The Apple iPhone 4S Event: A Mega, Meta Appreciation Of The Tim Cook Show

This is my first product launch since being named CEO, I’m sure you didn’t know that, jokes Tim, wearing black jeans and a dark grey or black button down. Evocative of Jobs but not full-on turtle. The iPod…is still the number one music player in the world, and the Mac is the number one best-selling desktop and notebook in the United States. They’re almost as big as Twitter Now! Applause, Tim’s all stoked looking. Oh snap! New clock faces in the iPod Nano! Now I’ll have to learn how to tell time! Greetings Cards, Apple’s newest messaging service relies on a very old one, but shows all classic Apple, eh hem, hallmarks of attention to design detail. Shares of Americans Greetings Corp…down more than 6%, but iOS5 brings over 200 new features to iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch devices, so that’s okay. And Find My Friends will leverage iCloud, a big deal service that will store your content in the cloud and wirelessly push it to all your other devices, to allow unprecedented impromptu hangouts and creepy stalking sessions.

Apple’s stock has fallen about half the time following a major product announcement, so… Schiller: Nothing has come close to iPhone 4. How do you follow up? Meet the iPhone 4S, it’s what’s inside that counts, seven times faster than the iPhone 4. Demo time: Oh Infinity Blade 2! With koi in the pond. A giant falls on screen. A metaphor? Probably no. iPhone 4S is a world phone, Schiller claims you can get 14.4MBps downloads. Those antennae around the sides (which caused many users so much trouble) have been revamped. Smartphone cameras are typically mediocre, but the iPhone 4S would seem to offer everything that most budget compact cameras currently do and the quality of the camera isn’t just about megapixels. When photo samples surface…they look stunning and doctor’s correct diagnosis via smartphones may be improved with the new camera. Plus Apple wants you to meet Siri, a virtual personal digital assistant that actually works, deciphers drunken slur—predicted 24 years ago so perfectly it’s scary. She sounds like a lady (but not for Rory), and the things the Siri can tell you are diverse and will be incredibly helpful—by contrast I just tried “Siri app” on voice search on my Google Nexus S running Gingerbread: it took me to the web page for Syria. 

Wall Street’s response was relatively subdued, but while there was disappointment at the lack of a “killer product,” some analysts remained upbeat. And thought a lot of people said to themselves “that’s it? that’s all?”, leave it to Apple fans to be disappointed when their favorite company announces something that blows away just about every other competing produt in technical sophistication, speed and price. 

On paper, Cook fits the bill. But he’s still not the notorious iGod.

Sources:

1. Tim Cook, Apple

2. Live team, Engadget

3., 4. John Paczkowski, AllThingsD

5. Team, Gizmodo

6., 7. Live team, GDGT

8. Brian Caulfield, Forbes

9. Alexia Tsotsis, Techcrunch

10. AP, Yahoo

11. Rosa Golijan, MSNBC

12. Staff, Appleinsider

13. Wilson Rothman, MSNBC

14. Chloe Albanesius, PCMag

15. Casey Chan, Gizmodo

16. Chip Cutter, AP Yahoo

17. Patrick Goss, TechRadar

18. Kit Eaton, Fast Company

19., 20. Team, ThisIsMyNext

21., 24. Jacqui Cheng, ArsTechnica

22., 23. Patrick Goss, TechRadar

25. Terrence O’Brien, Engadget

26. Xavier Lanier, GottaBeMobile

27. Amy Davies, TechRadar

28. Apple

29. GSMArena

30. Chris Gullo, MobiHealthNews

31. Ina Fried, AllThingsD

32. Dan Macsai, Fast Company

33. Brent Rose, Gizmodo

34. Peter Kafka, AllThingsD

35. Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC

36. Sam Biddle, Gizmodo

37. Charles Arthur, The Guardian

38. Josh Ong, Appleinsider

39. Sibun, Blackden, The Telegraph

40. David Carnoy, CNET

41. Dylan Tweney, VentureBeat

42. The Telegraph

Chat about this news with Kit Eaton on Twitter and Fast Company too.

Our previous Mega, Meta Appreciation of Steve Jobs.