Apple’s ‘slofie’ is its most pointless ‘innovation’ since Animoji

“The best work of their lives.”

That declarative statement of unambiguous triumph was issued by Tim Cook at today’s Apple event   held in the company’s Steve Jobs Theater. 

The CEO was heaping praise on his underlings’ role in bringing the various products and services presented onstage to market — a feat which, in his mind, would surely be the crowning achievement of their lives. Which, when one considers the newly unveiled “slofie,” suggests a collection of lives consisting of substantially more valleys than peaks. 

For those still blissfully unaware, slofie is a portmanteau of “slow motion” and “selfie” that describes a new feature available with the iPhone 11’s front-facing camera. Specifically, it allows customers to record a slowed down video of themselves. 

I mean, just look at how the game done changed. 

Revolutionary, isn’t it?

This new feature, which will be used a few times for novelty effect and then quickly forgotten, calls to mind a similarly touted and likewise failed effort by Apple to squeeze an extra inkling of life out of its annual hours-long infomercial: Animoji. 

Much like the ability to poorly map your face onto a questionably rendered animal face, the slofie seems hardly worthy of being created let alone held aloft by Cook as a testament to what great minds can do if they only work together. 

And sure, your most annoying friends will most definitely fill your Instagram feed with slofies in the weeks following the iPhone 11’s release. But that says more about them than the feature. 

The slofie does offer us one unambiguous benefit, however. Much like with Animoji, use of the slofie by others will allow you to weed out which friends you should or should not keep.