Today, I thought I would be waking up at 6 am to make the trek from San Francisco to Mountain View for the second day of Google’s annual developer conference, I/O. I probably would have forgotten to wear sunscreen and complained about trying to write stories from a venue made for rock concerts. But here we are. I’ve spent the day in sweatpants, writing from my living room couch. There’s a part of me that wishes I was outside, sweating.
It’s unclear whether tech companies will re-embrace their flashy events when the pandemic subsides. Today, Amazon announced its new lineup of Fire tablets with a simple press release. Even Apple—whose late CEO Steve Jobs brought a new level of showmanship to tech launches—introduced its latest phone last month with an online promo video.
