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Apple’s September Event was entitled ‘Wonderlust’. Which is curious because there wasn’t much to wonder at and I’m struggling to lust after anything that Apple showcased yesterday.
Yes, the iPhone 15 was announced, and yes there is going to be an iPhone 15 Pro Max and yes there will be a new Apple Watch Ultra 2. But if we’re honest, this is barely even newsworthy information in today’s age of technological innovation.
Pretty much every announcement and minor tweak that Apple revealed at Wonderlust was predictable. So much so that the biggest unknown beforehand was whether there would be an iPhone 15 Pro Max or just an iPhone 15 Pro. Thrilling stuff.
I’m not writing this to attack Apple. Phones and wearable tech are their bread and butter and they do them very well.
But watching Wonderlust made me realise just how rapidly and ruthlessly the tech industry is changing.
iPhone 15 is boring…and that’s ok
“iPhone 15 is incredible!” exclaimed Tim Cook at Wonderlust yesterday.
This is technically true, it’ll be a good phone. But so is the iPhone 14. And the iPhone 15 is just an iPhone 14 with a fancy hotkey button and a wibbly notification bar.
And that’s the problem. Hardly anything substantial has changed.
There’s higher processing capability and a camera with 36 more megapixels in it. And you can wave as many iPhone 15 Pros and iPhone 15 Pro Maxs in my face all you want, they are basically the same.
Now, I’m not saying new smartphones have to be exciting as a mark of quality. Apple makes excellent smartphones and they should continue to do so. But I do think these specific announcement events have lost almost all of their shine.
Must we all have to pretend that a Dynamic Island is the best thing we’ve ever seen at a tech conference? Because it really isn’t.
Ok, I admit the Island is cooler than I thought. It actually looks pretty useful, especially with the amount of information that can be squeezed in when it’s blown up. But it is just a glorified notification bar. Moving on.
This also isn’t Apple’s fault. Conventional smartphone design has reached a zenith. Unless you want to go down the foldable route, which Apple seems firmly set against, then your standard single-screen device cannot get much better than what is currently being offered.
And, in isolation, that’s great! Smartphones in this form are near perfect, what more could you ask for?
But it also means that events like Wonderlust cannot only focus on smartphones. Sure, update us all on your upcoming product, but throw something genuinely exciting in there. A wildcard to keep us guessing.
And that’s exactly where Wonderlust was fatally flawed…
Apple’s Wonderlust had nothing exciting
All we got from Wonderlust was existing product updates.
The Apple Watch also got an updated chip, some extra straps and a 2000 nits screen. Which is all lovely but the Garmin Fenix 7 Pro is still better.
Airpods Pro 2 were updated with a USB-C charging port. But that was it. There are equally as good, if not better, wireless earbuds on the market already. In a similar way to Nothing’s recent launch of their CMF brand, Apple offered nothing new or inspiring.
Again, I’m ok with that. Tech companies produce tech. But compare it to the recent conferences from other companies like Samsung, Google or even Meta, and Wonderlust looks extremely dated.
It all boils down to this; it’s hard to get excited about the nits level of an Apple Watch when companies like Samsung have prototypes for sliding phone screens.
Cast your minds back to January 2007 and you’ll remember the sheer mayhem when the original iPhone was announced. It was wild. Not only was it immensely exciting, but it felt momentous. You just knew, in that moment, that a huge technological leap had been made.
Wonderlust was the exact opposite. Nothing felt ground-breaking, and that’s why I think Apple’s focus needs to shift in order to regain its mojo…
Apple should embrace future tech before it is too late
Apple should continue to make the products announced at Wonderlust. They’re great and people buy them.
But Wonderlust illustrated why events, there to announce the slightly adjusted new iPhone, should no longer happen to such fanfare. They just don’t warrant the hype.
Take Samsung and Google for example. Their recent conferences were genuinely interesting. Both showed off the Pixel Fold and Samsung Z Fold 5 respectively, demonstrating what flexible tech can really do. On top of that, Samsung introduced the Z Flip series. A unique and somewhat surprising addition to their foldable range.
Google I/O 2023 similarly introduced the generative AI tool Bard, new language AI models and the super fun music AI tool MusicLM.
And, laugh as you may, Meta has the most engrossing events of them all. Yes, their gambits like Horizon Worlds may sometimes flop, but I’ll be damned if I don’t love watching a tech company try to innovate. The upcoming Meta Connect is focused on AI, virtual reality and augmented reality; anything but single-screen smartphones.
It’s rare for Apple to seem like the boring one, or the forgotten child lagging behind, but it increasingly feels that way.
Except for its trump card…
Apple Vision Pro
It’s time for Apple to go all in on Vision Pro. And the rest.
If Wonderlust told me anything, it’s that the future of Apple as a tech company rests on its VR bid. Sure, you can keep afloat by making smartphones, but Apple thrives on being the market leader, the innovation master. It has built a career on reinventing itself.
The Vision Pro announcement at WWDC23 was the most exciting Apple has been since, well, I’d say 2007. It could be another earthquake moment and represents Apple’s chance for regeneration.
But why is Apple stopping there? Why won’t they take this innovative spirit into other areas more vigorously?
Apple has been so vague on its AI developments where it must surely be lagging behind OpenAI and Bard. And I know they won’t touch foldable phones for some unknown reason but why?? Why I ask?!?
It’s not like folding phones are bad. Quite the opposite, they’ve been proven to be excellent in fact. Apple could dominate this space and probably make the best folding phone on the market. It would entirely reinvigorate their very, very dull smartphone division.
Look at Google with AI for example. They have just announced their Digitial Futures Initiative; a fund to encourage research and development into the challenges posed by AI. THAT is market leadership.
At the moment, Google, and others, are out Apple-ing Apple.
Wonderlust Final Thoughts
Wonderlust was fine. The iPhone 15 looks fine. But, if we’re honest with ourselves, we don’t want Apple to be just ‘fine’. In fact, we should expect them to be much better than fine because we know they can be.
The iPhone 15 will come and go. Next year, we’ll have the iPhone 16 which you can bet won’t be too dissimilar. If Apple wants to stay relevant, then they have to rediscover their innovative roots and dive headfirst into the future tech revolution.
