Is the era of Apple underpromising and over delivering dead?
When you think about it, the last couple major Apple events have held few if any surprises. I’d go as far as to say they were on the edge of being boring. Maybe it’s inevitable as Apple moves more towards the IT market–you know, as Apple becomes more like Microsoft. Does this make Apple more predictable and dare I say boring? During today’s keynote, for instance, during the partner demos I almost had the feeling I was watching Microsoft partner demos at TechEd. Was anyone inspired by any of it? I wasn’t.
And as Ben Patterson points out, there hasn’t been a “One More Thing” the last couple events. Kind of interesting compared to what it seemed like Apple was able to deliver in the early 2000s. To be fair, it’s hard to exceed expectations once let alone twice a year. Yep, Steve Jobs and Apple are mortal.
In fact, I think Apple’s been doing a fair bit of backpeddling the last couple events too. Take the iPhone SDK as an example. First the message was that the browser was the phone’s SDK and developers didn’t need more. Then Apple announced the iPhone SDK seemingly in response to all of the jailbreaking. Along the way Apple announced the single spot for purchasing or downloading iPhone apps, which it received further criticism for. And then today, it added a couple additional ways to distribute iPhone apps. Looks to me that Apple is maturing with its growth, providing more options for more customers and partners.
Of course, some of what might be going on here is timing plain and simple. If Apple wanted to release an Intel Atom based MID-like device, for instance, it could announce it but not ship it until around the Fall when the chips reach the market. Apple, I guess, could announce their forthcoming products, but since they are tied to Intel’s release dates like everyone else and considering that they are a secretive company, it might indicate that we watch for announcements around Intel product launch times.
So who knows, maybe there is One More Thing….it’s just that it’s not quite time yet. Stay tuned.