Is anyone really shocked? Here, I'll write out the tech media "design pattern" for a new Apple product.
1. Hype up killer pie-in-the-sky feature that makes zero economic sense for Apple (see: retina iPad, 4G iPhone with larger screen). Traffic spikes.
2. As launch approaches, use "inside sources" to mock up designs (Macrumors's "we think the 5 will look like this"). Report on supply chain behavior, leaked case designs, etc. Traffic spikes.
3. Live blog the launch event. Toss in snarky one-liners ("Siri? beam me up Scotty m i rite lolol") because you and your readers are too cool to watch the keynote but I guessssss we'll tune in anyway. Servers overload with traffic.
4. Write editorials complaining about how pie-in-the-sky features from #1 don't arrive. Cover your ass by reporting "supply chain delays" from unnamed sources. Hits among disillusioned gadget connoisseurs (heh) spike.
4.5. AAPL falls 2-3% even though the product will break sales records again. Yawn.
5. Break for a week or two to avoid tech journalism burnout, then repeat for next product. (e.g. iPad HD supply chain rumors in Nov/Dec). Traffic spikes.
Whatever.
EDIT: My favorite was the rumor about the iPad 2 getting a HD screen. The next best screen on the market (the Xoom) was like 140 ppi. Why would Apple drop $n >> 0 per iPad when competitors' screens are relatively abysmal and the iPad would sell out?
Anyone who bought that rumor displayed a serious unfamiliarity with the concepts of marginal benefit and marginal cost.
EDIT 2: Go read the child comment by chugger. It's all about the short positions.
(Random aside: I agree with all your arguments against the retina iPad display.
That said, I wrote the iOS Artwork Tool, which reads and writes the .artwork files found in iOS SDKs. Last night I updated the tool with iOS5 support and to my surprise discovered new iPad-specific @2x graphics. To be clear, the iPad @2x graphics appear to be woefully incomplete... but it's clear that someone over there is working on this.
Timeframes? I'll leave that to the rumor mill. Will it eventually happen? I'll venture a cautious yes.)
The iPad 3 was the most egregious example I've seen of this yet. John Gruber said it made sense for the iPad to be on a September release schedule (which actually makes no sense) based on no information whatsoever.
What followed was how the iPad 3 was coming, it had a retina display, the usual unverifiable tales from the supply chain, etc. In the end, unnamed sources said Apple decided to cancel it for a variety of reasons.
Not writing about a product that doesn't (and never) existed gets you zero pageviews. Writing about an Apple product gets you N page views. Writing about an unannounced product and then writing about it being scrapped, being ultimately the same as the first situation, gets you 2N page views.
The iPhone seems to be following a 2 year major release cycle. The 3GS was a relatively minor upgrade to the 3G (with faster CPU, etc) but it had basically the same design. You can make the same comparison from the 4 to the 4S. Next year's will probably have a major shift in outward appearance but that's just a guess.
For me, the upgrade is significant if you play games on your phone. I actually don't (I do on my iPad however). The faster shooting and better sensor are nice but not worth me upgrading I think.
I just wish so many people didn't fall prey to the obvious linkbaiting when it comes to Apple. This pattern constantly repeats itself. Any rational person knew the Fall iPad 3 was never going to happen the second the rumours started. You'll see a new iPad next March/April and probably an LTE iPhone 5 next summer or early Fall.
> John Gruber said it made sense for the iPad to be on a September release schedule (which actually makes no sense) based on no information whatsoever.
The iPad, being a contract-less decision, makes a lot of sense as a Christmas purchase.
The stuff about retina displays I think was based on the UltraHD icons and shit found in Lion. I think at least some of the thinking came from the idea that Apple wanted to do a super-high-res iPad (again, based on the direction of icons in Lion) and shift it's product cycle for the iPad from Spring to Fall. Since this was before the iPhone 4S was shifted from early summer, it made more sense a few months ago.
I'd still like a bigger screen on the iPhone. Mah thumbs are big.
Since this was before the iPhone 4S was shifted from early summer, it made more sense a few months ago.
More sense than zero isn't significantly different from zero.
I said this a few months ago, and I stand by it now: there was no reason for Apple to refresh a product that had 4-week delivery times. They couldn't stock iPad 2s in Apple Stores, so it made zero economic sense to refresh only 6-8 months later.
(I think this was cletus's point, and FWIW I agree with it 100%)
I don't know how anyone could reasonably anticipate an iPhone with a larger screen. From what I can tell, the resolution of the OS is effectively fixed and layout is done with pixels. A larger screen would mean lower DPI if the same resolution were to be maintained. That be rolling back on all the retina display hype.
