That Google event yesterday was very strange, from Jimmy Fallon’s general awkwardness to the uncomfortable QVC-style segment to the overuse of high profile celebrities. That’s already been discussed at length, so I won’t dwell on it. But it did get me thinking a lot about the state of product launches. Ever since the start of the pandemic we’ve been in a weird limbo, where some brands do videos and some host live keynotes. I’m personally a proponent of everyone returning to their pre-pandemic live formats, there are still a few holdouts, I’m looking at you Apple. Though the live stage presence is important for consumer confidence, human empathy, and an overall sense of community I think there’s actually something deeper going on.

Gadget product launches have largely gotten fundamentally boring, even if they’re well-crafted and the devices themselves are great. Phones, watches, headphones, tablets, laptops, and so on are such commoditized categories now that it’s really hard to wow consumers and in some cases even hardcore gadget nerds like myself. The reality is that these devices used to be able to speak for themselves. A product doesn’t need a splashy event if it can speak for itself and Steve Jobs knew this. There’s a reason his iconic keynotes were so captivating, yet dead simple in their actual execution. While his presentations were certainly masterfully orchestrated, the customer may never realize that. It looked effortless. Compare that to now, where they can almost certainly tell the companies are trying too hard. Because the current array of device categories is so mature, it’s difficult to convince anyone that they need to upgrade. That’s why we are cursed with prerecorded infomercials with fancy effects and cringey celebrity live shows. These devices cannot speak for themselves anymore the way that they once could. Commoditization is certainly a component as I said, but could these companies be doing more to just make even better, more interesting devices?

Sam Altman feels like the only one who gets it at the moment. Look at the subdued introduction stream for GPT 5 or even their previous few launches. The GPT 5 announcement was in front of a live audience, on a simple stage, with minimalistic slides, and with basic demos. GPT 5 can speak for itself (perhaps literally), but the new iPhone or the new Pixel cannot. Eventually we may enter an era where the same becomes true for AI models, though I think that’s a long way off. For the foreseeable future, they’re where the excitement is. OpenAI events, just as a singular example, now carry the level of anticipation and excitement that the new iPhone launch used to. Apple and Google need to recalibrate their marketing efforts as much as they need to create even more interesting products. Marketing and product go hand-in-hand. At the established tech companies, the two couldn’t be further apart nowadays.