

Why the iPhone 5 never arrived - philipDS
http://blog.deg.io/post/11054132161/why-the-iphone-5-never-arrived-time-to-question-big

======
achompas
Is anyone really shocked? Here, I'll write out the tech media "design pattern"
for a new Apple product.

1\. Hype up killer pie-in-the-sky feature that makes zero economic sense for
Apple (see: retina iPad, 4G iPhone with larger screen). Traffic spikes.

2\. As launch approaches, use "inside sources" to mock up designs (Macrumors's
"we _think_ the 5 will look like this"). Report on supply chain behavior,
leaked case designs, etc. Traffic spikes.

3\. Live blog the launch event. Toss in snarky one-liners ("Siri? beam me up
Scotty m i rite lolol") because you and your readers are too cool to watch the
keynote but _I guessssss_ we'll tune in anyway. Servers overload with traffic.

4\. Write editorials complaining about how pie-in-the-sky features from #1
don't arrive. Cover your ass by reporting "supply chain delays" from unnamed
sources. Hits among disillusioned gadget connoisseurs (heh) spike.

4.5. AAPL falls 2-3% even though the product will break sales records again.
Yawn.

5\. Break for a week or two to avoid tech journalism burnout, then repeat for
next product. (e.g. iPad HD supply chain rumors in Nov/Dec). Traffic spikes.

Whatever.

EDIT: My favorite was the rumor about the iPad 2 getting a HD screen. The next
best screen on the market (the Xoom) was like _140 ppi_. Why would Apple drop
$n >> 0 per iPad when competitors' screens are relatively abysmal and the iPad
would sell out?

Anyone who bought that rumor displayed a serious unfamiliarity with the
concepts of marginal benefit and marginal cost.

EDIT 2: Go read the child comment by chugger. It's all about the short
positions.

~~~
chugger
Most of these rumors are started by hedge funds with short positions in Apple.

1) Spread rumors about a product 2) Watch stock price go up 3) Wait for the
actual product announcement 4) Short sale 5) Profit$$$

it happens everyday.

~~~
jeswin
Any sources for this?

~~~
chollida1
I don't know about the spreading of rumours, but alot of funds short apple on
the day of product announcements as their stock almost always goes down during
the announcements.

It's pretty much free money.

~~~
andrew1
In fairness, that sounds apocryphal. If it were really common then there would
be no money in doing it because the market would have factored in days before
the event the fact that the price were going to fall.

~~~
chollida1
I'm not offended:)

Call it what you want, but it's been a winner for the past 4 years for us.

------
hemancuso
I'm surprised nobody is pointing out similarity to Intel's very successful
Tick-Tock release cycle - release a new architecture on tick and refine the
process on tock

The benefits for Apple are manifold, but the two most obvious are:

1\. Keep expectations sane - they can't release a radical new industrial
design of superbly high quality every year.

2\. Give customers on a 2 year contract predictable value rather than leaving
them always waiting for the next awesome device

~~~
InclinedPlane
Microsoft does the same thing with Windows.

Tick: Windows 95, Tock: Windows 98

Tick: Windows 2000, Tock: Windows XP

Tick: Windows Vista, Tock: Windows 7

~~~
Florin_Andrei
Except this "tick" (iPhone 4) was actually pretty good, whereas in your
example all the "ticks" were abysmal failures.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Windows 95 was one of the most successful product launches of all time. And
Windows 2000 was a very solid product though not generally a good choice for
casual users.

~~~
samstave
I still have this in original shrink wrap:

<http://i.imgur.com/4tc63h.jpg>

------
raldi
The real reason Apple called it an "iPhone 4S" is that they want to start
selling the 4 to the large segment of the market shy of the cutting edge.

Plenty of people will buy something called a "4" when the state of the art is
a "4S" -- there's no embarrassment there: "Oh, my discount phone is almost as
good; it's just missing an S. And it's not like my friends will be able to
tell that I'm using last year's model. It looks the same."

