Apple's coronavirus keynote was slick but extremely dystopian
This is the world of the 2020 apocalypse, where pre-recorded propaganda segments are brought to you from gleaming white saucer-shaped bunkers.
As wide-eyed, perfectly-coiffed executives find the bright side of a global pandemic that goes unnamed in uplifting updates (customers just so happento be using iMessage 40 percent morethan they did this time last year), masked camera crew members try their best to stay away from airborne droplets propelled by their enthusiastic mouths. And the animated opening portrays the people of Earth as having ascended to a new cloud layer of happy memoji.
To be fair to Apple, the first keynote of the coronavirus era was always going to be weird. WWDC, the company's annual conference for app developers, announced it was going virtual back in May. CEO Tim Cook couldn't just not have a keynote, the event that is so integral to Apple's strategy of surprise reveals. But he also couldn't have executives do software demos live and in real-time, goodness no. Especially not to an empty auditorium, where the lack of applause and whooping from rows of employees would have laid bare the fact that millions of fans are really just tuning in for a two-hour ad.
In the end, Cook leaned hard into the two-hour ad thing, commissioning pre-recorded segments of extreme 4K slickness — which also ended up dripping with science-fiction dystopia feels. (And no, not just because of our first glimpse of Foundationon Apple TV+, which takes place in a Galactic Empire that shuns experts and is collapsing.)
Apple's campus is known as the spaceship; this keynote felt like it was filmed on the Starship Enterprise holodeck. A team of Starfleet hosts led by dad joker extraordinaire Craig Ferengi — sorry, Federighi— seemed like they were filming a tech news informercial for the 23rd century using 20th century lingo. "Not cool!", Federighi, the SVP of software engineering, chided the old iOS phone app for its full-screen notifications.
Later he ran to a different floor of the ship to the sound of a guitar break, then teleported to a "secret location" where we checked in on the construction of chips. Clever edits disguised the fact that no two presenters could be in the holodeck at the same time, lest the space virus destroy them all.
More slickly produced still was Cook's intro, which felt less like a keynote and more "Tim Cook would like to remind you that he could quite easily run for president." Cook leaned into that soulless auditorium hard, using empty seats as his backdrop the way a movie reviewer might. With the soft projector lights, it felt like a TV host was presenting a very special episode of America.
The Apple CEO was right to lead with Black Lives Matter, and he made the right noises about systemic racism. "The events of this past month are not new, [but] they have forced us to face longstanding inequalities and social injustices," Cook said over stirring monochrome images of protesters. "For too many people and too long, we haven't lived up to those [American] ideals." He touted Apple's $100 million "commitment" to a Racial Equity and Justice Initiative, and a program for Black developers.
SEE ALSO:Apple announces 'App Library,' new iMessage features, and more in iOS 14Later on the holodeck came a bizarre moment that seemed to hint at the Black experience, but left it buried under layers of obfuscation. "Privacy matters now more than ever," Federighi emphasized meaningfully, standing in front of a virtual screen with a Black man holding up an iPhone to cover his face. Was this a reference to the very real fears of Black Lives Matter protesters being targeted by facial recognition technology? Federighi didn't say. He moved swiftly on to Apple's plan of "data minimization," limiting the amount of information on the iPhone that Apple "or anyone" could ever access. "Anyone," presumably, being overreaching authoritarians.
Who knows for sure? Apple likes to keep such things fuzzy; it just wants you to feel it's on your side in the privacy wars, unlike that nasty Google, which has a business model that thrives on selling data. But when it comes to what threats Apple's focus on privacy can help protect against, the company is strangely mute. In a world where we're starting to understand the flaw in staying silent on systemic problems, Apple's sunny disposition fails to read the room.
What's going on here, exactly?Credit: AppleSimilarly, it would have been nice if Cook or Federighi had said the words "coronavirus" or "COVID-19" just once. Cook mentioned "the virus," thanked healthcare workers, then quickly pivoted to how much Apple products were helping people stay connected. Federighi risked tipping over into self parody too, when he touted that 40-percent-more-iMessages number without naming the reason.
But hey, don't want to upset the cheery vibe, right? And remember, remain indoors!
Apple laid out the steps it took to produce the keynote during the time of coronavirus, but we never got to see the mask-wearing crew.Credit: AppleWhat we're all craving in 2020 is a measure of honesty. We value the unvarnished truth over slickly produced videos. No reason Apple couldn't have given us both — perhaps by, just once, swinging the camera around to give us a chance to know the hard-working crew. A card at the end of the broadcast assured us of the temperature checks, social distancing, and mask-wearing involved in the production. Fail to document this unique moment of history, however, and you end up on the side of reality-denying dystopia.
(责任编辑:资讯)
-
Yes, big spiders are spreading in the U.S. No, they're not flying.
They're not after you. And they don't "parachute" from the sky.Periodically, people and headlines on ...[详细] -
本报讯 为进一步推进城乡环境综合治理工作的开展,昨25)日下午,市委组织部和雨城区委组织部牵头,组织雨城区西大街社区网格化管理联系单位,对辖区责任片区城乡环境综合治理工作进行了检查。检查组就市区南正街 ...[详细]
-
China forcibly repatriates some 600 N. Korean defectors this week: civic group
Unification Minister Kim Yung-ho speaks during a parliamentary inspection of the Yoon Suk Yeol admin ...[详细] -
All across the country, schools and states want to dictate where people can go to the bathroom. That ...[详细]
-
China's Tsinghua University has scored a world first by demonstrating the inherent safety of the fir ...[详细]
-
RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA:Mexico's Abraham Ancer held off American Cameron Young to secure a wire-to- ...[详细]
-
N. Korea holds Cabinet plenary meeting over grain output, economic issues
This photo, carried by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency, Oct. 2, shows North Korean ...[详细] -
Rise of ‘Candle Citizens’ to reshape democracy in 2017
South Koreans rewrote the nation’s history of democracy last year by relentlessly taking to the stre ...[详细] -
13 Astronomical Clocks Connecting Time And Space
Composed of intricate dials and mechanisms, astronomical clocks more closely resemble eclectic works ...[详细] -
Chance the Rapper is catching major blowback for defending Kanye's 2020 'campaign'
Chance the Rapper publicly and repeatedly tweeted his support for Kanye West's presidential bid on M ...[详细]
- DOJ accuses TikTok of collecting and sharing users' personal views, as the app fights a ban
- Apple Pay is coming to major US transit systems this year
- Court to face hurdles in impeachment witness questioning
- How to watch Apple's March 25 streaming service announcement
- 护航孩子成长 解决职工后顾之忧
- American soldier who crossed into North Korea arrives back in the US, video appears to show
- Croatia, South Korea, Finland into Davis Cup Finals