[chucker]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 Well, on a related(?) note... They wouldn't do such a thing - and have them factoring in so prominently in the promo material - if there wasn't some big emoji/animoji/memoji/wtfoji "news" coming today.

Eh, I dunno. Last year's WWDC featured memoji very prominently (every session video started out that way, which was kinda cute).

It's funny… the last time I noticed memoji was literally at last year's WWDC. They don't seem to be used much in my sphere. Maybe that's very different for gen Z?

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 What's funny to me is that, at some point in the past few months at Apple, all the top-level execs received an email telling them to craft a new, updated "self-oji" for some upcoming marketing materials. They actually took time to a) ask for this, and b) they all did it. You have to imagine there would be at least one defiant, above-it-all one in the bunch who responded with "piss off, I've got actual work to do, Tim...". And then he got sent to HR for a stern talking-to/re-programming and suddenly got on board.

Maybe.

At this point, I imagine WWDC costs many millions to produce, what with all those session videos. I imagine any exec responding with "honestly, I'm not into it" wouldn't be very popular.

We've had Eddy dancing at WWDC. Or Steve having John Mayer play the guitar. Or Phil Schiller doing a dorky iChat video with virtual backgrounds. (Which, boy, did Apple screw that one up. They launch iChat 4 with virtual backgrounds in 2005, do nothing with it for over a decade, and then Zoom eats their lunch.)

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 They make everyone look like they're about 12 or so (too cute, too round/pie-faced/chubby-cheeked), so it's more of a "show us your idealized pre-teen perception of yourself". Maybe they should be called pedomoji?

Yikes

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 PS - I've noticed, as of 9:10am ET (four hours before the presentation) that the online store is still up. I've noticed in the past that it often goes down far earlier on the day of (often down when I wake up at 5-6am), so either a) they've just not done it yet and it'll happen in the next few hours, or b) this could be a sign that it is indeed a software/preview/OS-only type of show today...all talk, all OS's and services, and no new hardware to sell. I suppose some middle-ground answer could be "new MacBook Pros unveiled" but delayed ordering for another few weeks/months for whatever reason(s)?

Yup.

I don't like this trend how Apple does more and more pre-announcing of products ("it's available TODAY" was a really nice touch Steve often did), but it has been a trend, so I wouldn't at all be surprised if it's available for pre-order in a few weeks, so nothing new for the store today.