Scrapped Intro From WWDC 2014 With Larry David as Head App Reviewer

Sam Henri-Gold on Twitter:

Today’s vibe: scrapped WWDC 2014 intro film feat. Larry David, JB Smoove, and Evan Spiegel.

What a find. It’s effectively a 10-minute mini-episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm with Larry David as Apple’s head of app review for the App Store. Henri-Gold posted a 53-second clip to Twitter, but wrote:

The whole thing exists out there. I’m holding off on sharing the link to protect the party who inadvertently released it; I don’t want to cause any harm to their business over this. I encourage you to not publicly share the link either. Thanks for understanding.

A little late for that — the full version that was posted to Vimeo was pulled overnight. The whole video is funny in exactly the way Curb is funny, but Curb Your Enthusiasm-style humor is not Apple-style humor — and the difference has only widened since 2014. I don’t know how this project got so far, but the humor is such that I don’t see how Apple could possibly have used it, even in 2014. One joke that might have played as funny in 2014 but wouldn’t in 2021 is the central conceit of the video — that Apple’s head of app review is a capricious jerk who makes approval decisions based on inscrutable whims.

★ Tuesday, 6 July 2021