Anthony’s not alone in finding Apple’s long anticipated release of the iPhone 4S a bit of a snoozer. Gizmodo’s Mat Honan is disappointed, as are a number of other underwhelmed tech writers. Even Wall Street was unimpressed, pushing Apple’s stock down as much as 5 percent yesterday, before it recovered with the rest of the market to close marginally down. (The usual disclosure: I own a few shares of AAPL in my IRA.)
But the more I read about the new iPhone 4S, and the more I watch the demos, the more I think critics are overplaying the unchanged exterior design, and underplaying the many improvements inside. And I’m not mostly talking about hardware upgrades like the twice-as-fast A5 processor, the CDMA/GSM “world phone” wireless, and what appears to be a kick-ass 8 MP camera with vastly improved optics. No, the most exciting part of yesterday’s announcement was the software, specifically the Siri personal assistant that promises to change the way we interact with computing devices. You know… eventually.
Now I know what you’re thinking: Siri natural language recognition and dictation can’t possibly work as well as shown in this slick promotional video. Visions of the Newton handwriting recognition debacle instantly dance in your head. But despite the fact that Apple is branding Siri a “beta” product, various independent hands-on reports and videos posted after yesterday’s announcement show it working with nary a hitch. It’s really quite remarkable. Almost creepy. And possibly game-changing.
Yeah, habits are hard to change, and a lot of people might feel weird talking to their computers, handheld or otherwise, but if Siri works as advertised, it offers a dramatically faster and more convenient interface for interacting with a smartphone. In fact, more than four years after the introduction of the original iPhone, Apple has finally addressed what critics at the time insisted was its primary weakness: That damn, virtual keyboard. There are things pictured in that video above, and other demos I’ve seen, for which I would never bother to use my old iPhone 3G, because it would just take too much time and effort. But combined with other hardware and software improvements, I can imagine Siri changing not just the way I use my iPhone, but what I use it for.
For example, take “geo-fencing,” a feature that has been available for some time via apps for both iPhone and Android. At yesterday’s announcement, Apple’s Scott Forstall instructed Siri to “remind me to call my wife when I leave work.” Siri created a reminder triggered not by time, but by his physical location as determined via GPS. Again, creepy, right? But I can imagine many uses for such location based features, especially when they can be set up with a simple voice command, rather than through a series of clunky swipes, gestures, and taps.
Potentially game-changing. If it works. And people are willing to use it. Which, I’d wager, ultimately they will, because it’s just so much easier and faster than tapping and swiping. And it’s a feature that, while closely tied to new hardware (Siri won’t work on the older iPhone 4), is not a hardware feature in itself, and thus not much of a feature at all to those tech heads who insist on comparing smartphones based on technical specifications alone.
Which brings me to the hardware, and a question I think fair to ask of all those complaining about Apple’s lack of innovation: What did you expect?
A whole new industrial design? The iPhone’s design changed minimally between 2007’s original version and 2009’s third generation 3GS, so why would you expect Apple to so quickly mess with the iPhone 4’s iconic design, which has proven hugely popular, and more than a year later remains about as distinctive as you’ll find in a market that largely consists of similarly sized, multi-touch glass slabs? Are you disappointed by the lack of 4G? Yeah, they could’ve included that, though it’s not widely available, and Apple had already telegraphed that it wasn’t coming. A larger screen? Sure, but that would have required making the iPhone’s form factor larger too, so there’s a tradeoff. Near-field communications? To what end?
In fact, the history of iPhone is one of incremental improvements. The seconded generation 3G merely added GPS and the faster wireless standard from which it got its name, leaving the rest of the phone’s design and tech specs mostly unchanged. The next year, the 3GS merely added a faster process and an improved camera. Granted, the iPhone 4 was a bit of a leap, with a yet faster processor, a better camera, its “retina display,” and that snazzy new design, but that made a similar leap to the fifth generation all the more difficult. I mean, honestly… apart from a brand new design, what’s missing?
