambitious definition yet of the ‘Apple experience’ — one that is defined not simply by incredible devices, but by a seamless, increasingly omnipresent and intelligent platform experience accessed via those devices.”
“Cook’s gravitas and flat delivery serve him well when speaking on matters of moral import. Neither the Orlando tribute nor the Swift Playgrounds presentation came off as mere PR efforts. This seems to have been the keynote where Apple finally gave up on the idea that its CEO must be the center of the presentation,” Tetzeli writes. “This is surely a relief to Cook… But the keynote was even more notable because it made clear that Apple’s business concerns and goals are different — and more ambitious and complicated — than the ones Cook inherited from Jobs. Once upon a time, Jobs defined the ‘Apple experience’ as the merging of hardware and software in a single device in a way that no other company could match. Over time, that definition grew to encompass an iPad, a Mac, and an iPhone, and all that a user could accomplish because these were wirelessly connected. Cook is expanding that universe significantly.”
“If Apple can pull this off, Cook is taking Apple somewhere that’s far more complicated and all-encompassing than the device-centric ‘Apple experience’ that Steve Jobs was able to engineer. Cook’s goal, it seems, is for Apple to create the technology that will serve your needs all day long and everywhere you go — the devices are simply the (excellently designed) doorway to that world.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote on Monday:
The continuity aspects of all that was unveiled today are significant. More and more, macOS, iOS, tvOS, and watchOS are becoming intertwined to the users’ great benefit.
WWDC presentation showed the end of the era of the visionary and innovative Apple.
Now it’s all about increasing revenue by keeping all of us tethered to Apple devices and the walled garden.
Tim Cook and his team will continue to milk as much as they can from what was put in place by Steve Jobs. They will be tweaking here and there and making improvements to existing products. But don’t expect much more.
Open forums, like MDN and many others, attract no end of idiots, that know nothing of what they speak.
To paraphrase Forrest Gump, “Stupid is as stupid writes.”
Many times during the WWDC I had to shudder as I thought I was watching a Microsoft event. Apple seems to try so hard to wall people into its ecosystem, pay its subscriptions, and rent its servers. Just like Microsoft, except Microsoft didn’t have any real control over user hardware. Apple does and instead of making it simple, Apple is making it more complicated and less intuitive than ever. Wake me up when Continuity or Siri are ready for prime time. Nothing in the WWDC demos hinted anything but Apple’s desire to be just like Microsoft or some other service.
And yes, Apple crashed a demo during WWDC. Why? Because Messages just went from solid and reliable to overcomplicated and bloated. Seems MDN isn’t willing to talk about that.
Meanwhile not a single word during WWDC on the single most important thing Apple is doing right now: a new file system.
Not a single word about the new file system… Because it isn’t available this year. It’s a file system preview. The full release won’t be until 2017, perhaps with iOS 11, macOS 10.13. Then, it’ll be mentioned.
Because of Cook:
AAPL is cancerous
Products are worthless
iPhone sales will start falling
iPad sales wont recover
Keynotes are avoidable
User experience is shit
Software is unpredictable
Direction of company is indiscernable
Time to start using Android, time to sell AAPL, time to build a new Windows box!
Hint: somewhere in the article it mentions the essential word: intelligent. Birds of a feather flock together joshy boy android.
Time will be the best analyst.
What most ignorant people can’t understand is that Steve vision for “owning the whole widget” has yet to fully come to it’s realization. The vertical model is finally beginning to truly integrate, and Google will never be able to compete with that…which is why Apple will be the Gold Standard for the foreseeable future. I hope they continue to take a hard look at their in house software, and get it to where it needs to be–less bloat and more “it just works”.
How many of the presenters in the keynote presented with the gravitas of Jobs or Cook? None. Why? It’s their objective to eliminate the role of the single visionary, replacing it with the notion of genius by committee.
Why did I watch the keynote in years past? To see Steve.
Will I watch the keynote in the future? Pass.
I’ll bet you go to tent revivals for the show, and not the message.
Craig Federighi I think is a rough equivalent for Jobs. Polished, informative, humorous. I think he is a particular standout.
As I watched the keynote I was thinking:
Apple is slowly becoming Microsoft.
I’ve been saying this for several years. Apple will continue to grow into a bloated mess and then some other company will come along and replace them.
I wonder if Steve had gotten treatment right away instead of waiting if he’d have beaten the cancer. I wish he had. His presentations where far superior and Apple itself was far superior to what we see now.
As I watched the keynote, I thought: “This is so magical! I can’t wait for public testing!” Because Apple keeps roling forward, not waiting on stupid people who don’t know what they want. Apple isn’t held down by anything.
Fanboys are so blind!
Apple use to be about devices that just worked. They could be used for business and personal but the beauty was that they were simple and worked.
Now Apple devices are becoming more complicated and buggy. Apple is becoming more about fluff and entertainment.
Someone finally gets it.
‘the ‘Apple experience’ — one that is defined not simply by incredible devices, but by a seamless, increasingly omnipresent and intelligent platform experience accessed via those devices.”
It’s the product line integration suited for many, if not all applications.
The Tim Cook vindication train keeps rolling. It’s obvious to every Apple fanboy that Tim Cook can never do anything wrong, and all of Apple’s woes are due to mysterious and malevolent external forces.