Glowtime Ennui
John Gruber (Mastodon, Hacker News):
Last week’s “It’s Glowtime” event was very strong for Apple. It might have been the single strongest iPhone event since the introduction of the iPhone X. All three platforms are now in excellent, appealing, and coherent shape[…]
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But, still, flying home from California on Tuesday, I was left with a feeling best described as ennui.
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My dissatisfaction flying home from last week’s event is, ultimately, selfish. I miss having my mind blown. I miss being utterly surprised. I miss occasionally being disappointed by a product design that stretched quirky all the way to wacky. I miss being amazed by something entirely unexpected out of left field.
I felt that, too, but I disagree with the framing. The product lines are indeed very strong right now, but the event itself was boring. I started multitasking instead of fully paying attention and even then felt I’d wasted my time watching. It just felt too long and too canned. The products themselves seem fine. I’m not tempted to upgrade my iPhone 15 Pro, though after so many years of iPhones I think it would be unreasonable to expect to be after just one year.
Mossberg correctly cites AirPods and Apple Watches as big successes of the post-Jobs era. Not coincidentally, they are two of the three platforms Apple featured in last week’s event — and two of the three that people carry wherever they go.
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What we’re seeing is Tim Cook’s Apple. Cook is a strong, sage leader, and the proof is that the entire company is now ever more in his image. That’s inevitable. It’s also not at all to say Apple is worse off. In some ways it is, but in others, Apple is far better. I can’t prove any of this, of course, but my gut says that a Steve-Jobs–led Apple today would be noticeably less financially successful and industry-dominating than the actual Tim-Cook–led Apple has been.
I think that’s probably right. I bet the software would be better, though. The more interesting question is the long-term state of the company and its products, which of course we don’t yet know.
Cook almost never reveals his true passionate self in public. But at least one time he did. At the 2014 annual shareholders meeting, Cook faced a question from a representative of the right-wing National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR). As reported by Bryan Chaffin at The Mac Observer.
I have a somewhat different take on the famous “bloody ROI” response. Everyone focuses on how Tim Cook stood up for doing things that are right, even if they aren’t profitable. But the context is that Cook himself had started the ROI discussion by stating that Apple’s environmental programs were good for the bottom line. He was then asked a valid question—whether this was only true because of government subsidies. That would be interesting to know, but we never got the answer because he dodged the question and pivoted to accessibility and worker safety.
We know that Tim Cook loves data. But he wants us to believe that Apple has never run the environmental numbers, just like it has no idea whether the App Store is profitable. He’s always on message. And here the message is that Apple has its priorities, which shan’t be questioned.
Whenever an Apple developer or customer complains about something that sucks but could likely be fixed by the application of money, which Apple has, people respond that Apple’s hands are tied. It has to look out for its profitability and shareholders. But a perk of being CEO is that you can ignore smaller asks like these while spending tens of billions on TV content and cars. The ROI only matters when you say it does. You get to decide whether a cost that would make people happy is frivolous or an important investment in the future health of the platform.
Ever since Apple switched to this pre-packaged delivery format, the novelty has worn down quickly and these events all look like sophisticated PowerPoint presentations and, worse, they all look alike. When I try to isolate one from the last dozen I’ve watched, I can’t. They’re all a blur.
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My impression that Apple is severely removed from how actual people use their phones is reinforced every time they show a short video to illustrate how certain features work. These videos are supposed to showcase how Apple products naturally embed in regular people’s daily lives. What we see are slices from utopia. Impeccable people moving about in their impeccable homes living glossy-magazine lives, everybody fluidly relating to their personal tech devices.
The lack of a price increase for the iPhone 16 Pro made more sense when I watched Apple’s presentation; I found the updates over the iPhone 15 Pro to be pretty underwhelming. The A18 Pro chip is on TSMC’s newest 3nm process, there is a new Camera Control button, and the screen is a bit bigger with bezels that are a bit smaller; that’s really about it from a hardware perspective, although as always, Apple continues to push the envelope with computational photography. And, frankly, that’s fine: last year’s iPhone Pro 15, the first with titanium and USB-C, was for me the iPhone I had been waiting for (and most customers don’t upgrade every year, so these and other previous updates will be new features for them).
What I find much more compelling — and arguably the best deal in iPhone history — is the $799 iPhone 16 (non-Pro). The A18 chip appears to be a binned version of the A18 Pro (there is one less GPU and smaller caches), while the aforementioned bump to 8GB of RAM — necessary to run Apple Intelligence — matches the iPhone 16 Pro. There is one fewer camera, but the two-camera system that remains has been reconfigured to a much more aesthetically pleasing pill shape that has the added bonus of making it possible to record spatial video when held horizontally. The screen isn’t quite as good, and the bezels are a bit larger, but the colors are more fun. It’s a great phone, and the closest the regular iPhone has been to the Pro since the line separated in 2017.
