The WWDC keynote will be the most and least exciting Apple event of the year

Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which has all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized summary. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes well with a cup of coffee or tea on a Monday morning, but it’s also cool if you want to read it over lunch or dinner.

One week to go

There are just seven days left until Apple’s WWDC 2023 keynote presentation, the second-largest event on the company’s calendar and the first of any kind since last fall. By this time next week, the lucky few will be attending the waiting party at Apple Park (and looking forward to their special tour; no, of course I’m not jealous), while the rest of us huddle around our monitors to listen to the latest announcements. Both groups, it’s fair to say, will have high expectations.

From the sounds of things – and despite Apple’s relentless attempts to keep things a secret, much has been leaked – there will be big news to justify the hype. The problem is that the news, no matter how big it is, will only be relevant to a small audience.

When you work in media, you quickly learn to identify the things that are of interest to the greatest number of people. At Macworld, we are well aware that an article about the iPhone will be relevant to many more people than an article about the HomePod, and therefore, all things being equal, it will probably get more page views; the former is simply more popular than the latter. It’s more mainstream. Following a similar logic, each year at WWDC, Apple focuses on the software that runs on the products with the largest user base. For this reason, iOS is usually the presentation bounding box. There are many iPhone owners who want to know what new features are coming.

Now, I’m not saying that Apple will completely ignore the iPhone at WWDC 2023. iOS 17 is expected to include a slew of new features, including a smart smart display feature and, most likely, the memorable ability to install apps from third-party stores without jailbreaking . But most experts agree that this will be a silent update with no “tentpole improvement.” It’s about fixing bugs and improving reliability, with a few “nice to have” new features as a bonus.

Meanwhile, macOS seems to be heading for a dull month of June, so much so that my colleague has wondered if Apple still cares about macOS. “Our macOS 14 news hub has nothing,” he laments. “The chirping crickets just gave way to the sad trombone.” On the bright side, there’s the option of new Macs, such as a 15-inch MacBook Air and a Mac Pro (finally).

And remember, these are the flagship products. iPhone and Mac, side by side, lifting Cupertino out of the 1990s doldrums and making both Wall Street and Silicon Valley the envy. Surely Apple has something to say about these gigantic product lines worth hearing? Maybe not.

Instead, WWDC 2023 highlights will likely fall into two categories: the mixed reality headset and watchOS 10. Reality Pro is certainly an interesting prospect for me, given that it’s an all-new product line that could eventually become more important for Apple’s fortunes than the iPhone. It’s really futuristic, risky stuff. The problem is that it’s a niche for now. A TrendForce report last week predicted that Apple’s headset will initially be aimed at developers, not consumers, and that shipments will likely be less than 100,000 units this year. This is peanuts by Apple’s standards, and the product is largely irrelevant to the vast majority of people watching the keynote.

The Apple Watch isn’t as niche as that, but it’s nowhere near as mainstream as the iPhone or even the iPad. Depending on which research firm you ask, there are probably between 1 billion and 1.5 billion iPhone users in the world right now. The Apple Watch user base, on the other hand, is somewhere between 100 million (which officially crossed the mark in 2021) and 200 million, the estimated total number ever sold. And so the question is how much the WWDC audience will care about even a fundamental rethinking of how we operate our Apple Watches.

I’ve argued in the past that a boring Apple event is better than no event, and I think it’s important for Apple to pay enough attention to its fringe products. Apple can’t make every event about the iPhone, any more than we can make every article about it. Everything else aside, it needs to find the product that will take the iPhone’s place once the cash registers stop ringing.

But make no mistake: this will be the riskiest series of announcements Apple has made in years. A colossal global audience has been waiting for this event for a long time. It would be daring, to say the least, to spend most of the event talking about a product whose sales are rolling in with home and accessory products, and another whose customer base for this year would fit a major sports stadium.

Reviews corner

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The rumor mill

A leaked list of protagonists in Apple’s headset team reveals the wrong priorities of the project.

Apple has us one huge WWDC clue by inviting the VR press to the keynote.

The iPhone 15 may not require a MagSafe-certified charger for this Fast charging of 15 watts.

And the following year, Apple reportedly plans to switch back to a vertical camera layout on the iPhone 16.

Patent activity suggests a future Apple Pencil could have Find My support.

Podcast of the week

This episode of the Macworld Podcast is all about you hot food! You have thoughts on the latest happenings in the world of Apple! Let’s hear what you have to say!

You can watch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.

Software updates, bugs and issues

No, iOS 16.5 didn’t kill your iPhone’s battery.

New iOS and macOS updates have been fixed serious defects in iPhones and Macs over the last 10 years.

Watch out: the watch OS 9.5 update may make your Apple Watch screen green.

iOS 16.5 Fixes a vulnerability that was supposedly fixed last year. Mind you, it also prevents an Apple adapter from working with some iPhones and iPads.

And with that we are ready for this week’s Apple Breakfast. To receive regular raids, sign up for our newsletters. You can also follow us on Twitter or on Facebook for discussion on the latest Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.