Amazon is flooding the hardware gaps between Apple, Microsoft, and Google

Tech keynotes reveal more than just products

Today is Microsoft’s big day, as you no doubt have surmised from everything I’ve been writing about. Charlie Warzel at The New York Times wrote last month that he hoped these sorts of keynotes would become a thing of the past. I’m absolutely not going to defend all of the pomp and hype, but I do think these things are worth paying attention to.

I want to talk through a specific example of a tech keynote being instructive: Amazon’s big 80-product extravaganza last week. Amazon was communicating something important about itself by cramming so much into such a small space.

Every company only gets a certain number of opportunities to say, “Pay attention to us right now. We have something to say and it’s going to take an hour.” What Apple or Microsoft or Google or whomever decide to do with that very valuable attention is notable.

Let’s take today’s keynote. Microsoft very much needs to tell a story about itself and its hardware because it is seemingly doing at least two big, new things — and maybe more. New rumors have solidified not only the ARM Surface, but also the likelihood of a dual-screened device and a new flavor of Windows, called Windows 10X.

How will Microsoft explain the thinking behind these products? I’m not suggesting we should naively take what’s said on stage at face value, but paying attention can be instructive. We’re going to learn a little more about what Microsoft thinks computers should look like, and the company is going to make an argument. Shouldn’t we want to know what that argument is, even if we disagree with it?

Even though it doesn’t seem like it to an American audience that mostly just buys iPhones, no technology is inevitable. It has to get invented and then that thing could be good or bad. And the quality of those products and how they affect people’s behavior will have real-world effects.

It feels weird to have to say all this in the first place. But the techlash (a term I hate just based on the awkwardness of the portmanteau) has us all second guessing everything. Good; it should. And if all the big companies want to get together and agree to stop producing these announcement events, that’s fine. But I wouldn’t hold your breath.

So if they’re going to happen, we should be getting more out of them than just specs. Being troubled by the effects technology has on us means we should be paying more attention to the devices and software that causes all those effects — and on why the companies that make those products think they ought to exist in the first place.

Read more: theverge