A Few Thoughts on the Eve of WWDC
Here we are again, on the eve of another WWDC, feeling…weird. Excited. Ambivalent? Curious. Did I mention excited? But also kinda annoyed. And some of you? Some of you are downright mad.
There’s a cloud hovering over Apple Park again, and it’s not just the pandemic. It’s bruised developer relations. It’s alleged anti-trust violations. It’s App Store scammy-ness. It’s the weight of a million different expectations and quibbles, from “make the iPad more like the Mac” to “let the iPad be an iPad,” from pro hardware announcements to satisfy developers, to hints of an augmented reality revolution to satisfy those hungry and excited for the post-staring-at-screens era.
Caught in the middle of it all, then, are the lovely Apple employees we know (or are lightly acquainted with) and love. They show us their work with such deliberation and care, such passion and delight. They made our iMacs colorful again. They made it possible to control an Apple Watch with one hand. They work on Notes, on tvOS, on Safari, on SwiftUI, on hundreds of teams that make things millions of people rely on. And if any of them are reading this: I appreciate you, and I hope you have an awesome WWDC week. I can’t wait to see what you’ve been working on. There’s always something announced at WWDC that just blows me away, and I know this year will be no different.
Speaking of different, Apple’s slogan used to be “Think Different.” Apple does many things differently, such as its environmental initiatives, focus on health and accessibility, and emphasis on privacy. But Apple is a big company and big companies naturally become stubborn, entrenched in tradition, and difficult to steer in different directions.
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