Summary

The article analyzes past Apple event invitations, particularly their slogans and artwork, to assess the validity of reading into them for hints about upcoming product announcements.

Abstract

The content delves into the interpretations of Apple event invitations, with a focus on the WWDC 2021 invitation's Memoji wearing glasses, which some believe may hint at the announcement of Apple Glasses. John Gruber and Renee Ritchie discuss the potential significance of these details, with Gruber suggesting that the slogans often provide more insight than the artwork itself. The article revisits past event slogans such as "There's Something in the Air" and "Time Flies" to evaluate Gruber's hypothesis, finding that some slogans like "Gather round" and "By innovation only" were less revealing than others. With the upcoming WWDC slogan "Glow and behold," speculation arises about possible announcements related to display technology, such as Apple Glasses, a new iMac, or a lower-priced external monitor, though the article concludes that the odds of correctly predicting announcements based on slogans are not high.

Opinions

John Gruber and Renee Ritchie engage in Apple Kremlinology, interpreting the WWDC 2021 invitation's Memoji with glasses as a possible hint towards AR glasses.
Gruber believes that the slogans of Apple event invitations, such as "Time Flies," are more telling than the artwork, often directly referencing the main product announcement.
Renee Ritchie suggests that the inclusion of glasses in Memoji could be a strategic move to acclimate users to AR environments in preparation for future AR product releases.
The article's author applies Occam's Razor to past Apple event slogans, finding that while some slogans like "There's Something in the Air" and "Time Flies" were directly related to product announcements, others like "Gather round" were more ambiguous.
The author speculates that the WWDC 2021 slogan "Glow and behold" might indicate a new product with a significant display feature, though acknowledges the challenge of predicting Apple's announcements based on invitation slogans.

APPLE EVENTS

What Invitations Tell Us About Apple Events

Sometimes a screen is just a screen. Sometimes it’s not.

At the start of last week’s ‘Toaster Fridgey’ episode of The Talk Show, John Gruber, and Renee Ritchie went full Apple Kremlinology on the meaning of the WWDC 2021 invitation’s glasses-wearing Memoji:

John: People are going bananas, thinking that the fact that they’re all wearing glasses and that you see bits of software reflected in the glasses, is that it’s a hint that the AR glasses announcement might be coming at WWDC. To which I say, maybe? ... So what do you think, you think glasses are coming?

Renee: …it still feels really early to me, so I wonder if it’s just, “Hey we want to show a little bit of software in this, we can show reflections in glasses”.

John: …to go with what I’m thinking in my Kremlinology aspect of looking into these WWDC announcements, maybe even the little subtle things like Phil Schiller’s Memoji getting glasses is that they’re just subtly making, hey it’s cool to wear eyeglasses all the time.

Renee: …I even think Memoji are like that, just getting people used to having an AR presence because it’s not going to be comfortable for a lot of people, but if they get us in there with the iPhone, the iPad early, they get us to make our fun little Memoji characters so we’re used to seeing avatars of ourselves in an AR world. I think all of this stuff is really smart pre-marketing for those products.

After 15 minutes spent discussing Apple Glasses, Gruber delivered the following opinion:

John: I always feel like there’s more to read into the slogans than the artwork. So they had the “Time Flies” event last September and I thought well that means the headliner of this event is going to be the watch. And then other people had these complicated explanations for how “No, no, no, that actually means the iPhones are coming in September.” And I was like no, “Time Flies” really sounds like the watch to me.

Renee: It’s either the watch or flight and I’m pretty sure they don’t have flight.

John: What was another good one. I think “There’s Something in the Air”, remember that one?… If I’m recalling correctly, “There’s Something in the Air” was just that was going to be the MacBook Air and that was the year Steve Jobs famously took it out of a manila envelope. But I remember there were people who thought that they had a partnership with Adobe to make Adobe Air a new development platform…

Renee: Occam’s Razor, I think, is not often applied when it comes to Apple invitations.

Does The Defense’s Case Hold Water?¹

MacWorld 2008 and September 2020 Apple Event invitations.

Let’s see how well Gruber’s hypothesis, that invitation slogans hint at what Apple will announce, holds up. Starting with “There’s Something in the Air”, which was the slogan for MacWorld 2008, he is correct, that was the event where Steve Jobs announced the MacBook Air. An impressive recollection given that it was so long ago that Jobs said “We’ve got a great relationship with Intel”, and even invited Intel CEO Paul Otellini on stage to receive a round of applause for Intel’s role in creating the “The world’s thinnest notebook”. Time flies.

Speaking of “Time Flies”, that was the slogan for the September 2020 Apple Event, and Gruber is two for two. At the event, Apple announced Apple Watch Series 6, with a new health sensor that measures blood oxygen saturation.

September 2018, September 2019, and October 2020 Apple Event invitations.

So far so good, but let’s look at some other slogans. “Gather round.” was the slogan for the September 2018 Apple Event. MacWorld made 10 guesses about what the slogan could mean, including a round Apple Watch, a new Mac Pro, Over-ear headphones, and AirPower, before conceding that the invitation artwork exactly matched the t-shirts sold at the Apple Park gift shop and that the invitation’s artwork and slogan were references to the Apple campus.

“By innovation only.”, the slogan for the September 2019 Apple Event, could be applied to any Apple product, so no luck there. But “Hi, Speed.”, the slogan for the October 2020 Apple Event, was widely reported to be a reference to the iPhone 12's expected high-performance A14 chipset and 5G wireless modem, both of which Apple did announce.

Moving on to WWDC invitations, the slogan for 2019 was “Write code. Blow minds.” Taken as a whole, the slogan could have been a reference to the Catalyst and SwiftUI frameworks that make it easier for iPhone and iPad developers to write code for the Mac. But the slogan could have had a dual meaning, with only “Write code.” referencing the new frameworks, and “Blow minds.” referencing the new Mac Pro that was unveiled. Certainly, the Mac Pro’s $4,999 XDR display was mind-blowing. Especially the fact that the stand was optional, and priced at $999.

Disappointingly, the 2020 slogan, “Full stream ahead.” was a straightforward reference to the first all-online WWDC. That brings us to this year’s slogan “Glow and behold.” Like last year, WWDC will again be all online and the slogan could once again be a direct reference to that aspect of the event.

Based on the slogans reviewed in this story, there seems to be less than a fifty-fifty chance that “Glow and behold.” will wind up being a reference to an Apple announcement at this year’s WWDC. But if the slogan is an announcement hint, it seems pretty clearly aimed at a product that prominently features a new display.

In addition to the Apple Glasses discussed by Gruber and Ritchie, other display-centric candidates are a new iMac which has been rumored to have a larger screen and slimmer bezels than the current model, or the under-development lower-priced external monitor that has been rumored by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

While the odds aren’t in my favor, I’m betting that one of these three will be announced at WWDC. And I only have to wait 56 days to find out if I’m right.

[1]: The defense is wrong.