At the beginning of the keynote, the camera panned to an empty reserved seat at the end of the row. One imagines this was left open for Steve Jobs, who decided against attending the event. It could be due to his health or wanting Tim Cook to have the entire spotlight. I also wonder if was intentionally left open — and in a prominent position — as kind of a “missing man” formation. A seat left in memory.
Tim Cook is not Steve Jobs. Tim’s presentation style is akin to a Southern Gentleman. Steve had a bit of snake-oil salesmanship. Both are effective, but I could also see where the first 30 minutes may have caused a few people to nod off. Thirty of the 90 minutes were given to sales updates and ego stroking. I need to remember these presentations are not geared towards the same crowd at WWDC. Apple is setting expectations for their quarterly results in a few weeks. I wasn’t feeling well and following the live blogs reminded me it’s not a waste of time to have take out delivered right before the event starts. The problem with skipping the statistics is people will think Apple is hiding something. Tim Cook is very much a numbers game and I think talking about these let him ease into the rest of the talk.
iOS 5
Cards was subject to much derision and sarcasm by me until I remembered that iPhoto does the same thing already. I still think it was in a curious place in the presentation; App-type stuff is usually handled by Phil Schiller. For Scott Forestall to lead off with it made me think they needed to show something new. I’ve written about Cards here, but I can see myself using it. Taking a picture with my iPhone on vacation and sending it to friends and family as a card will be something I do, albeit once or twice a year.
Other than that and a few more details about the Camera app, the iOS 5 portion sounded like the sports highlights at 10pm. It’s all stuff we’ve seen before. The new notifications will be awesome and I hope there is an easy way for me to move my Zinio subscriptions into Newstand.
iCloud
It’s a First World problem, but getting data to and from my iPad is a frustration point. I use Pages across the board, but right now editing documents across devices is a mess. With iCloud, finally all my devices will have the current version of the document without me doing a damn thing. Apps will auto-download between devices. It’s not part of iCloud, but the new wireless sync means a recently-added PDF to iTunes will end up in iBooks.
The PC-free component is going to be nice. I keep a variety of 30-pin cables around the house so I can sync my data. Now, I won’t have to. Find my Friends has uses and seems a logical extension of Find my iPhone. I expect its use to be mainly between parents and their kids, and suspecting spouses.
iPhone 4S
It sharing the same form factor and name as the iPhone 4 didn’t surprise me. Apparently it did for some other people. Betting on Apple doing anything like they have in the past is a fools game (see: no iPhone in June), but I think Apple has been happy with the iPhone 4 design and seem to like to keep big form-factor upgrades to every two years. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple finally has enough of this naming thing and throws the iPhone into the Mac naming convention: iPhone, late 2011. People bitching because it’s not the iPhone 4 will get old.
The camera is amazing. As a semi-pro photographer, it’s appealing to me. The iPhone 4S camera isn’t as good as my DSLR, but it’s getting better than most point and shoots. Shooting at 1080p video will be amazing.
Siri was the star of the show. If that Apple video isn’t a gigantic smoke and mirrors trick, we’re at the point of Tony Stark in Iron Man talking to his computerized assistant about what to do with his schedule. I can’t wait to see what the reviews say about this. Sadly, I can’t upgrade for a while so I’ll probably hold out until the true iPhone 5 next year.
