Apple’s much anticipated – unexpected, yet expected – product launch was finally upon us yesterday evening. With a contract upgrade due any day now, I for one was waiting with bated breath to see what the fruity tech giant would have in store. Friends swear by their Samsung handsets, but being the hardcore fanboy that I am, I wanted to stick with an Apple device despite being increasingly disillusioned with dull version updates. As such, I considered this Apple’s last chance to win me over.
There were rumours of a bigger screen, wireless charging, NFC, a 13 mega-pixel camera and other wondrous concepts. Yes, it’s true that the likes of Samsung are already touting most of these features and Apple is merely playing catch up, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. As long as Apple jumped on the proverbial bandwagon and made it cool, that was OK by me.
So what did we get? First up, it was announced that there will be two new iPhone models, which was different, promising and presented a shift from the traditional pattern. But after some new colours, a fingerprint sensor, some well-timed comedy from Tim Cook and a marginally improved battery, that was it. And this pretty much sums up how I felt at the end of the conference (or indeed the live blog that I was anxiously scrolling through) last night.
This launch was supposed to signal a new beginning for Apple, it’s last stand against rising challengers such as Samsung that are, quite frankly, edging them out of the ‘cool’ market with features that people actually care about – screen size, diversity, camera quality and user interface. In my opinion, it seems that with this launch, Apple has tried too hard to appeal to new markets – namely China – with its phone of many colours. In doing so, it sadly failed to listen to what its established base really wanted – admittedly, an Apple-branded Samsung Galaxy S4.
Hopefully, the iPhone 6 will see Apple take a bit more of a risk and shake things up from both a design and aesthetic perspective, and THAT will really be its last chance for me. Besides – and forgive me if my frustration is showing – everyone knows that the speed-bump ‘S’ launches don’t matter anyway.
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