Take

WWDC used to be fun.

I have never gone, and "going" will probably never be possible, but WWDC used to be something to look forward to. Fun features, new frameworks, expanded horizons.

For the past ten years or so, it's been a mix of dread and hope. I hope they don't screw things up even more. I hope they don't lock down even more. I hope they don't take out the eyedropper, click on iOS, and flood fill on macOS Bummerville and let that stand as an improvement so significant that no actual features are needed.

And, if you insist on particulars that illustrate the problem, think back to when sessions used to present the Apple thinking of only very slowly and deliberately building on what was there, because they knew it would have to last forever, and contrast it with the buffet of half-cocked answers to reactive dataflow or asynchronous programming. KVO! Combine and Publishers! ObservableObject! Swift Concurrency! Actors! Observable/Observations! AsyncSequence!

My objection not being that new things are tried, nor that code that's been introduced obviously needs to keep functioning for those who have adopted it, but that it's a zoo of technologies that have been launched as universal solutions to all prior problems, which have then been superseded by next year's universal solution and left to languish, with nary a mention in the API documentation of which geological sediment you are currently uncovering. Technologies hanging around in plain sight but never spoken of, or with initial documentation still forthcoming, like software uncles to not be discussed in polite company. Excellence emerging from this process is a product of a determined community of developers willing to put up with stuff and bridge divides, not of it being defensible.

Nearly everything being produced is new code. Apple is running close to their capacity mostly producing new things. Where's the time to go back and clean up? Where's the recognition that just as saying "no" to many things so you can say "yes" to some things, if you introduce something you have to own it? Plan for the future, rather than just jumping from lily pad to lily pad on a sprint or annual schedule, hoping the next jump will finally do what the previous jumps didn't.

Success hides problems. Apple's had a lot of (economic) success, but it's had more problems, and a self-image that doesn't allow itself to admit to either.

I'll be sitting down for WWDC next week, and hope for fun. I'm not the same person I was when I started watching and following. I'll still hope for the same fun I did starting out - the blockbuster surprise hardware, the mind-bending genuinely new and useful OS features. But I'll take a silently simmering outward yawner if it comes with some introspection.