Why Apple’s ‘exciting week of announcements’ is better than an event

Update October 28: The first of Apple’s three announcements is the M4 iMac and the arrival of Apple Intelligence.

There’s a risk, if you do something for long enough, that you forget why you started doing it in the first place. And fail to realize that you’ve turned a once-useful activity into a cargo-cult ritual.

Take the Apple special event. These used to be some of the most electrifying experiences in the tech industry. Start with a groundbreaking product launch (iMac, iPhone, MacBook Air), sprinkle in some Steve Jobs razzle-dazzle, and fill the auditorium with a crowd so whoop-prone they should be tested for pertussis, and the result is, well, magical.

Why would you hold an event to announce your product, when events cost money and put everyone involved to great inconvenience? Why not just ship the devices straight out to stores, and spend the money on advertising? Because the person-to-person experience has no equal for sharing a sense of enthusiasm. Because seeing is believing. And because a one-off event makes people plan their week around finding out what you’ve got to announce, adverts just make them reach for the remote.

Apple still holds press events—it held one last month—but they’re completely different these days. Nobody can do what Steve Jobs once did, but his role is filled by a rotating cast who do their best to come close: Tim Cook as compere; Jonny Ive (until he departed) as the mystical evangelist; Craig Federighi as the likable gag man. Some can equal the founder’s polish, but none can match his stagecraft, his ability to build anticipation and make an event unmissable.

On top of this, Apple has largely given up on the idea of the live event. This policy began as a pragmatic response to COVID-19 but has continued well beyond the point when it was medically useful because the company recognized the secondary benefits. Pre-recorded events carry no risk of product malfunctions (such as Federighi’s unfortunate experience when unveiling Face ID in 2017), require less logistical organization, and enable presenters to rattle through a greater volume of material in less time. But they also remove the entire purpose of press events, which is to make the audience feel part of history, that they were there when something happened. There’s a reason why Rolling Stones tickets cost $150 and Rolling Stones DVDs cost $10.

With all this in mind, I can’t pretend to be especially sad to discover that the rumored October event will instead be a weeklong series of announcements, presumably by means of a press release or three. A lot of Apple’s meetings could have been an email; this one actually will be. And little, I suspect, will be lost.

I will admit that going for press releases instead of an event isn’t a terribly promising sign, in the sense that Apple would probably hold an event if it thought the announcements were going to be momentous enough to justify one. And for that reason we shouldn’t expect anything this week, despite Greg Joswiak’s optimistic word choice, to rival the original iMac or MacBook Air for excitement. But were we expecting that anyway? And has the company allowed dullness to stop it from holding events in the past? September’s event was pretty dull in the grand scheme of things, and my suspicion is that habit rather than a sense of urgency caused Apple to send out the invites on that occasion.

In actual fact, here at Macworld, we’re expecting announcements this week that may not live up to that “exciting” tag, but should be important and worthwhile. Apple has a lot of Macs to unveil: the M4 versions of the iMac, the MacBook Pro, and the Mac mini, the latter of which is likely to feature an actual physical redesign, something Mac fans haven’t seen in a while. The Mac mini is a key product in Apple’s ecosystem, much like the iPhone SE and 10th-gen iPad, but because it isn’t a “pro” device it will probably never get the stage time it merits.

This week (today, in fact) will also mark the public launch of Apple Intelligence, which will arrive with the iOS 18.1 and macOS 15.1 updates. Whether that will be officially tied in with Exciting Week remains to be seen, but the joy of a week, as opposed to an event, is that you don’t have to limit the number of things you talk about, or even come up with a coherent theme. Who knows, we might even get a press release about the much-needed 11th-gen iPad… although I rather doubt it.

Ultimately, though, the primary reason why this is better than an event is it’s easier for journalists to cover it. We don’t have to sit through a two-hour presentation taking notes like a maniac and then write them up for six hours while mainlining pizza and vanilla rooibos. We can cover the announcements at a leisurely pace, as they come in, and give each one the time and attention it deserves.

And if there’s anything more exciting than calm working conditions, I’d like to hear about it. Happy Exciting Week, everyone.

Foundry

Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.

Trending: Top stories

Apple confirms ‘an exciting week’ of Mac news, starting today!

With iOS 18, loving your iPhone is a real chore.

Why the ‘iPhone SE Plus’ makes more sense than you think.

Apple Intelligence is coming to fix the iPhone notification mess—finally.

Revealed: How Apple creates your passwords.

A day in the life of CEO Tim Cook: The hunt for Diet Mountain Dew.

Apple is forcing Jason Cross to turn to Google because Siri won’t do this one simple thing.

Revealed: The true cost of the iPhone 16.

The new iPad mini is only boring because the next model will be amazing.

Podcast of the week

Apple is all set to release iOS 18.1, and with it comes Apple Intelligence, Apple’s much-hyped set of AI features. In the latest episode of the Macworld Podcast, we talk about what we can expect from iOS 18.1 and how it will affect how you use your iPhone. We may also see new M4 Macs.

You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.

Reviews corner

• iCloud Drive review: The cloud storage service all Apple users can access.
• Google Drive review: Why Google rules cloud storage.
• Adata SE920 External SSD review: Turbo storage for mobile content creators.
• Scuf Nomad review: Compact iPhone controller with customization options.

The rumor mill

Fear not, M4 Macs are still coming ‘very soon’.

Apple is working on a new App Store just for games, report claims.

Early 2025 Apple bonanza includes M4 MacBook Air, iPhone SE, iPad Air, 11th-gen iPad.

More RAM, more ports, and sweet Space Black? The new M4 MacBook Pro might finally get everything right.

Software updates, bugs, and problems

Apple will finally fix the iPhone 16 freeze/restart bug with this week’s update.

iOS 18.2 beta is available with loads of new Apple Intelligence features.

Apple updates firmware on older AirPods models version 6F21.

And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters. You can also follow us on Facebook, Threads, or Twitter for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.