WWDC was great except everything we didn’t get

WWDC 2022 last week was a lot of fun, with tons of software announcements and, to be honest, more Mac news than we could have expected. But we’re hard to please here at Macworld, and can’t help but think about all the things that haven’t been revealed.

Let’s start with the device many pundits expected to be the tent pole announcement that the entire event would be based on: Apple’s long-awaited AR (or mixed AR/VR) headset† The hardware itself is still a long way off, according to most accounts – it probably won’t arrive until 2023 – but it seemed reasonable to expect some sort of preview of the interface and AR environments Apple is working on. No luck.

The headset is one of Apple’s wildcards, rumored products that would bring real excitement anyway. Another on that list would be the Apple Car, but this too was notable for its absence. Apple’s obvious development work in this area has been limited to some cool CarPlay updates that also won’t be available until next year and may take even longer to get right. To be clear, no one expected the Apple Car to take the stage halfway through the keynote, but its continued absence is symptomatic of a wider lack of excitement.

Instead of innovation, we got iteration – satisfying and substantive iteration, yet iteration. For example, it was a pleasant surprise that the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro both got the M2 chip, which was not expected until later this year, but these are still just new versions of existing product lines. Only Apple can generate such hype with a product innovation.

While the Air did get a smart new look along with its new chip, we would have loved to see those new vibrant colors that leakers had predicted for the event. And the Pro hasn’t even been redesigned. It was literally just a spec bump.

Speaking of iterative innovations, how long do we have to wait for the launch of the second generation AirPods Pro† These are expected to include support for Apple’s Lossless (ALAC) format, and on that basis alone it would have been a good venue for an event focusing on software and services. There were no new ones either iPads-which may have been a long shot, but the iPad Pro was unveiled at WWDC 2017 – and the wait continues for the next version of the mac miniwhich has not been updated since 2020.

But perhaps the most disappointing miss was some word about the next version of the Mac Pro. WWDC is the traditional stomping ground of the Mac Pro, with both the 2013 and 2019 models launching there, and it was widely expected that the new model would appear one way or another this year, if only as a a glimpse of work in progress. What a great bloom that could have produced.

IDG

Launch bottlenecks

I have a pleasurable moan here, but of course I recognize that WWDC is primarily a software event. There are five operating systems to talk about, and if you throw in those MacBook updates too, there’s never going to be room for much else.

WWDC 2022 was indeed packed with new features, with iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura all creating buzz with important and intriguing new features. Expecting Apple to find time in between all this time to talk about new iPads or AirPods was always unrealistic. Even if there was time, it would have lessened the impact of each announcement if it were crammed in with dozens of others.

What I’m aware of, though, is that Apple events don’t happen very often. Sometimes you only get three in a given year: a spring event in March or April, WWDC in June, and the iPhone launch in the fall. Other years we get four, with a Mac event in October, and some years it’s even more. But this year there will be no other event in two months. This is all we get for a while.

Apple could spread things out, especially since it currently doesn’t have to fly and feed large groups of developers and reporters when it holds an event. There could be one virtual event per month with no major logistical issues that I can see. But this is not the Apple way. And as long as that’s true, annoying journalists like me will keep complaining about all the things that aren’t announced on the rare occasions that the company speaks to us.