Apple has… put out an invite! Smash the glass on the emergency alarm. Call out the national guard. Fire up the hot take machine. Or… get a grip.
Apple invite is out! Confirmed on 9/9 at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in SF at 10am "Hey Siri, Give us a hint."
— Emily Chang (@emilychangtv) August 27, 2015
We’ve got to stop playing this game. Journalists have been tripping over themselves for far too long when it comes to the latest sniff of a new thing from Apple.
Of course, the reason is traffic. Apple means traffic. I’m writing this because it annoys me, but realistically, a post about Apple will also mean tasty traffic. That’s cool water to the dehydrated thirsty masses of the press corps.
Apple puts a clue on its event invite – a hint to talk to Siri this time – and hacks are suddenly off to the races with as many posts as possible about a single image.
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It’s Apple’s ball game and we slavishly play it. I have sat and watched every Apple event since 2007, when I first took coin to write professionally about technology. The game plan has remained identical.
If you use an anagram program, add some letters to the Apple Invite – it spells that they are introducing an iToaster and iJuicer combo
— Andrew Horowitz (@andrewhorowitz) August 28, 2015
The events themselves have remained largely the same, save for a recent move to good musical guests over the kind of middle-of-the-road chum fodder favored by Steve Jobs, whose music taste calcified sometime in 1969.
There might be a new Apple TV, there will be improvements to Apple Watch, there might be super-charged Siri, there will be new iPhones, there might be a new iPod, there may be a ‘one more thing.’
There won’t be a car. There won’t be any of things perennially wrong analysts like Gene Munster say we’ll see.
The bloggers will blog. The tweeters will tweet. Apple’s marketing bonanza will echo around the chamber, so much sound and fury, signalling practically nothing.
The products will be cool. We will drool over them. Two or three months later we’ll suddenly discover whatever the ‘bug’ or flaw in the new iPhone is and the cycle of press stories with a -gate suffix will start again.
We’ve all got to stop playing this game. Apple is astounding but Apple is also one of the biggest companies in the world and we’re still treating it like a plucky underdog.
#Apple's invite to the show asks for a hint from Siri, here's what she says. pic.twitter.com/FPAW3S10NS
— david kk (@ddkkpp) August 28, 2015
I’m typing this on a Mac. I like it. There’s an iPhone on the table. It’s a 5s and I’m craving a replacement. But Apple is a corporation – a startlingly effective one that keeps producing product that makes me put my hand in my pocket – but a corporation nonetheless.
It’s not a cult. Tim Cook is not the messiah. The messiah would have a nattier dress sense. The messiah is not from Alabama.
Or, to put it another way and misquote LCD Soundsystem – Apple, I love you, but you’re bringing me down.
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