Apple Imagines the ‘Appocalypse’ in Clever WWDC Video

Apple Imagines the 'Appocalypse' in Clever WWDC Video
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Can you imagine a world without apps? Apple did. In a thoroughly tongue-in-cheek video that kicked off yesterday’s WWDC keynote, Apple envisions the disappearance of our beloved apps as the beginning of the “appocalypse.”

The video opens with a new Apple employee inadvertently unplugging a critical server at a Cupertino data center — the result is the sudden disappearance of every iPad and iPhone app. Obviously, chaos ensues. You can watch the pandemonium unfold for yourself in the video below.

One of the most memorable scenes depicts Vine star Brittany Furlan on the street yelling “selfies,” desperately trying to hand out physical copies of her self-portraits. Without Maps or GPS, drivers forget what city they’re in and subsequently cause widespread traffic accidents. And “Face Swap” takes on a much more horrifying meaning when physical surgery replaces machine algorithms. Without the App Store, the survivors have resorted to a physical black market for shoddy replicas of their favorite apps. iTunes is a guy selling CDs, Candy Crush is simply a table where people crushing actual candy with a hammer, and FarmVille 2 is just a petting zoo. In another scene, a man stands atop a broken car and broadcasts, over a loudspeaker, how he ate an entire pizza by himself — “Hashtag: does anybody want a slice?” he says before bursting into tears.

Apple is no stranger to crafting clever marketing campaigns, and this video is yet another example of the company knowing its audience extremely well. The video was shown to a room chock full of app developers and its concluding message was aimed directly at them. “Keep building apps,” the video ultimately implores. “The world is depending on you.”

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