Let me begin by saying this: I am a serious Apple fan. At work, I use an iMac. At home, a MacBook. On the move, an iPad. In the car, an iPod. And in my pocket, an iPhone. When the need presents itself, I am prepared to preach the righteous way to the unenlightened.
And so, on September 12, I was glued to my iPhone, keeping an eye on iclarified's live feed from the Apple event, waiting for the iPhone 5 to be launched. For the past few months, I had watched the series of leaks: the front of the phone, then the back of the phone, then the dock connector and so on. In a symphony of leaks that would have put wiki leaks to shame, the iPhone 5 took shape before our eyes. And yet, based in a history of awe-inspiring product launches, I just knew that apple had something up it's sleeve. One last card that no one knew about. One Siri-like rabbit that Tim Cook would pull out of his hat that would out the entire droid world and windows world to shame. The only problem is, he didn't do that.
And thats why, the iPhone 5 is not so much about what it is, but what it isn't. And there's something terribly wrong with that statement.
Perhaps we should have expected it. A company like Apple, known for its famous secrecy about its products, allowing leaks of such magnitude before such an important launch? To me, thats the corporate equivalent of telling someone to sit down before giving them bad news. Note that there were no leaks about the new iPod touch, which too was a major product update. Which brings us to why - why is there suddenly a disconnect between what Apple fans expect and what the company has delivered?
Too much, too soon
One theory is that for a lot of breakthrough technologies - which may very well already exist - it might be too soon. A fancy touchscreen that has a surface that morphs according to applications is in the offing, but perhaps Apple thinks that something like that might be upping the ante too much right now. The corporate version of this normally goes like ‘its not yet commercially viable to make the technology available to the public’.
If its not broken, don’t fix it
This is truly dangerous territory for Apple. They’re falling into the trap of complacency... Jony Ive cushioned it nicely when he said that Apple is very careful about changing the iphone because they realize how important it is to consumers. To me, that sounds sort of like saying ‘We’ve got a good thing going and we know it’.
Incremental is never detrimental
This follows on from the above reason: incremental changes will always be taken well by audiences, even if all of them don’t like the product in the first instance. Its true: the iphone 5 is an excellent phone. Its thin, its light, its runs iOS, it has Siri and a whole host of other excellent features. It looks damn good and it has the coveted Apple logo on it. It’s just that if you already have an iPhone 4S, you might not feel the insane urge to upgrade immediately.
The iPhone 5 launch made me feel a little sad. It made me miss Steve Jobs, even though I’m sure he signed off on this product well before he passed on to iHeaven. It made me miss the magic of Apple product launches of days gone by. Apple has always been at the forefront of development - the multitouch technology, the retina display, Siri: all excellent examples of the speed at which hardware is advancing. And that’s whats missing from the iPhone 5.
Having said all that, man that phone looks good. Do I want one?
Are you kidding? Hell yes!
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