They try so hard to do a polished presentation that everything is kinda fake and unauthentic. I don't understand how this attitude survived so many years.
It feels fake, because they speak in a way that sounds unnatural and overelaborate.
It is so long, with so many unnecessary sentences. And it feels like everything is said at least twice; First a generic statement about the new feature. Then a specific example, or a deeper explanation of what the first generic statement was. Then a demo. And then a conclusion to the future.
The old Steve Jobs keynotes focused on the most interesting things, but now it feels like they are afraid not to include everything. So everything gets diluted.
It would help a lot if they would stop saying the same lines:"And now...", "We cannot wait for you to try our new XXXX ... ", or "We could not be more excited to...", "We are excited to... ".
That is not how regular Americans speak. I think it's some weird American corporate speak that has metastasized in Apple keynote presentations. ꉂ(˵˃ ᗜ ˂˵)
It is, however, how a lot of Silicon Valley speak. Source: lived there for a couple of decades.
And to an outside ear, it does just come across as completely fake.
Jobs' "reality distortion field" was just the conviction in his voice as he spoke. There is no, none, nada, zero conviction in the way Apple deliver these missives. It reeks of corporate America and is therefore not trustworthy.
I'm also kind of surprised that no-one there has altered the format. There are a lot of smart people at Apple...
You can do that with and without fake discussions.
One of the main reasons that killed my desire to move to the US was the amount of fake questions during - on a paper - friendly discussions, when the point of those questions was just, and only just, visibility. An average American non corporate discussion is worse than a non-American corporate one. And that seems to be pretty global to me.
My brother and my sister-in-law watched “Somebody feeds Phil”, and we watched together the Sydney episode and after that some others, because I’d just announced that I’d move to Australia soon. That Sydney episode had quite normal discussions for us, Europeans. Of course, people had agenda, but they still reacted to what response they got. Even if things were cut, most times people seemed to react to something else from before. Then the next episode was from Las Vegas. And it had full with questions where nobody responded to the answers, nobody cared what the response was. And they kept those in the episode. There was a point when Phil asked the people in a line one-by-one what they work. And they basically just listed it, Phil had zero responses to any answers. Zero reactions from anybody. The point wasn’t to engage with the answers or the people. There was another case, when a girl talked about her shop. There wasn’t a single sentence which was organically connected to another. Phil and the girl had different agenda and they had to perform based on those, no matter what. And I was enough now there to say that that happens way more frequently than elsewhere. The next one was from Manila. And there were organic discussions again. I’ve never seen that clearly this phenomenon which bugs me. Of course, the usual scripting which happens with these shows, even helped to make this more announced. Probably, the people talking in that episode were way less interesting, but still as a visual to what annoys me is quite good.
Of course, I had good conversations also over there, and I had bad ones elsewhere in this sense. Heck, I did similar things before, but maybe this is the exact reason why I’m so sensitive to this, because it annoyed me greatly when I did it. But on average, it was the worse over the pond. Especially on the extremities. But even in day-to-day discussions. It was annoying that I have to peal down an additional layer with anybody to get real answers, which is not needed basically anywhere else.
It's not "fake" - it's cultural differences where what is intended to come across as polite by Americans[1] can be seen as insincere by people from elsewhere. On the flip side, Americans often view foreign behavior that's intended to be neutral as unfriendly, uncaring or cold.
1. e.g. lots of smiling, use of superlatives like "great"/"amazing" to describe mediocre items/effort/results
Execs are ‘super excited’ about everything. There is no dynamic range at all. They appear to have no opinions and no judgement because their opinion is always that everything is awesome. When the audience knows that stuff is either normal-level ok or actually fucked up, this message is insulting to receive.
Worse, it trains people downstream that shiny happy is the only valid comms. Hard to escalate a concern when you don’t know how to start the message with how super excited you are about it.
If everything is at a “10” in linguistic intensity (“Incredible”, “Legendary”, “GOAT”) then nothing is exceptional.
It’s the linguistic equivalent of a Dorito chip.
I’m American and this marketing/corporate speak drives me up the wall. I have a harder time respecting the judgement of people who thoughtlessly speak this way.
