The go-to move with any major developer conference is to kick things off with a cheesy video of happy young people using your technology in sunny urbanscapes, and Apple has long been a pioneer of this genre. Today’s WWDC opener, however, was a little bit different, depicting a nightmare glitch scenario wherein all apps on all iPhones and iPads around the world just malfunction and cease to exist.
Cue a fast-moving whirlwind tour of a planet Earth tilted off its axis by hordes of disoriented, howling humans unable to distribute their selfies to a wide enough audience or communicate just how mad and impulsive they are to eat an entire pizza solo. It’s a strangely satisfying and endearing form of self-deprecation, and it culminates on the cheerful note — for all the developers attending Apple’s big annual dev conference — that the world is relying on the apps made for iOS devices, so we’d better keep making them. Or else, the fragile world order around us will collapse into total chaos and disorder.
