The hot topics from this week’s Apple keynote

March 23 2016

By @G_Parsons33

Published in Trends

On Monday, Apple hosted their latest keynote event, announcing their upcoming product releases and company news. The Apple keynote always attracts a lot of attention, so we used the Visibrain media monitoring tool to see which topics were dominating the online conversation.

The Apple Event generated 248,767 tweets between 12 pm on Monday and 12 pm the following day. 122,309 people tweeted about the brand’s latest news:

An overview of tweet volumes around the #AppleEvent

The keynote attracted attention from all over the world, but the lion’s share of posts originated from the United States at 29.4%. The UK, India and Japan followed suit at around 7.5% each.

A display of which countries tweets about Apple's keynote originated from

The event provided fans with key information about Apple’s latest products and company news, but which subjects had the most impact?

The ongoing encryption debate

Apple’s recent run-ins with the FBI over data encryption and privacy meant that the issue was the most talked-about topic of the event. CEO Tim Cook chose to address the elephant in the room early on in the keynote, and his words were quoted by @zackwhittacker in this tweet:

He was then quoted by Edward Snowden:

The post was the most-retweeted of the entire event, shared over 5,000 times.

A disappointing product line-up

Apple’s new products were overshadowed somewhat by the data protection debate, but got their fair share of attention nonetheless: #iphonese, #ipadpro and #applewatch all feature prominently in the most frequently-used hashtags.

the most commonly used hashtags in tweets about #AppleEvent

However, not everyone was particularly impressed with the new releases: a new smaller iPhone, a new version of the iPad and new wristbands for more affordably-priced Apple watches were admittedly not up to standard with Apple’s usual spectacular announcements.

If we look at the most-retweeted posts sent during the Apple event, we can see that after @Snowden’s tweet, the top two tweets weren’t exactly singing Apple’s praises:

The most retweeted posts about the #AppleEvent

And they weren’t the only ones expressing their disappointment at Apple’s underwhelming releases:

A strong focus on the environment

Data protection and Apple’s newest products may have been the ruling themes of the keynote, but the environment was also a hot topic. The brand unveiled its latest efforts in the use of renewable energy in its plants, as well as Liam, a robot designed to take apart old iPhones for recycling:

If we look at the most commonly used expressions in tweets about the Apple event, we can see that the keywords “Liam”, “renewable energy” and “environment” all show up in the word cloud:

The most common keywords appearing in tweets about #AppleEvent

If we search through for users tweeting about the event, who also used the words “Liam”, “renewable energy” “green” or “environment” in their posts, we can see that news of Apple’s environmental efforts was widely relayed by influential press accounts such as Reuters, Mashable and TechCrunch:

The most influential users tweeting about Apple's new environmental policies

All in all, Monday’s keynote was not the most spectacular event in Apple’s history in terms of product releases, but it covered some of the key challenges facing the brand for the coming year.

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Published in Trends