Yup. MacRumors really did a disservice to everyone with that mock up stuff. I get what the reasoning was, but that doesn't make it any better. Sometimes the rumor sites just flat out get it wrong, and MacRumors I think is responsible for a lot of over-zealous reporting.
That said, the stock lost some ground, but the thing with Apple's stock, it always goes up before and after their quarterly earnings calls. They continue to defy the numbers people expect from it.
Their profits are going to continue to rise, and with it, so will the stock. The geeks that have to have the new shiny will be disappointed, however, the casual user will love the iPhone 4S and it well sell like crazy. At least just as well as the iPhone 4.
Were we all hoping to see an "iPhone 5" ? Yup. I think we all were hoping, however little, that it would show up. But many of us with any sense of reasoning and logic regarding Apple have pretty much known that this update was going to be almost exactly what it was. Apple is on a two year design plan. Excuse the original iPhone since that was the exception (again, not that the iPhone 5 couldn't have been one as well). But if you look at it now, it becomes a lot more clear. iPhone 3G-> iPhone 3GS (Faster processor, more ram and the same design). iPhone 4->iPhone 4S (Faster processor, probably more ram, same design).
Next year we'll see a new case design, and maybe it'll resemble the tapered design that has been rumored. I'm kind of hoping against it since it would be awkward to hold in landscape orientation. Something that is curved in both directions would be neat. As long as it is symetrical. The problem with a "banana" shape is that it would no longer sit flat on a desk and that would bother me.
I'm pretty happy with the iPhone4/4S case. I kind of wish it was a bit more curved on the edges since I find the metal "mid-case" to be a bit sharp, not a cut you kind of sharp, but it could be more blunt and thus more comfortable in your hand. Think more pebble shaped with regard to the sides.
It's easy to look back and say, oh, those case mockups or cases shouldn't have been reported on since they were wrong.
But at the time, the entire case industry was moving forward with producing cases. They weren't just prototypes, you could actually buy the "iPhone 5" cases. It would have been impossible not to report on the cases and what they represent.
I believe and have been told that the iPhone 5 design was real -- just not ready.
As for mockups. Both sides tend to point and say, oh - look what they got wrong. or look what they got right.
But the thing about rumors is it's like a statistical distribution. You can't take any one rumor and say "oh, this is it". Eventually, by the time the event happens, the rumors settle around something that frequently is very close to the truth. See, our Rumor Roundup right before the event for the final conclusion from months of rumors: http://www.macrumors.com/2011/10/03/lets-talk-iphone-rumor-r...
You guys have done great work in the past. But you've taken things a bit far this time. You win some you lose some, but you helped set expectations way too high and that resulted in some serious disappointment for a lot of people.
Between your terrible moderators, insanely stupid forum readers, and this, I have no desire to really read your site anymore.
More importantly is why didn't it come out sooner, like in June? My guess is that the soonest it would have came out is actually came out is August 10, six months after the iPhone 4 CDMA, and probably because a contract between Apple and Verizon to not let Sprint in on the action quite yet, especially since the iPhone 4 could run on Sprint the entire time. Furthermore the white iPhone 4 didn't really come out until April. October is a fairly convenient 6 months after that as well.
It's possible we could have got an iPhone 5, but I'm sure apple is waiting for WiMax/LTE to really ramp up in both semiconductor quality and carrier service. Also, they won't release two phones, so they're going to wait for chips that do both WiMax and LTE at the power consumption they want, which will probably be in about a year.
The best aspect of all of this for apple today is that they have so many products, so you can jump from rumor-hyping one to the next, avoiding burnout. You can go from the retina-ipad to the iphone 5 and then you still have plenty more places to hop around to (such as macbooks, itunes, acquisitions, ebooks, etc.) before you hop back to the ipad or iphone.
I don't know about the spreading of rumours, but alot of funds short apple on the day of product announcements as their stock almost always goes down during the announcements.
In fairness, that sounds apocryphal. If it were really common then there would be no money in doing it because the market would have factored in days before the event the fact that the price were going to fall.
Long nicknamed the “favorite yo-yo” of daytraders and hedge fund managers – Apple’s high beta of 1.43, its prominent position in finance media and its vulnerability to rumors has made it a choice stock in short term profits, both through long and short positions
http://www.investorguide.com/article/6809/apples-aapl-mini-c...
Because the profit comes over a shorter period, i.e. shorting stock from the 3rd to the 5th. If they just bought at the lower price after the announcement they would have to wait for a longer period before they would gain the same profit as through shorting the stock.
iPad is a new product line and need to reach mass appeal. Apple is betting a lot on a form factor that has repeatedly failed. They need to sell a high volume of units, not sell a few high end units.