Ah yes British, the famously direct people who say things like "Maybe I haven’t explained this very well", "I’ll bear it in mind", or "How interesting!" which anyone unfamiliar with the culture would interpret to be the opposite of what was actually meant.
"I may be wrong", but perhaps 'Americans rarely sound authentic' to you simply because you're just more familiar with your own culture's idiosyncrasies?
Anyway, I love the Brits; no flame intended. I come in peace! :-)
As a Brit, at Apple, I once got dinged on a performance review because I apparently wasn't a team player - I was apparently always putting down people's projects in the group meetings.
"But, I've never done that. I'm pretty much always positive about things people present. I even said some of them weren't bad"
Yeah, high praise comes in subtle flavours if you're a Brit.
I think this “awesome”, “amazing”, “super exciting” phase came much later than the moon walking era. Remember it’s been over 50 years since humans walked on the moon. Much has changed.
See these old videos, where people talk in a straightforward way:
Speaking as a Brit, our national trait is generally too understate things. So even saying what you mean, directly, comes off as a bit immodest and hyping it up in sales pitches sounds shady.
Americans generally say what they mean a bit more, so I think their mid point is just different.
Speaking as a Brit, I couldn’t disagree more. I have no trouble understanding a wide variety of Europeans in a corporate environment, but sometimes struggle to even understand the basics of what Americans are trying to communicate, let alone the nuances of their position.
It’s like ‘American corporate’ is a totally different language that I don’t speak. The words sound the same, but that’s about it.
This is true for a lot of Americans too. God help me if I have to sit and listen to my CEO talk about anything and have to explain it to someone afterwards. It's just Buzzword Buzzword Agentic Buzzword Great Buzzword Exciting Buzzword Future Buzzword Growth Buzzword Great Great Great Exciting Exciting Exciting Buzzword.
As other comment suggested, the way I see it Americans are addicted to hyperbolas. Instead of "Thank you" it's "Thank you so much". So when you genuinely want to thank someone because that person went above and beyond (saved your life, avoided you a substantial hassle, etc.) then it's difficult to convey that.
American or corporate? I'm surprised that corporate talk overseas isn't overly enthusiastic! As an American, most of the stream has sounded very 'California' mixed with corporate.
A lot of corporate speak is developed in the US and then companies all over the world spread it around. Often the adoption happens without deep understanding of the concept, and without adaptation to local realities. And thus it feels much more unnatural.
Small talk is all lies. Almost all praise is fake. And it all drives me insane. I can fit in at work just fine, I can appear joyful and excited to come to work, I have 30 years of practice with it. But I avoid it whenever possible because it is all lies.
Americans appear to oversell everything because people get mad if you don’t.
“Why can’t you just be positive?!”
Because I’m not going to lie. I can’t fake praise, and I won’t even try. Being positive while lying is immediately obvious and it undermines the positive attitude that you’ve painted on. If anything, I take a negative message when I see someone faking a positive manner of speech.
> But "almost all praise is fake" and "small talk is all lies" feels like a pretty depressing place to end up?
No, not really. I just see it as a tool that normal people use to keep themselves happy. And that's not depressing, to me. It's kind of ... annoying that people are so fragile that they have to do that in order to have a "normal" day, but I can't fault anyone for doing things that make them happy. I wasn't given that opportunity; I was weird and if I didn't conform then I got in trouble. Yet normal people LOSE THEIR FLIPPING MINDS when asked to consider my behaviors normal and to consider my various physical movements as normal and tolerable. You have never seen such orchestrated and immediate pushback in your life, I promise. But I was forced to do what they refuse to do, which is to accommodate the other side. So, if anything, I'm angry about it all. Not depressed.
I don't need those platitudes to feel happy or normal, I need to be alone to feel happy, most of the time.
Praise given in private is usually legitimate. I value that. I feel that. Praise given in front of others (like ceremonies and ritual award reception stuff) are the fakest fake activity known to humanity. The ceremonies are for normal people. People like me can simply be privately told "well done" and given a piece of paper that they can look at, and maybe a raise, and that's enough. And maybe a mention during the ceremony that I will not be attending so that people know about it, if they're interested.
