The iPhone 4S coupled with iOS 5 looks like a fantastic device - true voice interaction, invisible cloud integration, blazing speed and apparently the best phone camera ever. So why has the general reaction to last night’s keynote been so glum?
A glance at the Apple home page tag lines for previous iOS devices might provide a hint;
- iPhone 3GS - ‘The fastest, most powerful iPhone yet’
- iPad 2 - ‘Thinner, Lighter, Faster, Facetime, Smart Covers, 10 hour battery’
- iPhone 4S - ‘Dual-core A5 chip. All new 8MP camera and optics. iOS5 and iCloud. And introducing Siri’
I’ve picked the three most recent ‘evolutionary’ products to make for a fair comparison but the shift in language is pretty clear. Talking about chips and cores and megapixels is very much what the rest of the tech industry does and Apple very pointedly didn’t do - yet tech-verbiage is very much a part of how the 4S is being presented. The iPhone 4S introductory video actually starts with the A5 processor and then (horror) zooms into the innards of the phone to show where the A5 processor sits. Later on (more horror) we revisit these innards and get to see a visualisation of the two gleaming cores. It’s like watching an old Intel advert.
And the thing is, the 4S didn’t need to be presented as just an evolution of the 4 - it has Siri, a potentially ‘magical’ way of interacting with the device that could have been portrayed to be as ground-breaking as the touch screen. Yet post-Steve Jobs, Siri is just another feature - one of a bunch.
Now, while I would really like to avoid playing the ‘What Would Steve Have Done’ game, I can’t get away from the feeling that the 4S would have been much better spun by Jobs. There’s a good chance that in his hands, Siri would indeed have seemed magical and amazing and exciting (and would probably have a better name - it’s strange that Apple chose to stick with ‘Siri’).
That’s not to say that anyone should panic. Far from it - the iPhone 4S will sell bucketloads, as will the now cheaper iPhone 4 (and the now very cheap iPhone 3GS). However, a marketing misstep like this so soon after Jobs’ departure is just a little bit worrying.
