Apple Needs an Editor
Too long. Waaaayyyy too long. That's it. That's my review of today's Apple Event.
I've felt this way before, but never like this.1 This was too long to the point of being boring at times. Boring! I know a lot of people have said such things for years. But I am not a lot of people. I think I've seen every Apple event for the past 15 years or so. Many of them in person. Apple just had the pacing of this one all wrong. I'm not trying to be a jerk, this is hopefully just constructive criticism: today's event could have and should have been half as long as it was.
It was just under 1 hour and 40 minutes – just about 100 minutes. It should have been 50 minutes. Just under one hour.2
I know they could have made this happen because I watched all 100 minutes. Pretty much every single segment was too long.3 But the real soul sucker was what I called the "Previously, on WWDC" segment. Essentially, Apple went over every Apple Intelligence feature already announced – and still not ready yet, by the way – at WWDC a few months ago. Apple often reiterates what was announced at an earlier event, but not like this. Again, for features that are still weeks, if not months away. It felt like it was too geared towards Wall Street. Or perhaps would-be Google Pixel or Samsung Galaxy buyers – "don't worry, we have AI too!"
And then there were the specs. So many goddamn specs. I joked that whereas old Apple never talked about the specs, new Apple only talks about the specs. Obviously it's not fully accurate – Apple has really always liked to tout specs, when they had specs worth touting, which wasn't always the case back in the day, now it often is – but it's also not fully wrong. And this is an event streamed live all around the world to the general public. Once we got the 20th mention of the A18 Pro chip being better than the A17 Pro which was better than the A17 and also, and so on, it was just tedious. More tedious than having a naming scheme that lines up the iPhone 16 with an A18 chip running iOS 16 and an iPhone 16 Pro Max with an A18 Pro chip running iOS 16. It's all just number salad at this point.
Apple, of course, would counter that they needed to go into detail about all the amazing new features. I'm sure plenty of them are amazing. AirPods fully becoming hearing aids – that's amazing. The new camera shutter button seems amazing. But you need to leave the audience wanting more, not less. Many of us left wanting less today. That doesn't mean the iPhone is going to sell less or that Apple is doomed. It just means that they need an editor. Today, "a thousand no's for every yes" felt a bit more like "a few hundred no's for every yes".
Update September 11, 2024: I wrote a sequel to this post. It's much longer...
M.G. Siegler
1 And after they had started to drift a bit long, it seems like Apple (smartly) course-corrected, making some nice and tight events. Even legimitimately short ones!
2 You know what could have helped naturally edit this event? Doing it live. Just saying...
3 Aside from the AirPods Max which got like 30 seconds of air time. So short that it almost seemed like a joke. Undoubtedly, it was because the only upgrades there was really to USB-C, but they could have at least shown the new colors a bit more.