One thing about Jobs is that he was genuinely excited about much of the stuff he was showing, and even if you knew he was showing some useless BS (like coverflow, something I remember he absolutely loved), it made it interesting to watch. If today's presenters are in any way excited about what they're showing (or, more likely, talking about), that excitement has been polished away by all the takes they probably had to film.
They're not genuinely excited. Because there isn't much to be genuinely excited about. The "incredible new super-exciting developments" are usually "okay, I guess."
Once in a while you get something like the M series chips, but the rest is reliably mid - functional, maybe a few nice tweaks, probably some better-than-average design, but nothing revolutionary.
So all of the "We know you're gonna love it!" doesn't land, because it's literally scripted and rehearsed, not spontaneous.
Jobs was rehearsed and passionate, which was part of the appeal.
It's debatable if Cook has ever been genuinely excited about anything.
Cook is excited about shaving a few dollars off the BOM, a few days off fulfillment times, and adding a few basis points to the stock price. It has made him a great CEO for Wall St., Apple employees with equity, and a lot of retirement funds.
But I can't recall him ever using a computer. I cannot, in my mind's eye, conjure an image of him sitting in front of a Mac and using it, whereas fuzzy black and white images of Jobs' messy-like-mine home office with a Power Mac G5 shaped external hard drive on his desk next to a 30" Cinema Display are trivial to remember. Like, when was the last time we saw him organically using any of the products the company sells?
Maybe it's just because he doesn't have the rizz, so I've just never seen the pictures, but he just feels like a dude who never goes into the Settings app and tweaks anything.
They try to imitate Steve's diction and mannerisms, without replicating his ability to concisely focus on the few things he wanted to stick with the audience.
That parental controls presentation felt like the same 3 bullet points delivered 4 times over with the vibe of a group presentation where every team member had to present but there was only 1 slide of content between the bunch.
It's a well known fact that it is quite difficult for some parents to setup and use parental controls, I believe it was just to fully explain it to people that might not know much about how parental controls work.
It used to be a developer presentation. Now the main WWDC keynote is just another product-focused Apple event (since it might as well be one if the tech press is already flying out for it), and the more in-the-weeds developer talks are held on other days.
Apple presenters are coached on how to speak, how to stand/move, what to do with their hands, etc.
I can understand how it might seem culty, but it's in the service of clear communication to a global audience. Anyone who represents a company to important customers and/or the public goes through similar media training.
The comment is about how everyone in their videos does it. The over-use of it is the issue, like when you say a word too much and your brain stops understanding what it means.
> It feels fake, because they speak in a way that sounds unnatural and overelaborate.
I’ve been to a few official Apple Developer events. What I’ve noticed is that they all have the same presentation style, to the point that it feels almost cult-like.
I really miss, as a late 90's/early 2000's apple fan, seeing Steve come up and joke with the audience then just show off real products or features and why they're cool. They really sterilized this whole thing after he passed. It's as exciting as a Microsoft keynote now.
Just watch a normal presentation like Mac OS X 10.2 or 10.3, it's not iPhone level earth shattering but he made it fun.
I remember one where there were technical issues so Steve just started telling stories about the old days with Woz... impossible to imagine that from ANY tech company today
Not to spoil the magic but the plan B dialog was somewhat rehearsed too. Award for the best recovery lines goes to James Dempsey and the "I Love (NS)View" song. "I, uh, forgot to mention up front that this song is a beta version. It's feature complete, mind you, but I won't have the words memorized until October..."
Probably but even the fact that they're rehearsing time-filling stories is a more human trait than the pre-recorded months in advance videos that are usually shown today.
lol, I have a few other memories of Steve for when there were technical issues during the keynote. WiFi congestion and dead digital camera still pop up in my memory every now and then.
Someone with no money must survive with short term thinking: hunt and kill a wombat on the savanna or something. From there you work your way away from short term thinking; you might have enough to get through the week already, so the threat of starvation is more long term. Eventually with enough in the bank you have nearly no urgency; you could conceivably mishandle your bonds when they mature in twenty years or something. But with enough money, literally the only risk is short term thinking and immediacy. Bending over to pick up a penny is not going to even be considered.
