Coming up with a slogan can be tricky business. Although Apple has a history of thinking different about its catchphrases, when the Cupertino company unfurled the banners for WWDC 2014 this week, we were unimpressed.
This year’s slogan — “Write the Code. Change the world.” — sounds like it came straight from Mike Judge’s hit comedy show Silicon Valley. In the HBO series, every half-baked startup either wants to “revolutionize” or “make the world a better place” through things like “software-defined data centers” or “scalable, fault-tolerant, distributed data bases with ACID transactions.” Code Flappy Bird, save the world!
Here are some of Apple’s WWDC hits and misses from over the years.
Think we’re off the mark? Let us know in the comments!
Worst
“Innovation leads to innovation”
Yawn. The big news from 2005 was the switch to Intel processors. OS X 10.5 (Leopard) was sneak-peeked and Apple announced that the iPod cornered 75 percent of the market share.
“Expand your universe”
Meh. Apple launched the iPhone in January 2007, so when WWDC opened its doors in June, developers were hoping Apple would announce an SDK for third-party apps. However, Apple instead announced support for third-party development via online web apps running in Safari.
“A whole new world is developing”
It was a cutesy way to tease the release of iOS 7 in 2013 — but we’re still trying to wrest that nasty earworm from Disney’s Aladdin with the similar title out of our heads.
“Where great ideas go on to do great things”
Just awful. Insanely bad. 2012. Sounds like it should be on the bottom of an inspirational poster on the wall in The Office.
Best
“One year later. Light-years ahead.”
In 2010, Apple announced the launch of the iPhone 3GS as well as iOS 3.0. Macbook Pros received updates, too. This slogan fits the actual mood of the year and the products.
“The center of the app universe”
Finally: At WWDC 2010, Apple really celebrated iPhone apps. There was a giant fame wall that showed how often individual apps get downloaded. This edition also launched the iPhone 4 and FaceTime.
“You’ve come to the right platform”
This 2006 slogan would’ve been more appropriate the next year, when the iPhone was introduced. Or maybe it’s prescient. Either way, it’s a familiar warm welcome for the 1,000 engineers getting up to speed at 140 sessions and 100 hands-on labs.
