Hacker News Reader

Comment by scop | Hacker News Reader

The overproduction on this presentation is jarring.

Given that so much of Apple's success is based on "simple" and "familiar" things, having Craig Federighi hover of an ominous greenscreen'd floating keynote outside of Steve Jobs theater just feels off.

Surely the best way to make virtual events feel familiar is to have actual humans interacting, touching, etc? Instead here you have isolated individuals floating in computer generated environments. Why aren't we just watching memoji's talk to us if that's the case?

View on HN

> Surely the best way to make virtual events feel familiar is to have actual humans interacting, touching, etc? Instead here you have isolated individuals floating in computer generated environments.

To be fair we are still in the midst of a pandemic and should be practicing social distancing. Having Craig and co giving high-fives as they hand off to each other is not appropriate currently. Sure it is weird but it is how the world is right now. If they didn't do it people would say "omg Apple staff think they are better than everyone and are not socially distancing, so irresponsible."

Honestly I don't have an issue with the production. They are going over the top with the transitions but it isn't really a problem.

They are not touching because they don't want to risk passing a virus between high level people at the company.

Not sure why there are complaints about something that looks fine. Or should it look like a Zoom session where he sits in their home to satisfy this complaint?

It feels like a weird training video from some large company. "Here at McDonald's you'll help our customers get their favorite foods!"

What does it mean to 'overproduce' something? Are you saying it's too polished and well done?

Too many visual effects and the whole thing feels sterile.

It means it seems too artificial and unnatural, so it feels like an ad.

I mean, this IS an ad.

It's so well-rehearsed and body language coached that it feels like watching an infomercial. I mean, it is an infomercial, but it's still annoying and distracting.

It's so high-stakes and painstakingly precise that it reminds me of watching the mass games in Pyongyang.

Well-rehearsed, coached, precise, all sound like good things.

I can't speak for anyone else by myself but for the last several years most of the presenters sounded like they were well dosed with beta blockers before presenting. Not at all natural, or at ease, or relaxing to watch.

And if it were not polished people would complain about how apple lowered the bar, how nothing is the same since Jobs has died, etc. etc.

They've been trending that way even at the live events. Last few years the obviousness of all the coaching and rehearsal has been extremely distracting. I mean it was there before but not quite so intensely. They all come off as robotic or like someone's holding a gun on them.

In all likelihood, insufficient coaching and rehearsal is why it feels coached and rehearsed.

A perfect presentation, which has been extremely well practiced and rehearsed, comes off as natural. Because they havent practiced it enough (and probably because many of them are simply not very good presenters, unlike say Jobs) it falls into the uncanny valley and appears unnatural.

An actor can only do so much with a terrible script.

Yeah, you're on to something. I'd guess it's intense and precise coaching paired with people who don't do this sort of thing very often. It seemed to get a lot worse soon after they started trying to get a bunch more presenters involved, some years back. My guess is they didn't think the first couple of those were polished enough, so cranked up the prep, which, when applied to people who haven't developed outstanding presenter-talent, gives you a really fake and awkward effect. I think the somewhat rougher early ones were nicer, personally.

To their credit, I guess, most other events I've seen like this since everyone started trying to ape Apple's announcement style have the same problem, and usually worse.

It sounds exactly like a late night infomercial.

Totally dry and corporate. Long gone are the Steve Jobs presentation days unfortunately.

To each their own. I found the keynote to be engaging and it was different from the usual same kind of presentation that we've had with Jobs for decades.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com