The era of the Apple event is over

By the time you read this, Apple may have launched the 4th-gen iPhone SE… or it may not. Who can say? Unlike a fall iPhone launch, which takes place at a special media event and is therefore flagged a week in advance by a clue-filled invite, we’re told that the new SE will follow the less glamorous route of an emailed press release. Press releases drop into our inboxes with zero notice, often in the window between writing an article and posting it on the website. A really well-timed email can send tech journalists scurrying to the nearest content management system like panicking meerkats.

They may give Apple the element of surprise (and save money on video production and acting coaches), but press releases lack a certain something when it comes to excitement. I complained recently about the injustice of a product as important as the new SE being treated like a coupon offer at your local burrito spot. Events mean hype, and if anything deserves a bit of hype, it’s this strategically vital entryway into the Cupertino ecosystem.

Hype, however, may be a commodity we will have to learn to live without. It may be time to recognize that big Apple events are on borrowed time, and that the days of tech product announcements as must-watch appointment TV may be over.

In 2024, admittedly, we got a generous slate of events. But the odd thing was that none of them seemed necessary. The Let Loose event last May ran long on gaffes and short on substantive reveals, and I saw nothing to make me revise my pre-event prediction of a meeting that could have been an email. WWDC was all software, and the iPhone event was heavy on Apple intelligence. And the one event that mattered didn’t happen. Instead of a Mac event in late fall to announce the redesigned M4 Mac mini, Apple chose instead to hold a week of quieter announcements on three consecutive days in October.

By doing so, the company held the attention of the tech media for multiple news cycles at a fraction of the cost of an event, and because it deployed the whisper rather than the megaphone, fans were less inclined to be disappointed by the new kit. It’s also worth bearing in mind that, as big events become rarer, the amount of attention and interest each one can harvest becomes greater. The boy who cries wolf too often may find that customers stop bothering to tune into his wolf live streams.

The warning signs for the big Apple event appeared, as with the decline of so many beloved cultural institutions, when normal life shut down for the pandemic. WWDC 2020 was the first of a series of virtual-only Apple events, with risky but exhilarating on-stage demos replaced by safe and dull pre-recorded videos: glorified adverts, really. When restrictions lifted the company understandably decided to retain many aspects of the visual events, blending canned presentations with a few hands-on elements. The benefits of virtual were simply too appealing to leave behind.

The problem is that with the live stage sections removed, events start to lose their original purpose and meaning. A pre-recorded video will be sharper and faster than a live performance, but it won’t communicate the same excitement to the audience—there will be no sense of being present at a historic moment when anything could happen. And once you get to that point, it feels quaint to sit through 80 minutes of joyless skits and robotic marketing spiel in order to get to the headline announcements. Why not save everyone’s time and just send out an email? Why not just post the advert on the website?

Once you add in the comparatively dull nature of many recent Apple product updates, and Tim Cook’s obvious lack of interest in being the same kind of showman as his predecessor, there’s really only one conclusion: there will be fewer Apple events in the future, and the ones we get simply aren’t going to be as exciting as they once were. There will be fewer mistakes (at least of the “whoops, this feature didn’t work” type) and fewer moments of authentic wonder. Imagine if Steve Jobs hadn’t unveiled the iPhone in front of a live audience.

But maybe, given how artificial the whole thing has become, it’s all for the best. It’s supposed to be about the products, not the event. The steak, not the sizzle. And the new iPhone SE will live and die by its qualities, not its press release.