Maybe in a few years there will be an 'iPad Pro' with a higher power processor, better screen, etc. But it seems unlikely in the short term.
Also a retina display on an iPad priced at 1000$ or so would probably have similar profit to the current iPads. So even less motivation.
I agree with all of the above and add that Apple's only plausible competition is from _below_ (e.g. the Kindle Fire) and so if anything they're probably figuring out a plan for what to do if sales start flagging from such competition (e.g. can Apple maintain margins on a $299 iPad2? $399?).
Whether or not you're right, if Apple is worried about competition from "below," as you put it, it will be the very first time since 1978 that they have done so.
I'm surprised nobody is pointing out similarity to Intel's very successful Tick-Tock release cycle - release a new architecture on tick and refine the process on tock
The benefits for Apple are manifold, but the two most obvious are:
1. Keep expectations sane - they can't release a radical new industrial design of superbly high quality every year.
2. Give customers on a 2 year contract predictable value rather than leaving them always waiting for the next awesome device
Windows 95 was one of the most successful product launches of all time. And Windows 2000 was a very solid product though not generally a good choice for casual users.
The real reason Apple called it an "iPhone 4S" is that they want to start selling the 4 to the large segment of the market shy of the cutting edge.
Plenty of people will buy something called a "4" when the state of the art is a "4S" -- there's no embarrassment there: "Oh, my discount phone is almost as good; it's just missing an S. And it's not like my friends will be able to tell that I'm using last year's model. It looks the same."
But if the latest model is called the "5", then suddenly there's a stigma to having the 4. You're stuck one full number behind the Joneses. And everybody knows, because you're still using the phone with the unfashionable flat back while everyone else has the slick new teardrop design that's all the rage.
Interesting theory but personally I don't see that most normal people care about that type of stuff at all. The 2+ year old 3GS was the #2 best selling SmartPhone last month even though it's using a 3+ year old design. If anyone was really that insecure about themselves they would probably just spend the extra $100 to get the latest & greatest.
I don't know if I agree with the reasoning of the "4" being like the "4S" as the reason for buying. I'd look at it instead as on the surface, looking at someone using an iPhone, you wouldn't be able to tell if it was a 4 or a 4S.
The 4S will sell to early adopters and power users, and the 4 will sell to more price conscious late adopters. Either way, Apple wins. They're already doing good with iPhone 4 production, probably have decent amount stocked, and production costs between the two don't change too much.
Saw the common reaction to the iPhone 5 disappointment summarised loosely as: "If this new product looks like the last one, how will people tell that I'm superior to them?"
If this exact same phone had come out with the name "iPhone 5", and maybe a different case, people would be praising it to the heavens. People are weird.
We've seen this time and again with software versions. Software version 2 is worse than competitor version 5. Why? Well 2 < 5, ignoring that the competitor may have just named their first version 5.
If they had just called what was released yesterday an iPhone 5 there would have been much less disappointment. As far as a full redesign goes, I don't see a whole lot Apple can do. The height and width of the current phone seems near perfect. They could expand the screen a bit to be edge to edge, get rid of the physical home button, and taper the back (seems less likely now that they are using a dual antenna design) I guess.
I just don't see a much larger screen iPhone coming. I think Apple has already said if you want a large screen iPhone, buy an iPad.
my apologies, seem to have missed that in my initial read.
I still think there were no breakout features this time round though. Siri being '4S' only is a bit of a cheek - and everything else felt firmly incremental. Even iOS 5 doesn't excite me much except for the notification system (though that is much appreciated).
Apple are experts in taking a feature their competitors technically have, but few customers use - and taking it 'mainstream' - nothing along those lines this time.
It seems to me that their next breakthrough in that regard is likely to be the NFC stuff, presumably to arrive with iPhone 5.
I don't think breakout features are really that necessary, though. There's tremendous value in incremental improvements. The 3GS was "only" an incremental improvement over the 3G, but the net result was a vastly better device. The iPhone 4's only breakout features were the screen (which is pretty impressive, but not ultimately all that consequential) and the new look. I don't think there's anything wrong with taking a great product and just making it greater. In fact, it seems to me that a lot of other companies miss that part and instead try too hard to come up with new stuff that will amaze people, which results in a worse product overall.
The iPhone 4 brought FaceTime/Mobile Video Calling to "the masses" too. Granted, the iPad 2 (and eventually the Mac) got that as well - but the forward facing camera was new (though entirely expected, granted).
I now FaceTime with my Family quite regularly.