As it is, the iPhone 4S offers a faster processor, Bluetooth 4.0, dual-mode CDMA/GSM operation, 14.4 Mbps HSDPA downloads, longer battery life, Airplay mirroring, true 1080p HDMI output, and a vastly superior 8 MP camera that boasts improved optics, half-second operation, and 1080p HD video. That strikes me as a bit more of an upgrade than we saw from the 3G or 3GS. Hell, the camera alone is enough to get me to upgrade from my old 3G.
And then there’s Siri, plus all the other software/service innovations like iCloud and iTunes Match, I haven’t even bothered to mention. No, there’s nothing particularly groundbreaking about the hardware Apple introduced yesterday, but Apple knows its customers aren’t simply buying a hunk of glass and metal—they’re buying an experience. And nobody delivers a better user experience than Apple.
So while the tech heads may be disappointed, I’m not planning on selling any of my (appropriately disclosed) stock.
all of these sw features are already possible on android, while they aren’t built into the os, they are available through the use of a handful of apps. i can appreciate apple’s innovation but nothing in yesterday’s announcement warrants this kind of fanfare.
as an aside, do we really need people interacting with their phones in this way in public? isn’t the state of cellphone etiquette bad enough?
I understand that Siri translates to buttocks in Japanese.
Siri has been around for years; you know how often I used it in real life? Never. I tried it when I downloaded it, it was on my phone, but I never used it. I simply don’t talk to my phone.
You know how often I’ve used FaceTime? Never. And that was supposed to be the future too.
I’m not saying this won’t be useful to some people. I’m sure some people would love voice activated software and video conferencing. But these things have been around for literally decades, and people just don’t use them.
I waited in line for hours to buy the first, second, and fourth iPhones, but even I can admit that at this point Apple is coasting, if not catching up. Android had voice activated software years ago, just like they had notifications years ago, and cloud services years ago. Basically everything they’re coming out with is yawn-inducing.
Are they providing a nicer face on things? Yes, that’s what Apple does. But they’re not providing anything revolutionary. It’s not the groundbreaking innovation we saw when the iPhone first came out. And you know what, that’s fine, Apple’s done enough and I don’t expect them to hit it out of the park year in and year out. This wasn’t an impressive announcement, and that’s OK, but don’t tell me it is something it’s not.
What did they expect? They were expecting Steve Jobs.
One thing you have to realize is that these “analysts” are mostly tools. These analysts – who by and large are just like anyone else on the Internet except with fictional credentials – spend much of the year between product launches inventing things out of sheer wishful thinking and, through the Internet echo chamber, convince each other – and us – that their wishful thinking has some relation to what Apple is actually working on.
It’s easy and profitable. Make up a claim by an anonymous but knowledgeable source, put together a mock-up image, post an article about said claim and showing said image, and sell advertising on that page. Or, make up a mock-up case, and claim this reveals the shape of the future model, as secretly provided to case-makers by Apple, sell cases and advertising. And you get to impress people by saying you are an “inside analyst”. Doesn’t that sound awesome? I’m one too!
This year’s keynote presentation sucked. Tim Cook was pacing slow like he was trying to run out the clock. So instead of being struck by the features that the presentation was trying to sell, they focus on their unfulfilled expectations, like no LTE, no NFC, no new design, no 4″ screen, no wide button, no whatever else that these so-called analysts spent the last year wishing for and then pretending was likely to be implemented.
Everyone thought Apple was going to zig when it zagged. And Apple didn’t have another Steve Jobs to really impress them about how awesome zagging is and instead they were disappointed that Apple didn’t zig.
I’m excited about the 4S. I think the new antenna, camera, and processor are getting downplayed. I’ll wait and see for Siri. It sounds cool but I’m not convinced that it will be as easy-to-use as advertised. It wouldn’t be the first time Apple has oversold ease of use of something, but it also wouldn’t be the first time Apple launches something that turns out to be every bit as transformational as expected.
I wish they had given us a 4″ screen and I hope we see a larger screen sometime soon. The current phone’s bezel is large enough that the phone itself doesn’t have to be that much bigger if they just fill the bezel. That’s the only feature I’m disappointed about.