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Software, specifically AI, is what will drive differentiation going forward, and even in the best case scenario, where Apple’s AI efforts are good enough to keep people from switching to Google, the economics of software development push towards broad availability on every iPhone, not special features for people willing to pay a bit more. It’s as if the iPhone, which started out as one model for everyone before bifurcating into the Pro and regular (and SE) lines, is coming full circle to standardization; the difference, though, is its value is harvested through R&D intensive services that need to run everywhere, instead of unit profits driven by hardware differentiation.
I think this nails what a lot of the tech community has been complaining about for the last few years—Apple is kind of boring now, but in a way that you can safely buy the current iPhone when you feel like it is time to upgrade.
Previously:
- iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus
- iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max
- AirPods 4
- Apple Watch Series 10
- Founder Mode
- Wrong About the App Store
- Apple’s Q3 2024 Results
Update (2024-09-18): Nick Heer:
This year’s bit of consumerist fun did feel overlong and tedious to me, too — like homework for understanding the lineup rather than an exciting demonstration of tomorrow’s technology available today. Apple’s employees were doing their best onscreen to show excitement. Yet it did not translate so well for me and, it would seem, many others.
When I originally took issue with the event itself – which is to say, the video presentation of what Apple was presenting “on stage” – it wasn’t about the products themselves. It was simply that the event itself was boring. It completely lacked any sort of pomp and circumstance. Sure, part of this is because the state of Apple leaks (by which I largely mean, Mark Gurman reports, of course) is such that we know almost everything coming at such events not just ahead of time, but often weeks or months ahead of time. But even if we didn’t know such details, I think the event still would have been less than great because it was just far too long. You got the sense that Apple was reiterating – which is a kind way of saying repeating – all of the talking points about Apple Intelligence for Wall Street as much as anyone else. Apple would deny this, of course. But in my mind, there is no denying that Apple is pushing their AI products far earlier than they would like or probably should be in order to “play the game on the field” as it were.
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I believe Jobs would have figured out better ways to present and explain and market the devices Apple is putting out there. And that framing would have yielded more excitement around this year’s devices, rather than just a string of endless numbers.
I’d almost prefer to see a live iPhone presentation that just owns the fact that the next model is a nice iteration of the prior and keep it short and sweet.
Update (2024-09-20): Riccardo Mori (Mastodon):
Let’s get back to the last bit of the quoted part above. Gruber says: Tim Cook’s Apple doesn’t make mistakes like that. That’s ultimately why Cook’s Apple is more successful.
Selective memory is amazing. Shall we talk about a few duds that happened under Tim Cook’s Apple? Like the 2013 ‘trash can’ Mac Pro? Like the impregnable 2014 Mac mini? Like the 2015 12-inch single-port retina MacBook? — A dud in itself containing yet another dud in the form of the infamous keyboard with butterfly mechanism, one of the biggest blunders in Apple’s history that took the company four years, four years to acknowledge and fix it. Shall we talk about the Touchbar? Or the gold Apple Watch Edition? Shall we talk about the slow but assured deterioration of Mac OS, the user interface and Apple software in general?
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If we’re talking about gut feelings, I’d say that if Steve Jobs were still around, we would have a differently successful and a differently industry-leading Apple. A company that wouldn’t feel so ‘corporate tech’ as other giants in the field. A company that probably wouldn’t be this greedily pushy when it comes to the App Store and its bloody 30% cut. A company that probably wouldn’t want to be involved in everything, everywhere, all the time in all the markets but would instead choose specific markets and bloody excel at those. A company that would probably know what to do with the iPad. A company that would still make excellent software — especially when it comes to the Mac. And that would be capable of differentiating itself in more meaningful ways than just being a giant tech powerhouse.
While the most common upgrade cycle is 2-3 years (40%), and a similar amount (39%) upgrade in 4 or more year cycles, a full 21% of people upgrade their phone at least once per year. Given an estimated 316 million smartphone owners in the US today, that’s 66 million Americans who buy a new phone every year.
15 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
Isn't it just that phones are finally the commodities that people have been calling them for years?
Ditto headphones and smartwatches.
Apple did pull a rabbit out of the har with their VR headset but it was an awkward rabbit.
> When I try to isolate one from the last dozen I’ve watched, I can’t. They’re all a blur.
One stand-out moment was in the previous one, with the Federighi parkour montage. I expected shenanigans again, but nothing this time.
I completely agree about your ROI comments. Especially in light of their continual insistence on customer unfriendly practices like the anti-steering provisions of purchasing things in apps.
Also agree about the point that Apple devs and execs clearly never uses their phones like normal people do.
So now that y'all can't find things to complain about with the products, it's on to the presentation? Pathetic.
@Total: Chinese retailers are already offering discounts on the iPhone 16. If it were the best thing since sliced bread there would be enough demand for that not to happen.
> It’s a great phone, and the closest the regular iPhone has been to the Pro since the line separated in 2017.
I have to disagree — the iPhone 12 was the closest ever to the Pro. Same SoC, same screen (apart from max brightness), same dimensions, same battery ratings. It was basically a better camera package (not just the telephoto), a steel case, and a mandatory bump in storage.
"I was left with a feeling best described as ennui."
Congrats. That's the correct, healthy response to voluntarily watching a 100-minutes-long ad from one of the largest multinational corporations. I feel like Gruber is on the precipice of an epiphany here.