I agree though, I love my iPhone 4 and am sure the 4S with it's incremental updates will simply be more-awesome. But for better or worse, I think version number bumps are now associated with big upgrades on iPhones.
Expectations are set high, but then Apple will quite happily just ignore everyone's expectations and do what they want.
Good point, I had completely forgotten about FaceTime. I still think people would have treated this as a major upgrade if it just had a different name and form factor, with everything else the same, but you're right that it is a bit less, in terms of completely new features, than previously.
Personally, I look at the specs for a 4S and have trouble coming up with anything new that I'd want to add. But of course that doesn't mean other people can't, I may just be unimaginable.
If the new case didn't have glass on the back, had a larger screen, or was thinner/lighter, then you're right that it would be getting more praise. I don't find that weird. I had an iPhone 4 for a while, and since I had zero performance issues with it, I probably wouldn't upgrade until there's a more significant improvement. Sure, it's frivolous, to the extent that there are people starving to death in the world and I'm discussing cell phones with anonymous people on the internet, but it's fairly reasonable and not just about feeling superior by having a visibly newer phone.
True, I had a friend debating whether to get one. I asked him, if they had labeled it a 5 would you feel the same way, what missing features are you after exactly? Turns out it pretty much was just the branding.
Perhaps part of it is this: I have an iPhone 3GS and didn't upgrade to an iPhone 4 when it came out because I was locked into my contract. By the time my contract ended, the 4 was 8 months old and I decided to hold off on upgrading until the 5 came out.
By releasing a 4s, Apple is most likely signaling that there will be a radically new phone released soon. (less than a year) I'm going to get a 4s (the new features are great and I can't really wait 6 months) but I probably won't ever actually get the 5 due to carrier lock-in.
A lot of people don't know this but the resale value of last years iphone is usually ~ the subsidized cost of this year's phone + cancellation cost for last part of your contract. There's a bit of a skew to this this year since the 4S came out later then usual.
Example:
(1) cancellation fee after 12 months at ATT is $325 - 120 = $205. If you had bought an iphone 4 in July 2010 the cancellation fee today would be $165.
(2) new iphone costs $200
(3) a 16 month old iphone 4 in good condition sells on ebay today for between $350-$375. A few months ago that was around $400+.
This is a twist on the old Jade plan for Macbook upgrades where you sell your old Macbook every year and buy a new one, always staying under warranty and continually upgrading -- it's not flawless, you will have to shell out a few bucks here and there but it's a pretty good system.
I think you are right. Apple delivered on every single other feature people were expecting/asking for, save NFC; and I don't hear anyone talking about the lack of NFC now. It seems like a pretty nice upgrade to me.
I don't think so. The biggest feature that people wanted, that they didn't deliver on was a bigger screen -- and screens on smartphones are pretty important.
The iPhone4s is a great device. The expectation though of a lighter, thinner, larger screen iPhone5 with crazy deep Facebook integration throughout made the announcement rather blah.
This is probably the first time I felt like Apple did a poor job controlling the messaging.
In contrast, recall when the iPad was coming out. There was a rumor a bit before launch that it would cost $999. The rumor lasted until Steve was on stage and showed $499. Their ability to prime the market for an upscale pricey device and slam home at less than $500 was beautifully executed.
This release was poorly done -- despite the fact that I agree -- the 4s is a solid product. And one that I think will sell well.
The biggest feature that people wanted, that they didn't deliver on was a bigger screen
Do people really want this? If they can go edge to edge in the current dimensions, that's fine. But, if they have to make the dimensions bigger it doesn't excite me. I want a pocket sized device that I can easily text on with 1 hand.
I imagine women who have smaller hands would also prefer the current size phone over some of the giant gimmick ones I have seen around.
Yeah I don't particularly want a bugger screen, it's the same thing that happened to net books, the screen size was a design choice but kept getting bigger until it was running into regular laptops again.
Does everyone want it? Of course not. The edge to edge screen is what was in the rumor mill. A 4" screen would not change the dimensions of the phone in this case.
I think we all saw what we wanted to see. I wanted an iPhone 5 and journalists wanted to write about an iPhone 5 so that was the story we all focused on. Looking back there are multiple signs that the 4S was going to be the only new model introduced, but just like Fox Mulder, we all wanted to believe.
Why does your comment sound like coming of 'iphone 5' is the most important thing on earth that humanity couldnt survive without?
Seriously, I dont want to troll and I understand that iphone's are cool, people want them and even many people in HN have businesses based on it, but "we all wanted to believe"? is iphone5 that important? This is beyond simple fanboism. This is a disaster.
