Apple should invent the future and not reinvent the present
It happens before every big Apple event. The hype machine starts churning out rumour after rumour, detailing how awesome new Apple gadgets are going to be. Expectations run high. And in some cases, Apple fans start lining up in front of Apple stores even before the new products have been announced.
Other gadget companies do see some buzz generated before their events, but not at the scale that is visible for Apple announcements.
The interesting bit about the high expectations from Apple and the hype its events generate is that all of it is justified. In the last 15 years, Apple has mostly met the expectations. With iPod, it was expected to reshape the music player industry. It was expected to unveil a music player that was so magical that mere mortals couldn't even imagine its final shape and design.
The company delivered and amazed people in a good way. The same was true for the iPhone. And when Steve Jobs held the iPad in his hand and showed it to hundreds of attendees at the event at Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, most of them were unanimous in their view that it looked magical. It wasn't a gadget any other company could have imagined and built.
No wonder, when Apple hinted at that at the September 9 event it would unveil a smartwatch - the first new category of device for Apple in the last four year - expectations were it was going to reshape the nascent smartwatch market. Everybody expected that Apple would show something that would be from the future, just the way iPod, iPhone and iPad were.
Instead, we got a smartwatch that is hardly any different from the watches sold by Samsung, Sony or Motorola.
Coupled with the new iPhones, which are the same old iPhones but with a larger screen, the Apple event of September 9 was disappointing.
One of the reasons why Apple occupies such a high position in the world of technology and why many believe it to be the most innovative firm is because until now it refused to join the rat race and focused on delivering products that were unique. This means working on a device for years, perfecting its design and, in almost all cases, waiting for the right technology.
Take the example of iPod.
Apple seriously started thinking about something like iPod in the late 1999 and 2000. But the company didn't have a crucial piece of technology that was needed to create it - a tiny hard disk that could store thousands of songs. As explained in Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, the company then waited for the right technology.
The technology was found by Jon Rubinstein, a long-time associate of Steve Jobs, in a Japanese factory managed by Toshiba. The hard disk was 1.5-inch long and Toshiba engineers reportedly had "no idea what to do with it". But Rubinstein instantly realised that it was something Apple was waiting for. He informed Jobs about it on the same day and on the same day Jobs wrote him a $10 million cheque so that he could negotiate with Toshiba for exclusive right to their tiny hard disk.
The result was a device that was almost magical. "We knew how cool it was, because we knew how badly we each wanted one personally. And the concept became so beautifully simple: a thousand songs in your pocket," Jobs later told Isaacson.
When it was released, iPod - and later iPhone and iPad - had a mesmerising effect on anyone who saw it. According to an anecdote included by Isaacson in his book, Bill Gates literally became speechless after he saw it. "Gates went into a zone that recalls those science fiction films where a space alien, confronted with a novel object, creates some sort of force tunnel between him and the object, allowing him to suck directly into his brain all possible information about it," Steven Levy, who was a Newsweek journalist at that time, wrote. "Gates played with the scroll wheel and pushed every button combination while his eyes stared fixedly at the screen. It looks like a great product he finally said."
Compare this to the products Apple launched on September 9? Can the Apple Watch have the same effect on a tech savvy user? No, it can't.
There is nothing particularly striking about the Apple smartwatch. It is a sum of the existing technologies that companies like Samsung are using in their watches for the last one year. Yes, Apple has polished the design somewhat but it doesn't look like a product that will be remembered ten years from now as something that changed the industry.
It is possible that the technology that can allow a company to create a totally futuristic smartwatch doesn't exist for now. The smartwatch, one that people will love to use, needs to be something that has a radically simple, but yet effective user interface, a design that is a break from the past, technologies that allow it to be a standalone gadget and not just an accessory to a smartphone. But to do all this, may be the world of technology needs extra tiny processors that are super fast. Or the screens that are bendable in shape of a bracelet. Or natural user interface that is so good that you can talk to your smartwatch just like you talk to your butler. Or sensors that go under the skin of a user. None of this technology is available right now.
The old Apple, possibly with Jobs at its helm, would have avoided coming up with a product for which the right technology was not yet available. It wouldn't have reinvented the present. It would have waited for the right moment when it could invent the future. Because that is what people expect it to do.
The Apple smartwatch is not a product from the future. And Apple probably knows it because unlike iPod, iPhone and iPad, it is missing the 'i'. It is just another Watch in the industry and not the iWatch.