The Descent of Apple

Heavy is the head that wears the crown.  The release of the iPhone 5 will be looked back upon as the turning point for Apple.  Throughout it's history, Apple has been innovative and it's stock has grown massively.  It's all about to change.  Apple will become just another company that updates their products and grows slowly instead of an industry leader that blazes a trail.  Let's take a look at the history of it's development. 

1st iPhone - January 9, 2007

Although the original iPhone would now be looked at as a brick with an awkward headphone jack and sluggish 2G capability, make no mistake about it - the iPhone revolutionized consumer mobile phones.  Absolutely changed the game.  Back in 2006, there were smartphones, but they were not comsumer friendly.  The hippest smartphone back then was the Blackberry Pearl, and the other options were the hard-to-use and uncool Palm and Windows smartphones.  iPhone changed all that in several ways that we probably take for granted now.  

The minimum requirement of a smartphone now is having some sort of iPod/music feature.  The iPhone introduced the music feature to smartphones.  The iPhone leaped ahead with the capability to browse the full internet, not just mobile WAP sites.  The iPhone was the first phone to have a multi-touch screen and no keyboard.  Few, if any, mobile phones threaded text conversations before the iPhone.  The pinch-and-zoom feature was incredible and unbelievable like a futuristic movie, and no other phone did that at the time.

iPhone 3G 2008

Of course 3G was a major upgrade and people were much more pleased with the speedier performance.  Can you imagine an iPhone without the App Store?  Well, the 3G introduced that, and although it started out small, it is huge now.  With the App Store the iPhone would become capable of doing almost anything.  The 3GS was basically an upgrade to the system and internal components, and didn't introduce anything revolutionizing, which is why it was not called the iPhone 4.

iPhone 4 2010

The iPhone 4 saw a significant change to the shape of the iPhone, going from rounded to more squared off and industrial looking.  The Retina display was impressive to look at.  An upgraded camera and front facing camera for the new Facetime App was ahead of the industry.  Many people were expecting iPhone 5 when iPhone 4S launched, and it may have deserved the title when it introduced Siri, but it seems that a new number iPhone requires changing the shape of the phone.  Siri was a really cool development.  I can now tell my phone to remind me every Sunday night to set my fantasy baseball lineup and Siri does it.      

iPhone 5 2012

The iPhone showed up with a longer body and larger display, as expected.  It's also thinner and lighter, as it should be.  It has the retina display, nothing new.  It's faster and will perform better, which we expect from new phones.  The new upgraded camera will be able to shoot in panoramic views, which is nice but if you don't hike mountains maybe it's not that useful.  The iPhone 5 doesn't have the wow-factor previous new models had. 

The 5 is the first iPhone released since Steve Jobs passed away, and I fear that Apple's ambition and creative genius went to the grave with him.  Apple, under Jobs, would unveil new products that went beyond customer expectations, not simply meet them.  Apple used to make us say "wow".  Now Apple makes us say "yup, that's what we were expecting."  I suppose it is very diffcult to maintain creative and innovative dominance, so Apple's run of most excellent consumer technology company had to end.  Apple has been great, and it has been great for you if you owned Apple stock, but I reckon the glory days are over.  Apple will maintain a share of the smartphone market for the near future and the stock will probably go up a little, but things will flatten out and people will stop lining up around the block the night before to get the new iPhones.       

Goodnight, Apple, you had a great run, but the crown is up for grabs, let the game of thrones begin. 

P.S. iOS 6 looks like it will have some nice new features, but I'm not going to get into that because it will be available to older iPhone models and not unique to iPhone 5.  Also, I borrowed the Jobs/grave line from my pal, JBFunk.