I showed my friends the iPhone 4S today without mentioning how some people online are disappointed and they loved it, they aren't geeks and were part of the group that said the iPad was useless and just a big iPod.
Most of the UK news outlets i've seen haven't reported it as a flop of any kind just reported it as an update.
People seem really excited by Siri, they thought it was impossible and I heard similar thoughts on the radio. Not sure if it's just the tech news bubble or that people love Apple.
I got all of the features I wanted but didn't get the design changes. I'm glad Apple didn't call it 4G as technically they can now as what makes 4G was changed once all of these phones called themselves 4G.
You know, I honestly don't know why people are saying that they're disappointed. For me, this is the first iPhone since the original that gave me a real 'Wow, the future has just arrived' moment. For the original phone it was the Minority Report UI. This time around it's the Star Trek computer that talks to you. When Apple start running TV ads showing off Siri, the average consumer is going to love it.
How many people ever tried using the Voice Control in the iPhone 4? Siri is one of those features (awesome technological achievement notwithstanding) that's great to demo but largely irrelevant (or even unknown) to most users. It's this generation's Carousel view.
How many people have tried using Siri? Until it's actually in our hands and put to the test in real world situations, it's hard for anyone to make any claims about how well it works.
It could be reliable, useful and effective; it could be sometimes useful given the right environments and inputs; it could be a complete flop. No one outside of Apple knows right now.
This is different though. Plenty of people have used Siri. The new version adds a few Apple app based intents, but we have been able to use what was essentially a beta of Siri for years. And the parent comment is right. In its current state, this is Facetime 2. Good demo, fun to play with, but ultimately inconsequential for the majority of people.
But when Siri was in app form, much (perhaps most) of the benefit that it has now wasn't possible.
Not only could app-Siri not do some of the things that people will most often do with iOS-Siri ("wake me up at 7 o'clock", "remind me to call my girlfriend when I get home", "note that I need to buy lettuce"), but you had to unlock your phone and navigate to the app icon before you could even do those things that you could do with it. If you're already using a touch/visual interface to do things, it's cognitively easier to just stick with touches to finish the job. If the interface is entirely spoken/audible, there are a whole other set of things that start to make sense to use voice for.
- Voice Over often just outright failed. The accuracy for speech interpretation was good, but not great.
- The tasks that it could actually do were simplistic (pause! play! call Bob! next track!) and often it was more work to turn on Voice Over and talk, and easier to just touch the device and be done with it.
- Voice Over had a very limited verb database that you had to learn. It wasn't so much natural language recognition as simply using voice to input a (very) limited set of commands.
Siri is (ostensibly) not subject to any of the above limitations, so if it works as advertised it really will be completely different from Voice Over.
My point wasn't that Siri wasn't any good (or even that Voice Control was bad — it worked when I needed it) but that users neither know not care about it. In fact, the only users who knew about it probably discovered it accidentally by holding the home button down!
As you say, time will tell whether it's a hit. I'm betting not.
I use voice control on my iPod touch when I'm driving with it hooked up to my stereo. That's the killer use case for voice control as far as I'm concerned.
It works about half the time.
"Play Machine Gun Fellatio"
*"BING! Playing songs by Marvin Gaye"
"ehhh, good enough"
It works slightly better if I put on a fake American accent.
Not that I necessarily agree, but I think his point is that they have overlapping use cases and that people aren't avoiding Voice Control because it sucks, they're not using it because they don't have a huge need to.
I missed that possibility, thanks for alerting me to it.
I still think that it's too early to dismiss it because of what we've seen with Voice Control, but I agree that there's definitely the possibility that the idea won't catch on. I suppose everything depends on the implementation and whether it can be made seamless enough and useful enough that ordinary people use it.
Thank you! I'm glad someone understood the point I was making.
For all the majority of iPhone 4 users know, Siri could have been in their device all along the they either didn't know or didn't care.
Let's think this through. The use cases for Siri are when a) you can't use the keyboard and b) it a situation where you can talk freely. It sounds awesome for when you're driving. Or if you have a disability. Or... No, I think I'm out of potentially useful situations. And to be honest, Voice Control worked pretty well for me on the one occasion I needed it.
The advantage of operating at Apple scale is the ability to buy components in vast quantities, giving Apple better deals and exclusivity that their competitors can't match. The downside is that they have to buy at those scales. Apple can't afford to ship anything that contains components they can't source by the million.
If one HTC handset is delayed by six months thanks to part shortages, that's a problem for them. They have plenty of other products to fall back on, though. If an Apple product is delayed six months, it's a disaster. Apple would lose billions of dollars in revenue and suffer a PR holocaust. So when I see rumors like the Retina iPad 3, I always filter them by asking, "Can Apple get that part in increments of a million units?" Given that, it should be very rare for Apple to ship the first product containing any given component.
