However, Cook was a lot more reserved and understated compared to Jobs, and he reminded me of those sleep-inducing old professors I had in college. Just a tad... boring. I'm sure Cook believed in Apple as much as Jobs did, but maybe it was his personality, I just didn't think he was as exciting a presenter as someone like Scott Forstall. I hope Apple doesn't think that the CEO always has to be the main presenter at their future keynotes and will give the task to someone more charismatic.
Of course, the new iPhone 4S was the focus. The critics laughed, and the diehard Apple fans were disappointed, because it was just a hardware revamp of last year's model and not a completely redesigned iPhone 5. Even the Apple stock suffered because Wall Street was hoping for a brand new phone. I think it's unrealistic to expect Apple to introduce a wholly redesigned phone every year, and as someone who has never had an iPhone before, I'm really happy with the improvements they've done and will preorder one as soon as they start taking orders on Oct. 7. With more powerful cores, better camera, new antenna system for faster download rate, and better battery life, even if it's not iPhone 5, it's still way ahead of any competion. Also, I think those of us who're tech savvy and follow these news daily forget that the vast majority of people are still waiting to get their first smartphones, so whether it's just an updated iPhone 4S or a brand new iPhone 5, it's going to sell like crazy.
The event didn't have as many "wow" factors because most of the iOS 5 features were already introduced at WWDC earlier this year. But, there were still some nice surprises. Find My Friends was interesting. It allowed a user to see his friends' locations should they choose to share them. When I wrote the app Friend Map, I actually thought it could turn into something similar to Find My Friends if it took off. People hesitated to share their locations for privacy concerns, so if people had the choice of when to share their locations and whom to share with, those concerns would be much reduced. Only problem with Find My Friends was everyone would need to have an iPhone. Maybe I should write an Android equivalent? :)
The sequel to Infinity Blade also looked nice. The graphics were obviously great, unfortunately the improvements probably were lost to all but the trained eyes. This goes back to the age-old game design question: do graphics matter that much, especially when most iPhone owners aren't core gamers? Still, it showcased the graphic prowess of the device, and I would be curious to see their claim that it surpassed the power of Xbox 360 and PS3 come true in future games. As a small aside, I remembered at the Halo 2 announcement at a Microsoft E3 event years past, the crowd cheered when they talked about dual-wielding guns. For Infinity Blade 2, there wasn't as much as a hand clap when they mentioned dual-wielding swords. Wrong crowd, and not as big a brand, I guess.
The "one more thing" this time (though not presented as such) was Siri, the natural-language voice recognition system integrated with all aspects of the new iPhone. Not only would I be able to talk to my phone to schedule appointments, check weather, look up nearby restaurants, I would finally be able to reply to text messages while I drive! I was seriously considering writing myself an app to do just that, although I couldn't find a good voice-recognition system. Here's to hoping Apple will make the voice-recognition system open to developers. Oh, and wouldn't hurt to add spoken Chinese recognition soon either.
Too bad, the faster download rate doesn't apply to those of us in the US:
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I don't think there is any way they can ever be the same company they were without Steve Jobs. They will have to really do something new and game changing to get my attention back.
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