Comment by Nevermark
15 hours ago
John Ternus, and his co-presenters, still presented with the now institutionalized Apple-voice: obviously-rehearsed, emotionally-flat, robo-replay.
They spent their time practicing to recite, instead of talk, to people.
So hard to sit through.
I had assumed that was a genuine, if not inspiring, reflection of Cook's controlled non-spontaneous personality. Relative to Steve's emotionally-rich casual-coded excited-to-share delivery.
One big difference from Steve: it isn't the Steve show anymore. The people showing this stuff off are the people who lead the the teams that work on these things.
It's so much cooler to me to see the people closer to the work talking about it rather than just Steve Jobs, as amazing as he was to watch. I'll take slightly stilted any day of the week as a tradeoff.
Ternus did introduce a new rhetorical thing, though. He framed some of the guiding principles during the opening and throughout as ideas originating from himself, not Apple. Cook rarely said "I" in relation to a claim, other than "I'm so proud of" X, Y, Z. That's a bit more product guy, a bit more Opinionated. I am hoping for more of that.
I disagree twice. It was very cool to see Steve Jobs, and he was heavily involved in the work and design decisions, perhaps even more than the people presenting.
How? How involved? Like what exactly did he do?
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People under estimate how hard it is to talk naturally in front of a camera.
There’s a reason why acting as a profession exists.
As someone who has spoken on a lot of stages, it's hard. I do sort of agree that falling back on an obviously rehearsed (over-rehearsed?) style isn't great. Jobs wasn't that way but (mostly) but he was a real talent who could have sold sand to arabia.
I do think there's a general high-end corporate tendency these days to over-rehearse for big stages. I could name some CEOs who were doing it years ago. And I could name some CEOs who were terrible presenters but were very successful at least for a time.
He maybe didn't present that say but he did rehearse a lot
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That's true, but if you wanted to boil down the art of acting to one sentence it would be "do not pretend; actually do".
Jobs was a great actor in that he did not pretend to be excited. Whatever coaching is being given here is exactly in the opposite direction of acting.
It is just one approach, often referred to as method acting.
But good actors trained more classically can be just as convincing by pretending.
One is not better than the other, these are just different approaches, both capable of delivering excellent or terrible results, depending on your skills and practice. Being excited doesn't mean you look excited to an audience and vice versa.
Surely they have enough money to hire either someone to teach them to do it better or someone to give the presentation instead.
It’s also hard to be the CEO of a multi-trillion dollar company. Speaking is part of the job.
Nah, this is a deliberate choice.
Do they?
I think everyone knows how many hours they practiced and the depth of talent they could draw from. The inhuman consistency demonstrates a deliberate choice, that undermines their own message.
Care about impact wasn't just a Steve quirk, it was the reason keynotes were worth having.
Try saying "And one more thing..." in recent-Apple voice, without laughing or crying.
You can have the best acting coaches in the world and still not get ‘it’.
Comparing anyone at keynotes to Steve is challenging. He really was among the best at presentation.
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Apple trying to make presenters 'act professionaly' is the problem, not the solution. Somehow it worked pre Apple campus?
Infinite Loop seems to have missed somehow. The old Apple with multiple dodgy buildings all over the show was perhaps a bit more chaotically creative. Now it all seems very rehearsed, architected. Too perfect, just like the campus.
Don’t forget about how they desperately try to figure out what to do with their hands.
It is distracting. Just use your hands normally. It just feels a bit alien and scripted.
Personally, I always loved the way Tim Cook would always do this little bouncy thing while he talked. He kept his knees always bent a bit, and every few words would do a little tiny bounce. Once you see it…
I noticed in the cook years that presenters legs are often strangely spread apart. Looked very … weird like ‘stand up man spreading’
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yes, the cringiest thing in the entire show.
I do hope John Ternus & his team change it up, but I wasn’t expecting it from this event. He’s only been CEO for 9 days & this was probably shot before then.
There is no matching Steve, but I would like to see Apple try at least one live event again a year. Covid is what brought around the super rehearsed video presentation, and it fit Cook well, but are the days of live keynotes really done?
It’s been a while since I watched an Apple presentation, but I caught a bit of this one. And I spent the whole time trying to figure out who it was for - the presenters didn’t seem to express any genuine excitement about the products, and it didn’t convey any useful information that couldn’t be better shared by just posting the slides.
The only thing I can see is that it generates some clips for the presenters to share on their LinkedIn pages. I assume there is prestige in being selected as a presenter, and the rest of the show serves its purpose simply by existing.
They need to do these live again with an audience. Miss the old steve days.
Doing it live isn’t going to bring Steve back. He was a natural showman, the people doing it now aren’t. They’re engineers and executives. Putting them on a live stage is going to make it even tougher on them.
me too, but I guess they feel they cannot afford any missteps.
I still enjoy Marc Benioff presentations. He's very engaging to watch, though not nearly as good as Jobs in terms of storytelling. I feel Jobs honed the craft more though.
The entire presentation fell into the uncanny valley for me. Not only was the presentation flat, but the appearance of the video just felt off for the entire presentation. At one point I was questioning if they were going for something that looked like an AI generated video.
Apple needs to bring back live keynotes instead of this overproduced TV show.
> Relative to Steve's emotionally-rich casual-coded excited-to-share delivery.
Example 1,494,298 of “most people aren’t Steve Jobs.” Can’t believe we are still doing this comparison. In a few weeks it will be 15 years old.
False dichotomy.
The right response to an inspiring founder that cannot be replicated, isn't to go for uninspiring.
That’s something I noticed as well. It was very subtle, but my brain was telling me that something was off and the way people spoke was very artificial.
apple needs to rethink so much more fundamentally. Ternus talks identically to Tim Cook. Indistinguishable. It’s like when Jobs left, Apple became a reflection of the superficial touchstones that Jobs left behind, rather than the CEO defining what the culture is, and evolving it.
Give him 6 months... usually it takes a bit to change things around (including marketing / pr presentations).
But, he has been part of Apple for too long, and probably has internalized that style.
Hope he brings good change though...
Craig F with his constant foot-shuffling...
Despite that, still one of the most natural speakers in all their recent events.
Brand is brand. CEO is not brand.
So... we agree.
Sort of. We don't know what Ternus can do. We know this event was a reflection of Cook, but that is all we know.
I loved the disclaimer at the end of the iPhone Pro model that felt distinctly non-Apple and more akin to a drug commercial, "Usage of heavier models may be limited. Subscribers to certain iCloud+ plans will likely receive higher usage quotas. Now here's Sri to talk about electronics!"
Steve Jobs built sand castles at Apple, these guys are building Kings Landing.
People are insufferable with the amount of criticism
Like no one is above reproach and def everyone is open to criticism, it to open a thread with 1200 comments and see this as the first comment was super annoying
So much stuff to discuss and we are focusing on some presenters tone? jfc
I use it informally as a metric for whether there is anything meaningfully bad that I should be aware of. If this is what people bitch about, then probably the product is mostly pretty good.
I couldn't agree more with the criticism being too much. The negativity adds up and drowns a thread so much faster than the neutral comments. I don't know the reason it feels that way. And it seems so pervasive in so many places.
I wish there was a way to just put all criticism in a single thread and leave other thread trees for technology topics. Of course my first thought is a technology answer to a human problem.
That said, I simply couldn't sit through this presentation and did find it insufferable; and I've been waiting for a foldable iPhone for a long time. Having to close the presentation out of frustration tainted my purchasing decision.
a very neurotypical response