You could be forgiven for expecting something special from a fancy Apple launch event the day before Halloween — especially when the company was branching into new chronological territory. This was the first evening launch of the modern Apple era. Would we see Cook in impeccable evening wear, carrying a martini?
Then there's the timing. And the event title: "Scary Fast." That suggested we were getting speedier machines, sure. But it also suggested a theme.
Was it too much to hope that Apple, which has previously had a ton of fun with a 420-themed event, a rocking California-themed event, and more Craig Federighi appearances than you can shake a book of Dad jokes at, was going to go all out on a spooktacular spooktacular — something that sold genuinely interesting upgrades with a dash of its signature, and highly seasonal, pizzaz?
Well yes, we concluded afterwards, apparently that was too much to hope. The M3 chip speeds in its new laptops were somewhat interesting for those of us looking to upgrade, even if Apple was engaging in some sleight of hand about model comparisons. The screen was a little brighter. The "Space Black" color got the interest of some Macheads, while others compared it to the dull black Powerbooks of the early Carrie Bradshaw era.
I couldn't help but wonder: If that's all Apple was going to give us, then why not make this a TikTok — or our similarly brief summary above — instead of a 35-minute affair that felt three times as long?
There was no horror movie vibe to carry us through all that hard-to-parse benchmark test info. Not unless you count the 13-inch Macbook growing ... a whole inch! Or the Touch Bar being quietly knifed off-screen. (Typical murder-mystery: It's always the one the audience likes the least that gets it first.) There was nothing scary save the $2,000 price tag on the Space Black MacBook.
Where was the pumpkin spice on this weak small decaf? Well, not counting about 10 seconds of Scooby-Doo level Halloween CGI while zooming over the Apple campus at the very beginning, it was ... the CEO's bright orange Apple Watch band. If this is his idea of a costume, Tim Cook must be fun at Halloween parties.
Oh, and several of the executives featured used variations on the word "monster," as in "monster CPU" and "monstrous improvement." (Geddit? Because Halloween?) Despite being stuck underground in dungeon-like labs inside a spaceship, these presenters never once uttered phrases like "It's alive!" Or "Soon my evil plan to make you buy a whole new laptop for a 15 percent speed improvement over last year's model will be unstoppable!"
In short, Tim Cook made the Apple event equivalent of Saturday Night Live's famous David S. Pumpkins Halloween sketch, in which an elevator in a haunted house keeps opening on a not-very-scary Tom Hanks and a couple of skeletons who dance for a couple of seconds. Except Cook didn't even give his audience a chance to ask "Any questions?"
Because yeah, like the paying customers in the sketch, we might have a few questions. Like: Where's the fun? How long do you think the world's wealthiest company can get away with launch events widely judged to be disappointing? What did you have against the 13-inch Macbook, which was that little bit easier to tote around or slip in a bag than the 14-inch replacement? And is the only innovation we have to look forward to from this company ... just faster chips in newer models?
The notion that Apple itself has no clue how to answer these and other questions may, for us fans, be the scariest Halloween surprise of all.
