WWDC: It’s Showtime!

The WWDC keynote is happening less than 24 hours after the Tony Awards. I like this kind of synchronicity. It implies a nonzero chance that God (or whatever) agrees with me that these annual developer keynotes should be viewed through the lens of Showbiz.

Historically, the fates of many nominated shows hinge on the outcome of tonight’s event. Some of these productions are in precarious financial shape and will announce their closing dates if they don’t get the burst of ticket sales that come with a win at the Tonys.

The producers, backers, and castmembers of Apple (or, if it were a musical: “Apple!”), currently in its 50th season, isn’t feeling anything like that kind of pressure. Still, some part of the company’s future will be affected by what happens during those couple of hours.

(Sidebar: Before you scold me for tying Apple to the Tony Awards, I’ll remind you that Schmigadoon! began life as an Apple TV-exclusive series and it’s nominated for 12 Tony awards tonight. So there! Tenuous connection achieved!)

Is it Showbiz? Yeah…and this year, more than ever. If there were ever a year for Tim to make his entrance onto the stage by doing a Bob Fosse-style knee slide, this would be it.

When Apple stopped keynoting twice a year at Macworld Expo, the company’s own Worldwide Developers Conference became (somewhat awkwardly) the venue for Apple to tell its story for the upcoming year. Since then, the focus of the opening keynote has shifted so far in that direction that topics of interest to actual Worldwide Developers get shoved off into a whole second keynote.

Remember the days when we got excited about the possibility of Apple announcing new consumer hardware? Well, we’re long past the era of “One More Thing…”.

The world’s attention is on Apple during this keynote and it’s vital that they nail the storytelling around Apple’s roadmap for OS 27 and beyond. Nope, Apple doesn’t have to put on a good enough show to justify keeping the box office open through the summer. But they need to reassure everybody that Apple will still be relevant in five or ten years, amidst an environment where the landscape and the rules of the game are changing faster than ever…and with memories of the rollout of Apple Intelligence two years ago still fresh.

There was a time when I might have written up some Predictions about what we’re going to learn during the keynote. These days, I’m just thinking about all of the stuff going on at Apple that I’m hoping that the keynote (or the sessions that follow) will clarify.

I honestly can’t remember a previous WWDC keynote that got me as excited as I am about tomorrow.

Apple has almost always been an important company. They’ve built and maintained a unique identity and a company culture: they have an understanding of who they are, and what role they want to play, beyond this industry and even into culture as a whole. They’ve consistently been moving the needle on the potential for tech as a positive force.

Over the last ten to twenty years, Apple managed to become both important and successful. No rational observer is concerned about Apple ceasing to be successful within the next decade. But Apple’s certainly at risk of becoming Successful and Unimportant.

AT&T (in the form of Bell Labs), IBM, Microsoft…at certain points they were as innovative and as important to the metronome of Progress as Apple and Google are now. Today, they’re merely Very Successful Companies. Providers of services.

Apple employs over 150,000 people and it contributes to the livelihoods of God knows how many more. So I shouldn’t say that I’d rather see Apple go back to being Important but Unsuccessful than see it go the other way around.

But wow…wouldn’t it suck to be talking to an incredulous young adult in 2035, and trying to explain why we all used to think Apple was kind of a big deal?