A Few Last-Minute Questions for WWDC2023

It’s Apple keynote day, and it is exciting but also stressful! Here are last-minute questions.

  • Will the headset pricing be announced today?
  • Will the headset be like the Apple Watch and be running apps, or will it be more like CarPlay, with some additional viewport from the iPhone? Or a combination?
  • Is the headset unveiled with a “one more thing” segment?
  • When the iPad was announced, Steve Jobs spent some time explaining its relative position within the use cases spectrum of our computing devices. Where does the headset fit?
  • Will the headset announcement overshadow Apple’s timid foray into generative AI?
  • Is Xcode finally coming to the iPad?
  • Can we infer something about the rumors setting the price 1999$ when we compare that to the AirPods Max price?
  • Tim Cook’s air time has decreased in recent events, is the trend continuing today?
  • Can we expect another meme moment from Craig Federighi?
  • Who’s going to present the headset? Jeff Williams, just like for the Apple Watch Ultra?
  • Can any of the announcements today affect my Apple hardware upgrade plan?

For someone who’s not interested in the headset, I have far too many questions about it. I’ll return to this post once the event is complete to fill in the answers!

👉🏻 This is WWDC day! Here are some informative tidbits. Two weeks ago, I set up a fake meeting in my work calendar for the entire afternoon (EST time here). I’ll be out of the office for the whole afternoon. I’ve been doing that for more than ten years. It worked 9 out of 10 times. I should be good to go today.

I’ll watch the keynote from within Safari to take screenshots (with the TV app, screenshots don’t work 🤔). Then, using a configured button on my StreamDeck mini, I’ll take the screenshots that will be saved and moved to my Synology NAS automatically; thanks to Hazel. The excellent Mastodon client, Ivory, will be running too side-by-side so that I can see reactions coming in. Sadly, feed streaming is not yet a thing on Mastodon, apparently.

My expectations are relatively low for all the tech announcements but high for the keynote production value and quality.

😱I just realized that for the first time in quite a while, I’ll be following WWDC news outside of Twitter. I’m unsure if I’ll go on Mastodon or Bluesky to read the room temperature. I’ll see. Maybe I’ll just make up my own mind, too, which is a good thing. 🤔💭

Here’s a short “life at the office” story. Our VP of sales never stops bragging about how ChatGPT is cool and how it works for him for many use cases. I’m uncomfortable with his stance on ChatGPT & generative AI in general. I think about it each time he sends an email that was obviously created with ChatGPT.

Why is it a problem for me? Who am I to judge him and his “new way of working”? I think I have found the root cause.

First, it’s not the results of his work. It’s the work of something else. He takes something “as is” without adding any value, any personal opinion, or a personal twist. Second, the fundamental problem is that he works in IT but is not a tech guy. He is a salesperson. He’s the type of guy who surfs on buzzwords a lot. Using ChatGPT makes him circumvent his lack of confidence because of a lack of IT knowledge and culture. He probably feels better and more “into the game” like most of my other colleagues, who studied computer science before getting to work in IT.

How many more people lack my colleague do the same, for the same reason?

I forgot so many things to talk about in my WWDC 2023 expectations YouTube video… 🤦🏻‍♂️ like the Watch Face store that I wish Apple would be doing someday. At least this is covered in my article published earlier. Not all is lost. 😅

Reflecting on My Photo Processing Strategy

For my next trip, I will bring my Nikon D750 and my iPhone 13 Pro (of course!), and my 2018 11-inch iPad Pro. How am I going to process my images? Will I continue using Lightroom for images from my Nikon? I usually use the iPad to import my photos into the Lightroom catalogue. What about pictures on my iPhone, which should be mostly in RAW format and shot with Halide? I like Photomator a lot; it is nicer than Lr and more approachable too. However, using Photomator to process images from my Nikon poses a challenge in file management. I’ll need to import the .NEF files from my SD card into my iPad in an iCloud Drive folder so I can work on imported files from any device (iPad, MacBook Air or iPhone). I prefer using iCloud Photos Library instead of managing files manually. I guess this will be this combo: Photomator + Halide for my “shot on iPhone” images!

Just writing this blog post made things a little bit less fuzzy. I’ll take any suggestions!