Actually, I think Apple could ride out a 6 month product delay quite easily. It would seem that the 4S was delayed 3 or 4 months (part shortage resulting from the earthquake in Japan?) from the normal summer release with no ill effects. Releasing it in December would have been bad, sure, but that has more to do with Christmas than the length of the delay.
I'm thinking more the kind of delay where the product is already on the market and a part shortage stops production, leaving Apple with nothing to sell.
One of these days I really must create a bunch of alter egos and make them predict different things. Then I can style the remaining ego that predicted the right thing into a prophet and make big money.
This is how some sports betting scams work. I can email a lot of people with one side of a wager and another large lot with the other side. The next week I'll just use the winning side email pool to send out another split wager. All the while I invite bettors to join my foolproof pick service. In a few weeks I'm looking pretty good to a small group.
Too much hassle. Start with one persona and just keep revising estimates as word comes out without mentioning it. Then obfuscate by "calling out" other experts. Nobody can be arsed to click the link you provide and wade through commentary to refute you anyway.
Just remember to answer any question with "It's what I've been saying all along..." and use short, choppy sentences.
IMHO, the most shameless was Jonathan Geller at BGR, who not only hyped the supposedly impending iPhone 5 to death, he released a story on Monday pushing a rumor that Sprint was getting an exclusive 4G iPhone 5.
Yesterday, his iPhone 4S story offered this astonishing course reversal:
"While confusion was sprinkled throughout the industry on exactly what Apple would announce, most seemed to agree that the iPhone 4S would be the smartphone that Apple ultimately would unveil."
The problem for big (and small) media is that hype (and its counterpart FUD) drives page views. Even good writers are more apt to fall for the "big" story even if they know it sounds fishy. Wishful thinking and greed (for clicks) leads to speculation run rampant.
It seems like, with most of the tech media, if they had called it a 5 it would have gone over better. The A5 processor in this thing is nothing to sneeze at. I am hopeful about the new antenna system, but will need to see it in action in a rural environment. Never mind the adding of Sprint and the price reduction on the 3GS and 4.
The screen is dense enough pixel wise, and consumers don't have to wait for new cases, bumpers, etc. since the iPhone 4 stuff works well. It is a good thing for consumers.
I am more and more convinced most of these stories were pre-written as soon as the 4S designation was found in iTunes. I am particularly down on All Things D and feel their reporting is pretty much useless.
I expected the 5 but I really admire how Apple stuck to their guns. With the CEO change any other company would have rushed out a new design to keep analysts happy considering the hardware boost (it's a bigger jump than 3S was to 4). While I prefer a rounder design personally I also don't want a mediocre iPhone. Apple won't refresh a design until everything is right. Also people fail to realize that the 4S comes with an improved antenna so they did improve the things that matter.
The downfall of Japanese manufacturers was adding features for features sake and switching up design to manufacture demand for the "new" model. Sony would have some nice products with promise but they always managed to screw something up with every iteration, never quite getting it right or abandoning product lines with passionate fans altogether. They're all struggling to stay alive now. The Koreans are doing the same only a little better (more innovation and focus on technology but still the same frequent changes).
When the dust settles I think you'll see that people who purchase or upgrade to 4S will be more than satisfied with the end product.
Wait a minute. What's all this "the iPhone 5 didn't arrive because LTE chips weren't good enough" ?
It wasn't mandatory for an "iPhone 5" to have LTE in the first place. Just because it wouldn't have had LTE ,doesn't mean they couldn't have made an "iPhone 5".
And if it's all about economics, then I guess it makes even more sense to keep the same design for 3, or even 4 years, no? That's probably what would happen if the iPhone had no competition, seeing how even with strong competition from Android, they still don't seem to care about using the same phone over and over again.
What's funny is that when HTC releases a more "refined" design (but still basically the same), the media is all "oh, same old design from HTC". But when Apple does it, "well, they are just refining a work of art!" or "It's the inside that counts!"
Yeah right. Most people buy phones for 3 main reasons:
1) design - and they don't want the same old one over and over again. It's no coincidence the iPhone 3GS was the most disappointing iPhone launch so far, too - until now that is
2) price - people will buy the phone they can afford
you are conflating many different people into one. so here's me: i like apple products. i like HTC's variations on a theme. i was disappointed by the 4S because i like new things, even if only on the outside. (though the 4S has an S on it, like superman, heh)
apple has its reasons for not changing the design and they are sound as ever—evolutionary, not revolutionary. and it makes so much sense for the 2-year upgrade cycle. considering too that apple is trying to make as many devices as possible, the same old design really helps them to that end. i am disappointed. but the product is by no means a disappointment.
