Maxwell Smart would have been proud.
Despite a cascade of increasingly frenetic rumors in the run up toTuesday's iPhone announcement, Apple maintained its own unflappableversion of the cone ofsilence, refusing to respond to the rumor mill until last weekwith a bare-bones confirmation that yes, we will host an iPhone eventon October 4 and no, that's all we have to say about the matter untilthen.
Turns out Apple had no need to fill in the blanks. Others had beendoing that job for them all summer.
Even in an industry where rumors dominate the conversation, the mediascrum in advance of the supposed arrival of the iPhone 5 was over thetop. The preceding weeks and months were chockablock with breathlessposts confirming one or another cool new feature said to be on theway.
So it was that Boy Genius would claimthat Apple was testing a 4G LTE-enabled iPhone with carriers. It wasbilled as an "exclusive" no less. BGR also ran with a similarlyhalf-baked story reportingthat an iPhone 5 would sport a "radical new design." TheNext Web reported that former U.S. vice president--and moreimportantly nowadays--Apple board member Al Gore said that at leasttwo new iPhones were in the pipeline. (CNETwas also tempted by the bait.)
You could spend an entire afternoon tallying up the whiffs as theymade their way to the top of media aggregators like Techmeme. (Gawker has a good scorecard recounting some of the bigger misses.) )At the same time, some outlets, like 9 to 5 Macwere spot on in reporting Apple's plans to use a dual-core A5processor as well as theinclusion of a better camera and a Siri-based assistant feature. Win some, lose some. That's part of the fun. But stepping back from the immediate fray, there's something about the blogosphere'sinsistence on the existence of a dramatic addition to the iPhonefamily that shows how hard it's going to be for many of us to let SteveJobs go.
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In our imagination, Jobs is still on stage, delighting the house as heextends his dazzling product presentation to include one more thing. But thistime around it was Tim Cook as master of ceremonies, up on stage for more than 1.5 hours--which may have strucksome as more reminiscent of a meandering Fidel Castro than the lapidary Steve Jobs. You'd think afterall that time running through the laundry list of new products, Apple would have had a blockbusterfinish, they harrumphed on the Twitter transom. Not this time around.
But let's do a reality check. Any disappointment registered by theannouncement of the iPhone4S seemed to purposely ignore the fact that this was a niceiteration of a great product. The new iPhone will be faster by a widemargin and also feature an improved camera with speedier mobile Webaccess. It's outfitted with a better antenna design and has a longerbattery life, among other new features. What's not to like? (Dan Frommer has a nice post explaining this in more detail here.
The new challenge for Apple is that without the Jobs realitydistortion field it becomes that much harder to register enthusiasmfor something like this, which still was a nice incremental iPhone 4 upgrade(with a cool Siri beta software teaser.) Again, worthy upgrade, butone not worthy of the "one more thing" treatment.
And then there's the team at the helm. Cook and Phil Schiller, whodelivered the iPhone news on stage, are solid executives with proventrack records. It would be out of character and entirely clunky forthis duo to pretend to be something that they're not. So don't expectthem to send thrills up your leg. Ain't gonna happen.The world is going to have to adjust to the new reality: Apple willcontinue to make good products but let's get over it already. Elvishas left the stage.