The seams that matter

There are seams that knit us in many ways. Some help us heal when we need to recover from something. Others are what make us stronger. But not all of them belong to the extremes, because life is not just up or down, white or black. There are others – perhaps, the ones that matter most, the everyday ones – about which very little is talked about.

They are like travel photos. We make them thinking about remembering that moment because perhaps we think that that moment is the one that deserves to be remembered – but things happen before and after it. The travel photos are epic, perfect, framed and full of smiles. For me, the most important photos are perhaps the ones we have the least.

The ones in your teenage room. A random breakfast, a random Tuesday in March two years ago, for example. Your first move, a walk through your city, a look at what the kitchen in your parents’ house was like before the renovation. The toys you kept in the closet. Perhaps the largest seams are the ones that are most visible, but without a doubt, the small ones are the ones that really they make up what we are made of.

The before and after

The first time I saw an Apple keynote at home, it was an ordinary day. Which you don’t have photos of. Apple had just launched the iMac G3 a year earlier, so I guess it would be around 1999. I finally had the Internet, and I was very curious to know more about that company that I had discovered with an impressive Performa, years before, in the kiosk warehouse. from a friend’s father.

I don’t even remember where it was. The company’s website did not post its keynotes, YouTube did not exist, so I assume it was some website with the video posted. It wasn’t streaming, I had to download it. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much. Another computer company. Another Microsoft, I don’t know. But the green iMac I saw in the back window – in Netscape – was something absolutely groundbreaking. What crazy person creates a translucent computer? And why do you take away the floppy drive? Why was this Jobs guy so important, if he was fired from the company?

When I finished watching that video, I didn’t understand why everyone wasn’t talking about Manzana.

The years passed and the keynote warehouse increased in size. I managed to have a good collection, which I reviewed over and over again. Finding them was increasingly difficult, since in the early 2000s the websites came and went. That’s why he tried to download all the ones he found. When I got a DVD recorder, I recorded them on two discs, which I still have.

It wouldn’t have been necessary. I practically know them all by heart, thanks to those afternoons in my room – of which there are no photos, but there are many small seams – where I went over them again and again.

The other side

Behind me, as I write this, My suitcase. Also the images from those DVDs, from those random afternoons – and so important – and the memories of what weave together, which sometimes come as nostalgia. It is inevitable to have them again every time I am about to travel to a keynote.

Because before, when I saw those videos – with horrible quality and that took hours to download – I wondered what that other side was like. The keynote moment is like travel photos: everything is epic, resounding, overwhelming. But I also wondered about the things that happen before and after: the small seams that make an Apple event impact us so much.

I wanted to know everything, because being there was even further away than Mars. It was almost science fiction, and therefore, she imagined it as another distant planet and how it would affect the Reality Distortion Field™ from Steve Jobs to the adventurous journalists who landed there. As They would explore all that technology and how they would synthesize their emotions to send us, who were on this side, everything they were discovering.

In a few days I will be on that other side, in Cupertino. I, we, will tell you here. But now I know that being there only makes it important to those of you who read and see what we want to tell you. The adventurers, the explorers, are not who we are going for. You are the ones who want to know everything. It was me those afternoons, like any of you, watching the keynotes at my parents’ house. And it is the conversations, the good times and the passion when understanding the optimistic side of technology and what can be created with it.

The rest of us are just messengers of moments that, like the one we will experience on Tuesday, excite us. Because maybe you started watching keynotes 20 years ago or this is your first time, it doesn’t matter. Telling it is our responsibility, but doing it and enjoying it with you is what makes them special. These are the seams that matter.

In Applesphere | My keynote in Apple Park

In Applesphere | All about the Apple Event