(i really wanted an ipod touch 3g with upgraded internals that could go month by month like the ipad and do facetime/skype over wifi/3g)
It is a terrible time to find a replacement for a lost ipod. I've been waiting until today's Apple event before getting anything. I was ready to be pleasantly surprised.
Turns out Apple has just enough market share and momentum to waive their hands around for renewed sales. Why break ground when you can still make great profits off the old stuff?
Nano is a software update. Touch has a new color (wowsy!). Phone has speaking app installed, a slightly faster chip. It is new technology at the slowest drip possible. Give me a small ipod with tons of storage. Easy enough, right? Look at the cost of memory these days. You can buy a 32GB SD card for $40. But Apple won't do that. The whole iCloud business looms. The iCloud is just a way to capture and sell you data. So they provide iTunes, integration with everything, then reel in the fishes. They haven't updated the capacity of any of their devices for four years. The ipod nano no longer has a camera, no longer shows videos, has a smaller screen than ever before, and the maximum capacity remains 16GB. But they come in a dazzling array of colors; come and get them while they last!!!
Should I wait another 6 months? 12 months?
I've thought about getting one of the old nanos, but I'm learning something about the mac I use for work. The computer itself is awesome, even though it is about 7 years old. It is actually faster and more stable than the 64-bit PC I got a few months ago. The thing is, fewer and fewer programs work on it. Google Earth was automatically updated and no longer works. A bunch of other programs are the same. This old architecture (PowerPC) doesn't support any new Adobe products or really any thing else that is new. Even browsers are starting to act weird. But it isn't the hardware, its great. It is that new software doesn't communicate with it anymore.
So, I suspect the same will be true with these mac devices. Software will be designed specifically for new devices. So on older devices, either you won't be able to get the newest software or software will be automatically updated and cease to work. For instance, the click wheel now only exists on the ipod classic. Once the classic is discontinued, you can bet that any ipod with a click wheel will start having problems with any new OS. And they update the OS at least once a year. So you can't go back, even if the device remains superior.
Welcome to Apple's vision of the future, the - phase it out, throw it away, buy it new - society.
Isn't it really the exact opposite? If you have the last-generation iPod or iPhone there's really no good reason to go upgrade. It extends the life of your current device indirectly. With the 3GS being free with contract you can bet it will be very popular which means developers will have to take some extra time to make sure their apps worth with a 2+ year old device. (which also means they will have to work well with older iPod Touches) Apple is upgrading all the iOS devices to iOS5 except for the original iPhone 2G, 3G and the first generation iPod Touch. So probably about 200 million or more users are getting some significant software updates in a week or so.
You shouldn't be expecting a fundamental CPU architecture shift to stay backwards compatible 7 years later. Backwards compatibility costs something when you do major shifts such as these. Statistically, the amount of people who have PowerPCs have dwindled to mostly insignificant so the extra cost required to support them is not worth it. It's like asking website designers to stay compatible with IE6 or Netscape Navigator 4, it's not worth the extra work.
It's like your complaining about a countrywide shift from gasoline to ethanol and how your gas-only car engine is finding fewer and fewer gas stations to fill up with pure gasoline as the decades go by.
You'll find things that do not change fundamentally or lend themselves to relatively easy upgrades last for a very long time. Houses, simple tools, cars until they wear out, etc. Things that change and improve frequently like tech does.
i have had many apple products over the years and only bought one of them new.
apple products are in my experience built to work until they break and the cost of fixing them is more than a replacement. this happens much sooner in tech than in other spaces because it changes so quickly. the CPI has stayed relatively flat† because advances in technology have allowed more purchasing power (though for lower cost goods). the iphone is a technological marvel that was priceless ten years ago because it couldn't exist.
† year by year table of CPI since 1913 ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt
Isn't there also something about a promise Verizon gave the government when they won their LTE spectrum? That all devices on the network would be open to any application? I recall Google using this as a club over the iPhone 5 on Verizon.
The real reason (according to a CNET blog) is that iPhone 4 users are still locked into their 2-year contracts. The iPhone 4S is a good intermediate product which might attract former iPhone users (out of contract) or Droid users.
That's never been an issue before. Other iPhone product cycles have been well under two years and still introduced new features. Hell, the original iPhone was dropped en masse by pretty much everyone in favor of the 3G when it was released after just a year. That sounds more like an excuse than a "real reason" honestly.
