Apple: No Wonder, No Lust

The company’s worst keynote event in a decade

Stephen Moore
4 min readSep 19, 2023

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Image: Badly edited by author

This article was originally published on my Substack, Trend Mill.

It was nothing if true to form. Flashy visuals. Slick product reels. The “Apple hands.” Robotic presentations with so little charisma it’s impossible to tell if they are now AI-generated. And, of course, new iterations of products that are, well, basically the same as the last model.

But, for a keynote that Apple calls “Wonderlust,” it lacked both wonder and lust.

It might even be the worst Apple event of the last decade.

What did we get? The new iPhone is a whole gram lighter. I repeat, a WHOLE GRAM lighter! There’s a new side button to replace the old slider button. A new material. An upgraded chip. Cameras with a few extra megapixels and another level of zoom. A new range of colors. A new range of watch straps. A few new features here and there, features that other phones have had long before now. There was even time for a bit of corporate green washing with a cringeworthy video about climate change. One of the biggest changes was less innovation and more enforced by EU law; the move to USB-C, which did at least provide some laughter — it’s another excuse for Apple to sell us a $30 dongle. If you buy this, there is no hope for you.

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Stephen Moore
Stephen Moore

Written by Stephen Moore

Writer, editor, part-time furniture maker. Subscribe to Trend Mill for critical takes on our dystopian metaverse hellscape future - https://www.trend-mill.com