There's really two aspects to this:
* the 18th generation of an annual cycle of iPhones isn't going to be as exciting as the first. It's not possible to wow every year. Most releases will be very iterative. (Maybe iPhone 20 will be foldable, or whatever.) Not much Apple can do. That's a bummer for stockholders and enthusiasts, sure, but if you take the Mac as a substitute, there were lots of releases, and we didn't suddenly dislike the Mac because the change from the Power Macintosh 9500 to the 9600 was too small. I'm currently on an iPhone 13, perhaps in part because they 15 just didn't seem like enough of a jump (I'm still baffled by people who consider the move to USB-C a big reason for upgrading?). I'll appreciate the 16, I'm sure. It won't be hugely better, but it'll be a little better! Better camera, faster SoC, Dynamic Island, Camera Control, little things here and there. Just like going from the 2006 MacBook Pro to the 2010 MacBook Pro wasn't a massive change, but a nice bump. So, it's not exciting, but it also isn't _bad_.
* the other thing, though, is the presentation. Tim himself seemed especially bad this time, and they should've just made his segments shorter. I'm not convinced he needs to be there at all. But the other presenters weren't that great either. What was a good new approach in the early COVID days now feels extremely formulaic. I'm with Mori — it almost feels like a sophisticated PowerPoint presentation. Which in a sense it is, but I'm not sure whom that is for. The audience aren't managers about to sign off on a deal. I also see, increasingly, that people don't even really notice the details of what's being presented. I _still_ don't think photographic styles have ever been explained well, neither the original version nor this iteration. I don't think what the Camera Control can and cannot do has been shown well. They're so focused on superlatives and specs that they forget the Steve-like "…and I'd love to show it to you". Just have a slide that says "Demo" in cursive, then have someone semi-awkwardly present the feature. Since it's all prerecorded anyway (which may also be a mistake?), there's less risk. But there's more… life to it. The worst, as I recall, was the Apple One introduction; I felt like I was in some insurance sales pitch.
"but my gut says that a Steve-Jobs–led Apple today would be noticeably less financially successful and industry-dominating than the actual Tim-Cook–led Apple has been."
Maybe if Cook wasn't there at all. As I recall Apple did rather well with both Steve and Tim.
@Old Unix Geek:
Or perhaps competition in the Chinese retail space is fierce enough, and demand for the 16 still high enough, that they find it advantageous to sell the 16 at a discount as a loss leader even if they lose money on the iPhone sale.
All the recent Apple event videos leave me with the same cold sterile and distant impression as most Apple TV+ program promotional materials.
And the more I see of the interior of Apple Park, the more it reminds me of THX-1138 set designs only with a few more textures. Are those even actual interior shots or are they CGI environments?
@Total
Just to be clear, the linked excerpts from the parent post are all Apple fans. If that's the feeling Apple's fans have…
Having said that, I've been bored by Apple's presentations for over a decade and don't bother watching them. So I have no skin in this game. If you wanted my opinion and you may very well not, I'd rather the devices be excellent and the presentations boring to be honest. So if these are good devices, then that seems fine to me.
The 18th iteration must be boring...
Really?
Personally, given pervasive government snooping, I'd like the phone to have a hardware switch that turns off all access to the microphone/camera/network etc. I'd also like the hardware to be designed with privacy in mind so that different processes can't access data to which they should have no access. Real security, not security theater. This is not it.
The Huawei iMate XT with 3 panels looks pretty cool to me, particularly since my eyes are finally getting old and being able to have a larger screen without finding reading glasses would be nice. The price is insane though.
I'd also like a phone using an atomic battery so I don't have to even think about recharging it.
Phones could also have more sensors, like a temperature gauge, a pressure gauge, a humidity gauge, sensors that work better at night, etc.
It would be nice if phones were built to work on all phone wavebands so that one could always be sure it would work in every country.
In the longer term, increase the dpi sufficiently, and use a couple of layers of screen, and you could have holographic displays. (Need to compute the interferometry pattern corresponding to n voxels in real time, and use multiple layers of screen so that the hologram is 3D not just 2D to ensure it works with less color distortion without a laser illuminating it).
Eventually actual AI on device might also prove useful. But sending all my data to ChatGPT isn't anything I want.
Oh, and I'm not mentioning getting rid of Apple's stranglehold on the App Store, so that people can build software for their own needs and share it without all these impediments Apple throws in their way.
So there's plenty more that can be done with phones, since they are essentially digital Swiss Army knives. But Apple is not leading the pack anymore. It's just making MOAR MONEY. So yeah, whatever, what they're making has no spark of true novelty.
"The Huawei iMate XT with 3 panels looks pretty cool to me"
That thing is bonkers. My phone is my most often used digital device, apart from my laptop. For me, it's worth to pay twice or three times a normal phone's cost for a phone that genuinely improves my daily experience. The XT is exactly that kind of phone, there are tons of situations where I would find it incredibly useful to just turn my phone into a tablet.
As soon as I can get my hands on one, I'll buy it.
