David Averbach

I’ve been covering the World Wide Developers Conference, Apple’s annual developer's conference, for a decade, and no year has felt as simultaneously surreal yet comfortingly familiar as when Tim Cook presented the Apple keynote address to an empty conference hall in June. Cook served up the usual healthy dose of dad jokes and self-congratulatory statements. Most importantly, WWDC was jam-packed with updates for all of Apple’s major operating systems., including iOS 14, iPadOS, WatchOS 7, and Big Sur, the latest MacOS. Here are my top four takeaways from WWDC.

Apple didn’t invent the personal computer. Nor did it create the first smartphone or tablet. Throughout the tech company’s history, from its origins with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak tinkering in a garage all the way to the present, the key to its success has been in taking emerging technologies and making them user-friendly for the masses. One of Jobs’ catchphrases when introducing a new product was, “It just works.” He said it so frequently it might as well have been Apple’s motto. Apple’s ability to create user-friendly products has not only allowed it to sell products to the masses, but also to charge a premium in the process. Today there are countless Android phones and tablets on the market that cost a fraction of what Apple sells its products for. For example, you can buy a brand-new Kindle Fire for $80 whereas an iPad costs anywhere from $329 for an entry-level model to $1,279 for a fully loaded iPad Pro. It’s no exaggeration to say that Apple’s reputation for making easy-to-use products is its most valuable asset. In the past year, Apple has struggled to meet its own standard. With iOS 12, Apple is attempting to repair the damage incurred by iOS 11 and reclaim its mantra of “It just works.”