This is a weird time. Everybody knows it, even if they do not want to acknowledge it. Apple’s trust with its customers is on the line and today’s news from Mark Gurman about internal conversations proves that they know they are in a complicated position. The company is staying quiet outside of the statement that it gave to folks like John Gruber and the next major Apple event is a little over two months away. They have cleared the deck of early 2025 hardware releases and I imagine we will not hear much from them for a bit outside of, you guessed it, a WWDC announcement.

As usually is the case, I imagine that we will start to get details in about two weeks or so. Every single WWDC keynote since 2020 has been prerecorded and the company has since dropped its weeklong in-person conference, opting for an entirely online approach with a select few welcomed to view the keynote video on the first day. I have been a proponent of Apple returning to its iconic live keynotes for a long time, but fuel has just been added to that fire. Tim, Craig, and Joz need to talk to us like people right there with them, not in some sort of extended ad. They cannot show us another concept video, because if they do unveil something that looks too good to be true (even if it is real) there will be immediate skepticism. We need live demos and we need Craig to be doing them to show the company has confidence in the offerings.

Ryan Christoffel at 9to5Mac laid out a comprehensive argument for it with both the pros and cons. But I firmly believe the pros far outweigh any sort of value the company has gotten the past few years from transitioning to the current format. They need to look human, which means dropping the high production value and returning to form. It also could not hurt for them to spend more time in-person with more developers. They used to invite far more people and in-person sessions were tremendously valuable to developers. Plus, if all of the software platforms truly are getting redesigned from the ground up, this is the year to capture the same kind of live reaction like iOS 7 garnered back in 2013.

If they want other events to remain prerecorded, that is fine. But this WWDC is just too important. The stakes for the next few are likely only going to continue to get higher.