'Backstage' at WWDC: Apple posts the Bill Hader video that kicked off the keynote

12.06.2015
Apple loves its dad jokes, especially when celebrities can get involved and lend an air of coolness. "Our products are cool, but we're all nerds here," seems to be the message, and there's no better audience for that message than the Worldwide Developers Conference. Monday's keynote kicked off with a video made expressly to delight the 5,000 developers, who laughed and hooted through the whole thing.

Starring Bill Hader of SNL fame, the video is called "Backstage" and it's pretty funny. If you were tapping your foot during the live stream hoping they'd just get on with it already, do yourself a favor and watch it again, for the lulz.

But if I can be honest, this isn't my favorite silly Apple stunt in recent memory. Bill Hader is great and all, but my heart belongs to Stephen Colbert, and his appearance at the October 2014 iPad launch event, in a funny appearance as Apple's new "Secrecy Chief." (If you'll remember, the company accidentally leaked photos of its own iPads before the event.) Apple doesn't have a clip of that on its YouTube site, but the full event is there, and the Colbert skit starts at 25:22, as Craig Federighi is about to demo the new Continuity features in Yosemite and iOS 8.

(www.macworld.com)

Susie Ochs