Deriding the iPhone is so 2018. What’s hot this year is deriding iPhone events.
Writing for a local paper in the New York area called… [puts on reading glasses, squints]… The New York Times, Charlie Warzel called for Apple to stop doing product release keynotes. Because all our problems can be traced back to Apple keynotes.
John Gruber has already responded to Warzel’s piece but suffice it to say Warzel seems to have written it under the principle, “let the light of my burning strawmen guide your way.”
Of course, Apple is the only company that does product release keynotes so that’s why it’s the only company that has pieces like this written about it in national newspapers. And now, less like sharks smelling blood in the water and more like lazy fishermen smelling chum in the water and deciding to throw in more chum, other publications have also magically decided that they, too, have very serious reasons why Apple should stop doing keynotes.
Writing for Time, Patrick Lucas Austin details “What Apple Risks By Doing Momentous Events Without Momentous News.” (Tip o’ the antlers to Peter.)
Dahling, these events are so borrrring, aren’t they? Why do we even fly people out to them and cover them relentlessly and, oh, let’s not forget all the reporting on rumors leading up to them and, ha-ha, then of course there’s the speculation from November to April about how poorly the iPhone is doing and…
Ceasing to report on the event is not an option, so the only option is to complain about reporting on it.
The danger for Apple, Austin says, is that “lackluster events could encourage consumers to think more critically about what they’re actually getting.” As opposed to how we all go out and blindly buy whatever Apple’s selling this year.
[Looks down at iPhone SE]
Uh-huh. Sure.
“I think we need to divest ourselves of the expectation that each vendor event will bring groundbreaking and disruptive features in hardware,” says [Gartner analyst Werner] Goetz. One exception he points to is Samsung’s Galaxy Fold, a bold new foldable smartphone design.
Samsung: disrupting recalls since 2016.
This honestly could not be a more perfect example of how Apple has always differentiated itself from the rest of the technology industry. An Apple competitor attempted to ship a technology before it was ready. Apple didn’t.
There is the usual complaining about how Apple never introduces anything innovative or successful anymore.
Apple’s only major new hardware in recent memory, the AirPods, are a nice accessory but haven’t yet become truly revolutionary…
It’s not enough for Apple products to be successful and well-liked, they must be “truly revolutionary.”
The Apple Watch is not mentioned in this piece and the Macalope continues to find it hilarious that this is the product pundits said Apple had to release or it would perish because the wearables market was the next big thing. So Apple did and it went on to own that market and now everyone has decided to pretend the Watch doesn’t exist even though it’s incredibly popular.
What’s also hilarious is imagining what would happen if Apple suddenly decided to stop doing keynotes. Surely the company would be applauded for caring enough to take action against our culture of consumption and no one would say things like “IPHONE FAIL, APPLE CANCELS KEYNOTE”.
Sure. That sounds right.