Gruber, WWDC, and Apple Glass

From John Gruber’s post on the WWDC announcement:

The invitation artwork consists of a diverse bunch of Memoji characters, peeking at a MacBook display as the hinge opens. (One of them is wearing a hearing aid.) It’s a clear callback to the Craig Federighi hero shot in the M1 announcement event that launched a thousand memes.

When I first saw the announcement, didn’t click for me, then saw this Rene Ritchie tweet, now can’t unsee it. Great callback.

But the other thing: every single one of the Memoji characters is wearing glasses, with the contents of the MacBook screen reflected in them. Does this mean Apple’s glasses product is getting announced at WWDC? I’d say that’s possible, but wouldn’t read too much into it.

The hint at Apple Glass seems so strong, so deliberate, it will be interesting to see what Apple does at WWDC to connect the dots here. If they do not announce Apple Glass (or Apple Glasses, or Apple iGlass, etc), seems to me Apple is playing the crowd here. This graphic clearly leads to a very specific conclusion. Or, if no Apple Glass, it purposely misleads.

Has Apple ever put out an invite graphic that purposely misled? Plenty of graphics that didn’t really lead anywhere, some that were obscure until the announcement made things clear (thinking bokeh event invite). But purposefully misleading? Can’t think of one.