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2021 WWDC Pickies

jbiatek 31st December 2021 at 10:30pm
Winner: Indeterminate

As always, points are doubled for everything since WWDC is in the first half of the year.

🥇 Round 1 (3 points)

HostPickScore
John "Apple is going to introduce a standalone display at WWDC 2021" 0
  • "Costs less than a Pro Display XDR"
  • Yet again, John makes this his 3 point pick, but Jason thinks this might be the year.
James "Jason and John will earn no more than 16 points this game" ???
  • James decides to go a new, more meta route with his first pick.
Jason "I will win the 2021 WWDC Upgrade Draft" 6

🥈 Round 2 (2 points)

HostPickScore
John "Mail.app gets a disappointing update" 4
  • There is some fear that this will be subjective, but since the update was basically just blocking tracking pixels, this is a clear win.
James "Apple will finally put out TestFlight for the Mac" 4
Jason "John will come in last place" ???

⚡️ Lightning Round (1 point)

HostPickScore
John "Actually, it is James who will be in last place" ???
James "Tim Cook will not say the word "Apple"" 0
  • This seemed ill-advised at the time, but... no, it was very ill-advised.
Jason "New features for FaceTime" 2
John "The Home app will get updated, but only the watch version" 2
  • A very specific pick that pays off
James "macOS will skip all the way to version 2021 to match the year" 0
Jason "iPadOS will get non-mirrored external display support" 0

🏆 Scores

During grading, there are some... issues. The three meta picks can't be scored until the end. The standings initially are:

  1. Jason: 8 points
  2. John: 6 points
  3. James: 4 points

James and John's picks are correct, as Jason and John have just 14 points between them, and James is in last place. However, the 6 additional points for James boosts him from last to first, making John's pick incorrect after all. All seems resolved until Jason remembers that with John now in last place, Jason's pick is correct, earning him 4 points and taking the lead. The live listeners then point out that Jason and John now have a combined 18 points, making James's pick wrong again. James drops back down to last again, which takes the 4 points back away from Jason and gives 2 to John. Now Jason and John's combined score is 16, just small enough to makes James's pick correct again.

In retrospect, at that point the scoring process had wrapped back around to where it started, but it took a few loops to realize it. What followed was a confusing whirlwind of numbers and logical deduction.

Eventually, the hosts and live listeners concluded that there actually was no solution: any decision about these remaining picks resulted in either a loop or a contradiction. Just as the statement "this sentence is false" is neither true nor false, each host has neither won nor lost this game. The result is decided as "indeterminate" and a new rule that picks must be both provably true or false and related to technology is added to prevent this in the future.