Every time we receive an invitation to a opening speech From Apple we are starting to look for clues in its design. We always suspect that there may be some suggested novelty in them, and in some cases it has happened. An example: the word “Performance” in the invitation to the keynote last spring referred to the performance of the iPhone SE. Does the same happen with invitations to WWDC?
Symbology is everything…sometimes
Four years ago, in the WWDC 2018, we saw a monochrome design filled with raised symbols representing macOS interface elements as well as programming symbols. No disclosures here, all related to the work of the developers and xCode. The news was focused on software, nothing more.
If we look at the posters of WWDC 2019, those emulated neon lights that formed figures of Apple products and icons. But those neon lights didn’t symbolize anything: it was just another simple style that Apple chose to theme the developer conference.
The WWDC 2020 it took on a certain symbolism: in the invite, Memojis were used and they were shown using a MacBook Pro, so as to convey that we were all going to be watching this event remotely due to the pandemic. It was a time of insecurity and we had just come out of a tough two and a half month lockdown. But as far as news goes, nothing.
In the WWDC 2021 we saw those Memoji again in front of a MacBook Pro, with that detail of the macOS interface reflected in glasses that made us suspect a possible Apple viewer for augmented reality graphics. But it was too early for that, and what they reflected revealed nothing of the news we had seen.
And now we have the WWDC 2022, which brings us this mysterious image with several profile Memoji in a very dark environment. The Swift icon that also brought us the confirmation from the conference a few weeks ago also had this tone:
Right now it looks like something serious. And the Swift icon was displayed in the foreground may indicate important new features in this programming language. We could also talk about a virtual reality interface, but that would already be venturing to rely too much on rumors. We can also see the emojis of some of the presenters of the opening speech (Is Tim Cook in the middle?), but that’s probably just a coincidence.
What is certain is that Apple knows that its invitations are always subject to close and almost excessive scrutiny from all fans. And yes, in some cases there are divulge like the colors of the new Apple-colored iMacs taken from the spring 2021 event invite, but doesn’t seem to be the case with WWDC. In any case, we will check it in less than two weeks.
