Apple just took two hours out of everyone’s Monday afternoon to announce a whole bunch of new stuff at WWDC, but let’s be real: The only thing anyone learned is that Craig Federighi was born for this.
Federighi is the senior VP of software engineering at Apple and has been one of the usual presenters in these streams for a few years now. This year, Federighi carried the whole team on his back. After CEO Tim Cook gave his usual intro, he kicked it over to our man Craig, who refused to let go of the steering wheel. Sure, another presenter would show up for a minute here and there, but this was Federighi’s show.
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Aside from the fact that he’s a handsome guy (this very website called him “a mood” and a “daddy” in 2020), the main thing Federighi brought to his performance was presence. I watched the whole two-hour stream and don’t remember what any other presenters aside from Cook even looked like.
Federighi, meanwhile, was a one-man army with an arsenal full of bits. He donned a tracksuit and (with the help of Apple’s visual effects team) shot a basketball hundreds of feet into the air to transition to a segment about checking live sports scores on your iPhone’s lock screen. At one point, he dramatically sprinted in slow motion to the tune of some emotional ballad, even taking a second to comb his fingers through his immaculate salt-and-pepper hair. I think that was a segue into an update about iPadOS, but really, who cares?
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The highlight, for me, was when Federighi took a shot at Apple’s product naming team, claiming they needed a three-month outdoor retreat after coming up with “M2” as the successor for Apple’s in-house silicon, M1.
Craig brought a bunch of goofy dad jokes to a stream that would’ve been excruciatingly boring without them. In fact, it was excruciatingly boring much of the time anyway. Apple has never brought much pizzazz to its product announcements, but watching Craig get out there and keep the train running was like watching a superstar athlete lead a crappy team to victory.
Shout out to Craig for being the only thing I will remember about WWDC 2022 by this time next week.
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