“The iPhone you’ve been waiting for.”
“The fastest, most powerful iPhone yet.”
Every year since 2007, Apple has pumped out a new version of the iPhone, along with a marketing slogan to sell it. The iPhone 4S, unveiled this week, is “the most amazing iPhone yet.”
The sizzle line attached to each phone is crucial to its success. That’s because the new phones perform the same core function as previous ones, only with modest improvements. The iPhone 4 has two cameras, front and back, a feature missing from the 3GS. The iPhone 3GS has video, a feature missing from the 3G. And so on.
This much is obvious, yet the phones sell anyway. Unbelievable marketing, sure, but it doesn’t say much for Apple’s idea-generating abilities.
The 4S and the new iOS5 are simply incremental upgrades, a disappointment for those expecting a more ambitious product. These unmet expectations even pushed down Apple’s stock.
But besides failing to leap forward, the “Let’s Talk iPhone” event further exposes the gap between Apple’s innovation mythology and reality.
How creative are the new features?
Most of them are stripped from existing devices, apps and services. Let’s go down the list.
• Siri: A voice-activated personal assistant, developed outside of Apple, but acquired by it last year..
• iMessaging: A proprietary iPhone-to-iPhone messaging system included in iOS5. It’s Apple’s answer to RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger, where “answer to” actually means “clone of.” Basically WhatsApp, except only for iOS.
• iCloud: A cloud-based synching service, ending the chore of connecting to iTunes to sync devices. Taking its cues from massively popular DropBox, and keeping pace with Amazon’s tablet and Cloud Player service.
• Mobile Safari’s Reader: Strips out navigational links, advertisements and any other clutter surrounding text and photos and has a read-later feature. Pretty much a rip-off of Instapaper.
• An improved Mail app is a mix of Android, which mimics Gmail, and BlackBerry, favoured by business users. This can’t be seen as anything more than playing catch up.
• Find My Friends: A new app that allows iPhone users to see where other iPhone users are in the world, using GPS. Google’s Latitude does the same.
• Photostream: Finally solves the problem of iPhoto existing on different devices by following Google Picasa and putting photos in the cloud..
• Inside the 4S is a dual core A5 processor very similar to the Motorola Xoom’s.
“While our competitors try to imitate iPhone with a checklist of features, only iPhone can deliver these breakthrough innovations that work seamlessly together,” says Philip Schiller, an Apple vice president at the launch.
Another good marketing line. But it’s been 16 months since the iPhone 4 – the longest wait yet for a new version. Besides writing catchy ad campaigns and swiping ideas from the competition, what has Apple been up to?
joshuae@nowtoronto.com
UPDATE: Between the Apple announcement on Tuesday and the publish date of this article, Apple co-founder and until recently CEO Steve Jobs passed away. Read an obit here.