If my ship ever really comes in and docks at the harbor I’m going to remember to keep my wallet full of cash, so I can stop and get that strawberry ice cream cone without worrying about the long term consequences, which are all I would have left.
Sure, but I think it’s also b/c the target audience for these keynotes has shifted. Given their immense market cap, now there’s an increased fiduciary responsibility to control how presentation lands, such as earnings reports, which comes at the expense of the fun.
It’s not money they started it during Covid and it stuck because presumably Cook likes the little movie making bits they had in it judging from other things like the Mother Earth skit he did.
Would be a welcome change it if the incoming CEO went back to live on stage imho
Also—and this sounds like a small thing but it's really not—when Steve said something like "we have some really exciting updates for you today," he really truly believed it. I just went back and re-watched his appearances on WSJ D1, D2 and D3, and he was actually psyched about every little iTunes update.
It's not just Apple, Microsoft but whole corporate world, and hell - even open source projects use same sterilized safe language of "we're so excited" in communication with users, customers. That's the actual reality distortion field.
The uncanny hands-but-not-fingers movements they all do really bothers me. Their hands flop around but stay completely limp. Like they're robots who heard that humans move their hands when talking but don't have any fine motor control.
Yeah, the biggest problem is really that they all have the same approach, so these specific details stick out more through repetition. They don't let their presenters speak in their own voice or in their own presentation style. It's ironic for the company that made that 1984 commercial. The attempt at using different speakers to add variety actually ends up doing the opposite because the similarities become even more evident when a dozen people all behave in the same way.
This has been a thing for all tech companies for years.
According to what I was told by some FANNG people (I've never worked for them myself) some employees were/are were sent to public speaking classes after being hired specifically to teach socially awkward programmers how to talk on stage, and this is what they teach them, weird hand movements and all.
People smiling while using Siri and holding their phones 2 meters away from their faces looks genuinely disturbing and fake. We are at that point where I hope their next stream will be AI generated so it looks more natural.
It seems very disturbing in the current environment somehow, like nothing bad ever happens in Apple world, when in reality many things are falling apart.
For example the part about cameras, where they seem to advertise them not as security products but as a lifestyle aid.
The rehearsed marketing is so strong that it comes across in a very perverse way.
Apple is as much an aspirational lifestyle company as they are anything else. That's been their marketing aim for quite a while. It's less about the tech and more of a message of "This is the person/lifestyle you can be if you buy our products"
Of course, but it’s interesting to see how they apply that marketing mold to security devices, by making up use-cases which nobody is buying them for. It contrasts with the crash detection and health stuff where realistic scenarios are shown.
Ok, maybe it’s not that interesting on reflection, and how are they even supposed to advertise it, with burglars?
are these even real people there? they look so perfectly orchestrated in every hand and body movement, void of any mistake but also soul. you really can't get further away of a real human connection than this.
I think Apple can't find their voice since Steve Jobs passed/stopped doing the presentations. Thats why it feels inauthentic. I imagine its also hard to really feel "best (iphone|ipad|macos|etc) yet" when they are debuting features that existed elsewhere for a while. Its just a massive disconnect from anyone but fans. The same could be said for innovative features, whats left to innovate on smart phones?
In some ways both things are like having to be the person coming on after an amazing presentation or comic or musical act. How do you follow it?
You have to remember that Steve spent months, stories say half a year, preparing for the keynote. Arguments would get so heated he’d fire people and bring them back the next day to continue.
Hate him or love him; he knew that was the single largest stage for Apple and put the effort into each one. The keynotes today are like Apple overall, a fantastic organization that is starting to drift toward.. fake.
I wonder how Steve would've felt about the nagware for new AI generated pictures in the "new" Keynote CrEaToR StUdIo app, considering that the app was basically tailor made specifically for his needs in those keynotes.
A great unacknowledged gag would be Craig losing an additional button on his blue shirt every time they cut away, so by the end it's full-Scarface unbuttoned down to his belt.
They communicate the products and product changes quickly, comprehensively and accurately. This was a change that happened at the beginning of COVID, but it turns out most people liked it so it stuck.
Many of us don't want to watch people fumble with presentation problems. We don't want the lead in, setup, filler banter, so on.
