Speaking as someone who’s never attended a WWDC in person, today’s sessions felt like an overall improvement over an in-person event. Presentations felt tighter and more polished overall. It was probably a little less nerve-wracking for the speakers to have everything recorded ahead of time, even if they miss out on some of the live audience feedback and applause.
I realize that for the people who have attended WWDC in person this is for sure a downgrade for a lot of reasons, but for the tens of thousands more developers who get to experience the conference this time as first class citizens, this is an overall upgrade.
WWDCs for the past… decade or so have felt stagnant in their format that dates back to Steve Jobs. This year’s WWDC feels like Apple is finally breaking free of that legacy and trying something new that is true to the reality of Apple’s scale today. This year’s WWDC format also feels more true to the nature of working as a developer, something Apple hinted to in the outro video for the Platforms State of the Union, showing developers working in a variety of settings, sometimes late at night, sometimes with children around. By embracing a distributed and more asynchronous conference format, you are making WWDC feel like it’s for everyone, not just a privileged relative few who can make the journey.
Apple didn’t want to do this year’s WWDC like this; they were forced to do the event like this because of COVID-19, and I’m sure they’re eager to do live events again when it’s safe. And that’s great! I can’t imagine it gets much better than working hard on something great for people and hearing that thunderous applause when it’s introduced on stage. But the community has changed, and the defaults should change too.
Leave a Reply