More than once a year, Apple sends out invitations to something big. In the first half of the year we get an invite to that year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, and then later it’s all about the big ol’ September event. The event is the Big Deal, of course, where all the excitement comes from. But the invites aren’t without their attention grabbing antics.
You’ve seen it more than a few times by now. After Apple sends out an invite, more than a few people out there will start hypothesizing what it could mean. While not everyone will go over it with a magnifying glass or a fine-toothed comb, there’s definitely a lot of attention put towards these digital releases.
This year isn’t any different.
That image just above was sent out with invitations for this year’s WWDC. At first glance, there’s not much there! A very hip person with some great glasses is looking at a MacBook . . . Pro with an excited look on their face. But then you look a bit closer and you see the Calendar app’s icon shows us the date of the event: June 7, 2021. It’s a cool way to do it, for sure.
But then when you look closer, you can see that the Calendar app has the app’s name highlighted above it. Now, this happens by default when you put your mouse over one of those icons in the macOS Dock. However, it does look a bit different and that apparently got a lot of people thinking Apple was hinting at some big changes to Accessibility in the next version of the company’s desktop operating system (which is macOS 12 Monterey).
That didn’t turn out to be the case, though. Turns out the invitation’s image was really all about the big day’s date.
Now, the image just above is from the invitation Apple sent out for its “California Streaming” event happening on September 14, 2021. It’s very pretty to look at, for sure. Very bright and contrasty. We get a nice mountain background and some placid water. Oh, and a very luminous Apple logo for good measure.
This invite doesn’t appear to show a lot at all. Apple’s augmented reality version does show us the event’s date within the Apple logo, but I’m not sure that counts. But, while this is a very nice invitation to what will probably be a great event. But does it hint at anything?
I did see some folks, like Brandon Havard, say it gives them some “always-on display” vibes:
That invite gives me some heavy ~always on display~ vibes. pic.twitter.com/BqegwTpGBa
— Brandon Havard (@BrandonJHavard) September 7, 2021
An always-on display for the iPhone is one of the more oft-requested features to date, something Apple has simply just refused to add to its smartphone lineup so far. Is this the year that the company actually does it? Will the iPhone 13 Pro use this as a differentiating feature? Maybe! Is this invite hinting at that? Maybe!
Now that Havard has put that out there in the universe, I find myself not only hoping that is indeed the case, but now I can see that “hint” in the invitation, too. I definitely couldn’t before, but now I don’t have to look too hard to see where the idea is coming from.
That being said, if it turns out this invitation is nothing more than just a very bright, very nice picture coupled with a very important date for Apple, I wouldn’t be surprised. But I am curious to see what you think. Is Apple teasing a big reveal for its upcoming California Streaming event? If so, what do you think it is?