I'll take this sort of "you spend your time perfecting your presentation instead of wasting thousands/millions of people's time doing it live"
I like it I think it’s sort of cool to see the different environments around Apple Park and be able to hear from a lot of different employees without having to watch a parade over the stage
Seeing people whining and gnashing and bitching, in vein it should be observed, about this sort of nonsense is so uproarious and, quite honestly, pathetic.
Like the root post whining that it's too polished. Christ. Get a grip and go touch grass if this is the sort of pathetic nonsense someone actually takes the time to whine about.
It's actually funny how every single presentation like this always gets topped by profoundly boring people complaining about some aspect of the presentation: The people aren't standing right or moving the way you want. OMG look at his jacket. That joke wasn't funny. Etc. Christ.
Yes, most people just want the information, not some sort of organic, "all-natural" presentation.
I didn't feign to comment about presentation style until someone's complaint sat atop the entire thread. As always it gets sidetracked into meta and arrogantly held personal preferences. Could it be HN otherwise?
So I say I like it and why. To, in again classic HN style, to be met by someone declaring that no, nobody on the entire planet likes it.
Upset? LOL, no, I guarantee you nothing on this shakes fists at clouds site upsets me. Humours me? Sure.
Are you one of those people who make that mistake? Because nowhere is that inferred in my post.
I enjoy the presenters and the enthusiasm and nuance that they bring to the presentation. I do not need to see someone figure out how to switch a display or change a slide or fumble with wireless that is overwhelmed in a hall with a thousand wireless devices or... All of that is utterly unnecessary, so pre-recording it, doing all of the post production, reshooting so you don't trip people up on misreads / mispronunciations / fumbles / technical issues, etc, gets the human + the information without the ancillary bullshit.
It's actually funny because I don't stream Google or nvidia presentations for this same reason (I just wait for engadget or someone to just give the bullet list recap), and I suspect many/most of the people whining and gnashing about this one being "too produced" don't either. Somehow it always ends up being 80% in the weeds nonsense.
> We don't want the lead in, setup, filler banter, so on.
Wait...they still don't do that?
Every one of the dozen or so speaker changes during that presentation involved a snippet of some jaunty bland corpo-pop song and some swoopy animation. Filler banter? They had a flying fucking VW Bus!
I'll take some sweaty nerd walking out on stage to applause and tripping on their shoelaces over that every day (except the Bus bit that was actually pretty well made)
I think it is more that axing the audience feedback was convenient for them. In the old WWDC keynotes they had to get the audience to 'wow' and applaud. You could very quickly see a feature sink when Apple announced features where the audience went 'meh'.
Now they completely control the narrative.
But I have only rarely heard anyone who liking the new-style presentations. It all seems fake with the same woolly business talk (everything is an 'experience' now, 'app experiences', etc.).
I certainly long back for the days where anything could happen, Jobs would work to convince the audience and Bertrand Serlet would come on and troll Microsoft.
Currently streaming the presentation, but it has mostly gone to the background as it's so insanely boring.
Their audience are no longer the people in the room. The audience is the people watching the video or livestream which is great because that means you don't need thousands of dollars and an invite to go to WWDC.
>I think it is more that axing the audience feedback was convenient for them. In the old WWDC keynotes they had to get the audience to 'wow' and applaud.
I feel like I'm about to tell you there is no Santa or something, but did you really not know that Apple always stuffed audiences with Apple employees? Of the remainder it both through intentional and natural selection leaned towards sycophants. Did you really think the roaring response were organic feedback?
It was always controlled. Personally I'm happy to be done with the on-cue tumultuous cheering and whooping.
>But I have only rarely heard anyone who liking the new-style presentations
Well I have only rarely heard anyone who liked the slow, plodding old-style presentation. So...
But yes, HN is overwhelming filled with angry, shakes-fist-at-clouds "it ain't like the olden days!" sorts now. So if you really think this place represents the norm...
I was in the audience at WWDC 2019 and lemme tell you, there ain't no whoopin and hollering from the paid shills in the audience that could've been louder than the massive "oooooooof lol whut" let out by 1500 people when Ternus announced the Pro Display Stand would cost $999.
