Apple has unwrapped the iPhone 16 along with a new watch and some updated headphones. I’m sure you’ve noticed.
It was a bit of a letdown, mostly because Apple told us everything cool the last time it took the stage to introduce “Apple Intelligence“, its take on the AI features we’re used to seeing from every phone maker. Really, this event was about the hardware that powers the software we already knew about.
Maybe that’s why this time things felt like the most un-Apple-like Apple event so far. To be frank, it resembled something we would see from Samsung or Google — filled with numbers and tech terms that you or I might find interesting, but things that most of its customers aren’t concerned with.
Remember Google telling us about tokens without telling us why tokens were important during the Google I/O keynote? While Apple didn’t use the same word, time was taken to explain the different processors inside the SoC and how each supported the new version of iOS and its AI.
This is a stark contrast compared to years past. You might be old and nerdy enough to remember Steve Jobs showing off the YouTube app. He told us all that we could watch YouTube videos right on the iPhone without them spitting and stuttering. People into the tech understood why — a powerful processor and software optimizations — and everyone else, the people who were going to buy the iPhone, knew everything they needed to know: the iPhone could do what their BlackBerrys and Palm phones couldn’t.
There was no need to talk about memory bandwidth or processor cores. it was implied and interested people understood. It’s what made me spend way too much money at AT&T and buy one even though I knew better.
This happened gradually and it’s something Apple had to do. Apple has a tight hold on just a few national markets and if Samsung or OnePlus is telling everyone how fast and how good their hardware is Apple has to have a response. It wants to keep that grip on markets that make it so much money and even the smallest thing could have an effect. Apple is already the cool and trendy phone in the eyes of consumers but it can’t afford to let another company grab that spot in the eyes of the tech community.
I won’t lie, I don’t hate it. That’s because I enjoy hearing about the numbers and neural pathways from Apple the same way I like hearing Google tell me how many tokens (the smallest, most basic units of data in AI processing) the Tensor G4 can handle. But I’m definitely not the average consumer even if I want to be or try to think like one.
Maybe this doesn’t take away from the message but it sure makes the presentation longer. I wonder if the people looking to buy a new iPhone would rather hear more about the new camera control button or hear a refresher on how the new Siri can harness generative AI from a cloud provider instead.
These things are cool and what people using phones are going to talk about to their friends. Nobody cares about the chip inside AirPods or how a custom piece of glass covers a button for the camera except nerds like me, and maybe you. They care why these things matter and what having them means when you’re using the products.
This won’t change and as tech events move further away from in-person to over the top scripted videos it will only get worse. There was a lot of things I didn’t like about Steve Jobs but I loved the way he directed events and spoke to users, not the tech press.
The new Apple has moved away from that and is following in the footsteps of every other tech company.
