Will Apple Ever Go Back to In-Person Product Launches?

MC: Well, I will say that our readers love to read about Apple news, and as an editor who is a total traffic glutton, I enjoy producing stories about Apple news. So I will say that no, I never get tired of Apple events.

LG: I’m so disappointed by this answer.

MC: Sorry.

LG: I’m not mad at you, Mike. I’m just disappointed in you.

MC: Oh no, I’m sorry.

LG: No, it’s OK. There is still a ton of interest in these. I tweeted yesterday asking people if they wanted me to live-tweet the Apple event, and I think I got about 500 responses and 80 percent of them were, “Yes, please tweet about the Apple event.”

MC: That’s funny because I tweeted the same thing, and I got 500 responses and they were all, “Please, God, no.”

LG: So with that clear answer, we’re now going to podcast about the Apple event.

MC: Let’s do it.

[Gadget Lab intro theme music plays]

LG: Hey everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I’m Lauren Goode. I’m a senior writer at WIRED.

MC: And I’m Michael Calore. I am a senior editor at WIRED.

LG: We’re also joined by WIRED product writer Brenda Stolyar. Hey, Brenda.

Brenda Stolyar: Hello. Thank you for having me back again.

LG: Brenda, we’re so close, and yet so far away, I happen to be in New York City right now, where you are. We’re just in different neighborhoods. And I just got off a plane and I might sound a little different than normal.

BS: Yeah. I mean, you also chose … You did kind of choose this day, I guess, but it’s a little rainy, so I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry we welcomed you with some gloomy snow, rain, all the weather today.

LG: That’s OK. I love a moody New York day. All right, let’s talk about what was going on in sunny Cupertino. So this week Apple held its first product launch event of 2022. And we’re going to talk all about the hardware details later on in this episode. But first, let’s talk a little bit about the event itself. Since the start of the pandemic and the need to keep social distance from each other, these tech press events have largely been prerecorded things. We’re all sitting home, watching them, covering them, writing about them virtually. And this has its obvious downsides and maybe a few upsides. Generally, these are very slickly produced events. They’re flashy. They might be a little weird. I’m looking at you, Samsung. But they’re kind of these trailers for this world, this Apple universe, that companies like Apple want us to aspire to live in.

Then they’re like, “Oh, and here’s this shiny new iPhone.” But this time around the tone felt a little off. There’s a horrific war going on right now in Ukraine, since the country was just invaded by Russia a couple of weeks ago, and everyone is on edge as tensions grow. But Apple, interestingly, didn’t acknowledge any of that, which was unusual. In the past, it has sometimes spent a minute or two making remarks about what’s happening outside of the Apple world, whether it’s to acknowledge social upheaval or the impact of the pandemic on various communities. But Tuesday was just about gadgets: iPhone, iPad, Mac, lots of chip stuff, oohs and ahs, the whole thing. I want to get your thoughts on this before we talk about the actual new products. Brenda, let’s start with you.

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