So today was one of those split-screen tech news days. On one screen: Apple sent out the invite yesterday for their September 12 event at the Steve Jobs Theater, "Gather round," 10am, the usual swirly rainbow-line logo graphic that everyone immediately screenshots and zooms into like it's the Zapruder film. On the other screen: Jack Dorsey and Sheryl Sandberg sat in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee for hours today talking about foreign influence operations, bot networks, election interference, the whole mess. And Google just wasn't there. They left an empty chair for Larry Page, who was invited and didn't show, sending a statement instead. Someone in the hearing room actually took a photo of the empty seat with the little name placard still on it and it went everywhere within about twenty minutes.
I want to talk about both of these because they say something about where things are in 2018, but let's do the fun one first.
The invite ritual
Every single time Apple sends one of these things out, my group chat lights up like it's a lottery win. Somebody posts the graphic, somebody else does the "count the lines, its a hidden clue" thing (it never is, it's just art), and then the rumor mill that's already been running for two months suddenly gets treated like its confirmed. This time it's supposedly three new iPhones — an Xs, an Xs Max with the bigger screen, and a cheaper one with the LCD screen and a bunch of colors, which people are calling the Xr even though nothing's official yet. Plus a bigger Apple Watch. None of that is announced, to be clear, it's rumor, but the rumor mill has been eerily accurate the last few cycles so I'm not betting against it.
Here's my actual gripe though, and its not really about the leaks. It's the pricing trajectory. My first iPhone, the 3G, cost me $199 on contract in 2008. Ten years later were talking about phones that could clear a thousand dollars before tax, unsubsidized, and everyone's just sort of nodding along like that's fine now. It is not fine. I'll probably still buy one, which I recognize makes me part of the problem, but I reserve the right to complain about it on my own blog while I do it.
The empty chair
The hearing is the less fun part but honestly the more important one. Dorsey and Sandberg both testified, answered questions for hours about bots, fake accounts, foreign ad buys, the stuff thats been the background noise of every tech story since 2016 basically. What stuck with me wasn't anything either of them said though, it was that empty chair. Google apparently offered to send a legal exec instead of Page or Sundar Pichai and the committee said no, they wanted a top exec or nothing, so it was nothing. A literal empty chair, on camera, for hours.
Say what you want about Facebook and Twitter's actual policies (I have plenty to say, some other day), but showing up and taking the questions in person is at minimum a PR move that reads as "we're not scared of this." Skipping it reads the opposite way regardless of the actual legal reasoning behind it. I dont think Google's comms team is thrilled with how that photo turned out.
Anyway. Two things going on today that have nothing to do with each other on paper, an invite and a hearing, and both are really about the same underlying thing if you squint: how much control a handful of companies in the Bay Area have over what a couple billion people see and buy and think is important. Apple gets to set the calendar for an entire industry's news cycle with one email. Two other companies get subpoenaed, more or less, into explaining themselves to Congress. I dont have a neat way to tie those together and I'm not going to force one. Going to go re-read the leak roundups now, which I recognize is a little bit of a contradiction after everything I just wrote, but here we are.