Anyone who’s been following Apple events for a while is familiar with the concept of the “Reality Distortion Field“. For the uninitiated, the term referred to celebrity CEO Steve Jobs’s ability to make you believe what he wanted you to. The phrase has been used to praise Jobs’s charisma and equally used to imply something sinister. Since Jobs’s passing, many Apple event followers have wondered if new CEO Tim Cook would have the same sort of affect on the masses. Some pundits want to make their speculation into a self-fulfilling prophecy, judging from the ho-hum reactions to the iPhone 5. There was little of this with the 4S, but not on the level I’m seeing now.
In the last few months, we’ve seen multiple leaks of the iPhone 5’s body, down to the new lighting adapter on the bottom. As such, part of the reason for the product apathy is that the tech media was expecting to be surprised. They wanted that “one more thing” moment that Jobs made famous. Instead, it turned out that the leaks were exactly right. How horrible.
Sort of like knowing in advance about your own surprise party.
Of the complaints about iPhone, missing features ranks high. Complainers want to know why there isn’t wireless charging, like the Lumia 920 (so buy a Powermat). They’re upset at the lack of microUSB (really?). They want to know why there won’t be simultaneous voice and data on CDMA (okay, I agree on this one). Except missing features are nothing new to the iPhone. When the iPhone first came out, there was no ability to add additional apps, no copy and paste, no multitasking, and no MMS. Other smartphones all had the ability, but what they lacked was Apple’s slick user interface that actually made the phone usable for anyone instead of only power users. Would Passbook be a hundred times better if there was an NFC chip in the iPhone 5? Sure. Does the average iPhone user on the street even know what NFC is? Not hardly. Let’s get users used to using their phone as a wallet before we have it actually function as one.
Apple’s iPhone philosophy has always been to build slowly but steadily, and this iteration continues that. When reviewing tech, it’s often forgotten that most people can’t update their phone every year (or in the case of some of us, every week). Because of that, Apple wisely has a staggered release model. If you have an iPhone 3GS, there’s not tremendous incentive to upgrade to an iPhone 4. The new features are nice, but not enough to break contract. However, the 4S compared to the 3GS is awesome. The 4S takes what was good about the 4 and refines it, and just in time for all those iPhone 3GS users to be out of contract. The same thing is happening here with the iPhone 5: if you’re on a 4, the 5 is kind of epic, and you can get what is market standard without losing your investment in iOS. I call this the “new every two” factor (thanks, Verizon). This has proven to be a winning business model for Apple, and even Samsung has begun to copy it a bit with the Galaxy line.
Don’t tell Apple’s lawyers.
These Doubting Thomases are also ignoring what Apple has added. Sure, turn-by-turn GPS may seem done to death after Nokia Drive and Google Navigation, but if you’re someone who has invested in Apple’s ecosystem for several revisions, it’s a chance to finally get that kind of feature. Add that the feature will apparently work on the 4 and 4S as part of iOS6 and that’s really good news. Apple could have easily chosen to restrict this new iPhone feature to the latest and greatest, as it did with Siri. Speaking of Siri, Apple has also made great improvements in that arena. The A6 chip inside the iPhone 5 is powerful enough to run the Retina Display iPad and will absolutely haul in a 4″ phone. Additionally, that extra 1.5″ of screen real estate is absolutely nothing to scoff at. Apple could have simply chosen to letterbox all of its apps or scale them. Instead, all Apple apps will take advantage of that added screen real estate to provide extra functionality. That’s something you just don’t get with Android, because your functionality remains the same if you’re using a 3″ screen or a 5″. Is it ground breaking? No. Is it a hell of a nice upgrade? Yes.
We’ve also had a year of superphones. Samsung’s Galaxy S III and HTC’s One line are incredibly powerful phones that upped the ante. The Motorola RAZR HD line and the Nokia Lumia 920 are those company’s attempts to call that ante. But your average person on the street, seeing you with a smartphone, will ask “what iPhone is that?” It doesn’t matter if you’re using a Samsung Galaxy Note. The iPhone is the first place minds will go.
Unless you use a Blackberry. Then people just run away before you can audit them.
To return to the poker metaphor, the thing that these pundits are forgetting is that Apple isn’t even playing the game. If we want to keep the analogy going, Apple is the dealer. Hell, Apple might even be the house. The iPhone has become the baseline by which any other smartphone is judged.
Or, as fellow Techcitement writer Tom Wyrick put it during an internal discussion, “Personally, I think the phone has matured to where it doesn’t need massive changes anymore. It needs to evolve with nice little tweaks as new revisions come along. That’s just what we’re seeing.”
Other companies are free to throw whatever they want against the wall to see what sticks. Meanwhile, Apple will continue to cook phones that are perfectly al dente.
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