Yeah, I like them too. But I sure do
lament the complete disappearance of the Jobs format.
(I'm also half-British – close enough to fathom that dispositional ilk, I think.)
I didn't really notice the later contrived applause you mentioned – perhaps I would have with time, particularly when the invited audience was largely media people who would have been there to spectate rather than to applaud – but certainly, WWDC each year remained a pretty genuine source of the pretty genuine reactions of people worldwide who cared about Apple's software expending a great deal of their time and money to appear and fill the room. And in the earlier days, the applause was distinctly
applause – euphoric acknowledgment of something someone did – when Apple began finally putting in the work to accomplish thing after thing that people seemed to intrinsically feel was possible, but no other company in the industry was clearing their minds and putting in the work to do well. Perhaps we miss the genuine applause because we miss what Apple did to earn it. One fact seems that many of the most obvious things have now been accomplished. We've lived for decades now in a world of computers and phones that are way more excellent and luxurious than people generally need, and there's more of an open frontier.
I didn't mean to be commenting at all on Apple's tone today. Since you mention it: they do seem to be more "corporate" than ever. Anyone would expect that from one of the world's most successful companies of all time, but Apple also has some of the world's biggest merit- and value-related shoes to keep full. Even for those who believe they're navigating these paramount challenges reasonably well, as I do, our eyes are certainly attentive to everything about how they're going. It's clear there have been challenges.