> Did you really think the roaring response were organic feedback?
It was always controlled. Personally I'm happy to be done with the on-cue tumultuous cheering and whooping.
While I agree with you, I think even the controlled audience mattered.
The audience, even if they were largely Apple employees + journalists, did not know what was gonna be revealed. And there weren’t literal cue cards.
So you would never see the audience boo, but there were several situations where the Apple presenters expected cheering but got polite clapping instead, or cheering which was very evidently just the sycophantic employees (or the team that worked on something).
When something was truly exciting, the cheering reflected that in a way it didn’t when the announcement wasn’t.
Two very different examples of this were the Snow Leopard reveal, where the excitement could be felt throughout the presentation, culminating with the $29 price, and the iPhone reveal with the 3 devices in 1 gimmick.
(Aside from clearly not an Apple employee, Jobs' way of taking the question is brilliant. Yes I know this was probably not the keynote, but it's a big, risky, filmed WWDC event.)
But yes, HN is overwhelming filled with angry, shakes-fist-at-clouds "it ain't like the olden days!" sorts now. So if you really think this place represents the norm...
Yes, let's resort to personal attacks. There are a lot of things that are better now. Apple Keynotes are not one of them.
You linked to a "fireside chat" with Steve Jobs, consultant, returning to a highly dysfunctional Apple. The video is almost 30 years ago.
If that's your evidence to rebut me, lol.
>Yes, let's resort to personal attacks
You took that as a personal attack? That is incredibly weird. It was a general observation about the sort of perspectives that top HN, but not in the general world, or even general technology. You don't have to believe it.
Like seriously, currently the top post to a discussion about Apple unveiling an array of software improvements is some guy whining and bitching about the presentation, whining that it isn't like the olden days.
These events used to just be for developers and press but they've seemed to recognize that these events have become major marketing opportunities and will get clipped on social media ad nauseum so they started (over) polishing them
Oddly, the strange handheld look and constant reframing of the talking head shots are pulling me wildly out of focus and distracting me terribly. Wonder what drove the choice to do it.
Now they are showing their AI image generator. It looks about two generations behind, so it's essentially slopmaxxing. Really horrible and unauthentic looking. "Take a picture of your friend, then make a funny picture of her holding a cake." How about no?
The bits that are fine: removing distractions from photos, extensions to the edges, fixing color/exposure etc.
In a time where people are increasingly disillusioned with the tech industry & billionaires the imagery Apple puts forward of a literally siloed utopian ultra wealthy landscape probably does rub people the wrong way, at least at a subconscious level.
In the past Apple has been pretty good at anticipating and responding to shifting cultural dynamics. I wonder if they'll recognize and adjust?
I'm not sure it actually rubs people the wrong way, given Apple's sales numbers. Apple positions themselves as an aspirational brand. Everything they do is on purpose to enforce that. When people are upset at reality most people look for an escape into something else, not dive further into whats actually happening.
The siloed utopian landscape is the point. Apple tries to sell a modern, clean lifestyle status symbol. They are selling products for the person you hope you become, not the person you are right now. "Buy an iPhone, and this is what your life could look like."
Same deal as fad diets and gym memberships, its the illusion of being able to buy your way into a lifestyle without doing the hard work. Apple is selling an identity.
I agree with that, but I don't think it's incompatible with my observation.
Apple has often in the past positioned itself as an aspirational product for those who aim to be tasteful, talented, beautiful and wealthy.
The risk of becoming too disconnected from reality is that the typical person may stop aspiring to the sort of rich-person reality Apple presents. Think of how many of the symbols of wealth of prior generations, like fine tableware, were rejected by younger generations.
It is so long, with so many unnecessary sentences. And it feels like everything is said at least twice; First a generic statement about the new feature. Then a specific example, or a deeper explanation of what the first generic statement was. Then a demo. And then a conclusion to the future.
The old Steve Jobs keynotes focused on the most interesting things, but now it feels like they are afraid not to include everything. So everything gets diluted.
It would help a lot if they would stop saying the same lines:"And now...", "We cannot wait for you to try our new XXXX ... ", or "We could not be more excited to...", "We are excited to... ".
"With that, now over to person-X"