Apple is basically a parody of itself

If you were trying to construct a parody of every Apple product presentation of the last 5 years, you probably couldn't have done much better than the keynote the company offered at WWDC on Monday.

CEO Tim Cook barely present on stage? Check. Interminable updates on stuff almost no one uses, like Safari, Mail, Maps and the Apple Watch? Check. A parade of presenters we've never seen before? Check. Groan-worthy dad jokes from Craig Federighi? Check (this year the Apple VP outdid himself with 420-related humor based on Apple's new MacOS name, High Sierra). 

SEE ALSO: WWDC 2017: iOS 11, HomePod, and everything else you need to know

Every year we sit through keynotes like this, waiting with bated breath for the tech giant to surprise and delight us. And every year, the actual innovation — and the information the company offers its loyal fans from the stage — seems thinner and less substantial. 

This year, Cook didn't even bother providing the traditional updates on the company's core businesses, such as number of iPhones sold. "I'm dispensing with the updates other than to tell you Apple's doing great," the CEO said. 

Well, we know at least one part of Apple's business is doing great: its hubris.

Last year the company killed the headphone jack on the iPhone and called it "courage." This year it gave us the HomePod, a $350 scratching post — sorry, a speaker with voice recognition that is supposed to compete with Amazon's $150 Echo. 

Given that journalists weren't even allowed to touch the HomePods on display after the keynote, their introduction left us with more questions than answers.

Why does the HomePod activate when you say "Hey Siri," given that every other Apple device in your home responds to the same call? Will it play tunes from Spotify, or just Apple Music? And is Apple seriously expecting us to drop $700 on two HomePods just so we can use the stereo functionality? 

We can guess the answer to the last question. After all, this is a company that expects you to spend $29 on a pouch for your $99 Apple Pencil, even though that pouch doesn't actually help you attach the Pencil to the iPad Pro, which is the only device that can use a Pencil. (I bought a $10 third-party iPad Pro case to solve that problem.) 

Then there was the $5,000 iMac Pro. While Microsoft is selling its innovative Surface Studio, a 28-inch all-in-one desktop where you can draw on the screen, Apple expects us to opt for this 27-inch device, which is simply an iMac with more power and doesn't arrive until December. 

Why buy it? Because it comes in Space Gray and looks "badass." Seriously. Why should power users not wait until Apple releases a new Mac Pro desktop, which the company confirmed is still to come? Crickets. 

So much of the company's PR seemed confused. An opening video showed an Apple employee carelessly unplugging an entire data center, at which point everyone's iOS device goes dark and civilization collapses. 

All good fun, I suppose — though you could also argue that societal collapse is no joke in the Trump era. But ask yourself this: fundamentally, what message is the company trying to reinforce here? 

Is it that Apple employees are selfish clods, that iCloud has no backup generators, that Apple's devices are entirely cloud-reliant, or that its customers are all way too iPhone-reliant? (Only one of these things is actually true; none of them are beneficial messages for Apple to be pushing.) 

Elsewhere in the keynote, with a straight face, Craig Federighi tried to get the audience excited with a demo of the new filing system app in iOS 11. 

Let's be clear: I'm a huge fan of both Apple and organizational systems, I own four iOS devices, I'm thrilled about iOS 11, and even I was reaching for my third cup of coffee to get through the keynote demos at this point. What would the casual, non-nerdy viewer make of it all?

I suppose it's neat that Apple is getting into supporting virtual reality, but Windows machines have been doing that for years. No amount of Darth Vader-filled demonstrations from Industrial Light & Magic can make it seem like Apple's offering is any different. 

As for the augmented reality developer kit, which Cook used to fake a cup of coffee and a desk lamp on an empty table — great, but why? What's the killer app here? It certainly wasn't on display at WWDC. 

All we saw was a CEO pretending something was there when it wasn't — and you don't have to look too hard to see that as a metaphor for the entire event. 

When even the Apple fanboys are rolling their eyes, when the company cannot be trusted to push a coherent and interesting message, you know something is rotten at the core. Let's hope things seem a little more fresh when the iPhone 8 releases this fall.

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