The real reason, of course, is that Apple didn't have anything revolutionary to ship (other than an out-of-house software product that they turned into a "hardware" feature by fiat). I'm not convinced that's bad, really. I think a bigger issue is that smartphones are turning into a mature product and there's simply less revolution to be had.
But my gut is with the many other people who have voiced similar intuitions: this feels a lot like the mid-90's, when Apple stagnated in the face of clear motion in the industry, chasing old markets while new ones opened. Is the iPhone 4S the new Centris?
"That's never been an issue before. Other iPhone product cycles have been well under two years and still introduced new features."
Not so, the pattern of introducing an entirely new model only every second year and a performance boost of the existing model in between is one that Apple has followed since the iPhone 3G:
iPhone 3G -> iPhone 3GS -> iPhone 4 -> iPhone 4S
For that reason I was not expecting an iPhone 5 and was bemused by all the hype surrounding it.
Yet objectively this is a significant upgrade with a huge performance gain, the addition of a very exciting feature in Siri (I suspect it's limited to the iPhone 4S as a result of the decision to add dedicated processing hardware) and a vastly-improved camera. The iPhone 4 design is great and extremely successful, I don't understand why people are so upset that it wasn't changed.
I don't understand why people are so upset that it wasn't changed.
IMHO the iPhone 4 is already fast enough. It didn't need a new system board, it just needed a bigger screen, and they needed to get rid of that Radio Shack-style square enclosure.
This release was an exercise in fixing things that weren't broken while giving the competition a break.
That's fair enough, but it seems like more of a personal wish list than an analysis of what the iPhone really needs. Does it need a bigger screen and a new enclosure? The sales figures don't seem to suggest that it does.
Assuming for a minute that I'm right and the screen size and enclosure are not market liabilities for the iPhone, then my personal opinion is that the upgrades are sufficient to maintain sales, with the performance boost, new camera (along with the improved processing hardware) and Siri all being enough to keep it competitive at the high-end.
Also, I suspect it was about dropping the price to $99 while still preserving the enthusiast market who will continue to buy the $299 devices on sheer inertia. The former part of that decision is good. The latter is IMHO a very dangerous platform to base your business on (i.e. "dumb users will continue to pay more for our products"). Apple tried that in the 90's. It worked... poorly.
I think the reason there is no iPhone 5 is becoz the LTE / TD-LTE / WiMAX hybrid-chip is not yet ready. When iPhone 5 comes out it is gonna run on Verizon LTE, Sprint WiMAX and China Mobile TD-LTE networks.
some interesting points:
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More than 90% of Americans still don’t own an iPhone. Heck, two-thirds of Americans still don’t own a smartphone. So the iPhone 4 design isn’t “old” to them.
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I agree with everything the article says. IMHO, the biggest announcement from yesterday is the $99 iPhone4. I think consumers when given the choice between a cheaper Android (not the flagship ones at $200+) handsets or an iPhone4 will pick the iPhone4.
Most people don't think like that (last I read the average American is $8k+ in CC debt). Also, see how many people are using the free phone that comes with their contract.
The guy completely misses the point. The only feature missing was a bigger screen, not LTE. The reason there was no screen is because apple pissed off samsung. Whay would samsung give apple third gen amoled?
1. Hype up killer pie-in-the-sky feature that makes zero economic sense for Apple (see: retina iPad, 4G iPhone with larger screen). Traffic spikes.
2. As launch approaches, use "inside sources" to mock up designs (Macrumors's "we think the 5 will look like this"). Report on supply chain behavior, leaked case designs, etc. Traffic spikes.
3. Live blog the launch event. Toss in snarky one-liners ("Siri? beam me up Scotty m i rite lolol") because you and your readers are too cool to watch the keynote but I guessssss we'll tune in anyway. Servers overload with traffic.
4. Write editorials complaining about how pie-in-the-sky features from #1 don't arrive. Cover your ass by reporting "supply chain delays" from unnamed sources. Hits among disillusioned gadget connoisseurs (heh) spike.
4.5. AAPL falls 2-3% even though the product will break sales records again. Yawn.
5. Break for a week or two to avoid tech journalism burnout, then repeat for next product. (e.g. iPad HD supply chain rumors in Nov/Dec). Traffic spikes.
Whatever.
EDIT: My favorite was the rumor about the iPad 2 getting a HD screen. The next best screen on the market (the Xoom) was like 140 ppi. Why would Apple drop $n >> 0 per iPad when competitors' screens are relatively abysmal and the iPad would sell out?
Anyone who bought that rumor displayed a serious unfamiliarity with the concepts of marginal benefit and marginal cost.
EDIT 2: Go read the child comment by chugger. It's all about the short positions.