But if the latest model is called the "5", then suddenly there's a stigma to
having the 4. You're stuck one full number behind the Joneses. And everybody
knows, because you're still using the phone with the unfashionable flat back
while everyone else has the slick new teardrop design that's all the rage.

~~~
jsz0
Interesting theory but personally I don't see that most normal people care
about that type of stuff at all. The 2+ year old 3GS was the #2 best selling
SmartPhone last month even though it's using a 3+ year old design. If anyone
was really that insecure about themselves they would probably just spend the
extra $100 to get the latest & greatest.

------
prawn
Saw the common reaction to the iPhone 5 disappointment summarised loosely as:
"If this new product looks like the last one, how will people tell that I'm
superior to them?"

~~~
mikeash
If this exact same phone had come out with the name "iPhone 5", and maybe a
different case, people would be praising it to the heavens. People are weird.

~~~
robgough
I don't agree with you on that one. I think people would have been more upset,
as they expect a number increase = new design.

~~~
mikeash
That's the "maybe a different case" bit.

~~~
robgough
my apologies, seem to have missed that in my initial read.

I still think there were no breakout features this time round though. Siri
being '4S' only is a bit of a cheek - and everything else felt firmly
incremental. Even iOS 5 doesn't excite me much except for the notification
system (though that is much appreciated).

Apple are experts in taking a feature their competitors technically have, but
few customers use - and taking it 'mainstream' - nothing along those lines
this time.

It seems to me that their next breakthrough in that regard is likely to be the
NFC stuff, presumably to arrive with iPhone 5.

~~~
mikeash
I don't think breakout features are really that necessary, though. There's
tremendous value in incremental improvements. The 3GS was "only" an
incremental improvement over the 3G, but the net result was a vastly better
device. The iPhone 4's only breakout features were the screen (which is pretty
impressive, but not ultimately all that consequential) and the new look. I
don't think there's anything wrong with taking a great product and just making
it greater. In fact, it seems to me that a lot of other companies miss that
part and instead try too hard to come up with new stuff that will amaze
people, which results in a worse product overall.

~~~
robgough
The iPhone 4 brought FaceTime/Mobile Video Calling to "the masses" too.
Granted, the iPad 2 (and eventually the Mac) got that as well - but the
forward facing camera was new (though entirely expected, granted).

I now FaceTime with my Family quite regularly.

I agree though, I love my iPhone 4 and am sure the 4S with it's incremental
updates will simply be more-awesome. But for better or worse, I think version
number bumps are now associated with big upgrades on iPhones.

Expectations are set high, but then Apple will quite happily just ignore
everyone's expectations and do what they want.

~~~
mikeash
Good point, I had completely forgotten about FaceTime. I still think people
would have treated this as a major upgrade if it just had a different name and
form factor, with everything else the same, but you're right that it is a bit
less, in terms of completely new features, than previously.

Personally, I look at the specs for a 4S and have trouble coming up with
_anything_ new that I'd want to add. But of course that doesn't mean other
people can't, I may just be unimaginable.

------
brackin
I showed my friends the iPhone 4S today without mentioning how some people
online are disappointed and they loved it, they aren't geeks and were part of
the group that said the iPad was useless and just a big iPod.

Most of the UK news outlets i've seen haven't reported it as a flop of any
kind just reported it as an update.

People seem really excited by Siri, they thought it was impossible and I heard
similar thoughts on the radio. Not sure if it's just the tech news bubble or
that people love Apple.

I got all of the features I wanted but didn't get the design changes. I'm glad
Apple didn't call it 4G as technically they can now as what makes 4G was
changed once all of these phones called themselves 4G.

~~~
demallien
You know, I honestly don't know why people are saying that they're
disappointed. For me, this is the first iPhone since the original that gave me
a real 'Wow, the future has just arrived' moment. For the original phone it
was the Minority Report UI. This time around it's the Star Trek computer that
talks to you. When Apple start running TV ads showing off Siri, the average
consumer is going to love it.

~~~
hopeless
How many people ever tried using the Voice Control in the iPhone 4? Siri is
one of those features (awesome technological achievement notwithstanding)
that's great to demo but largely irrelevant (or even unknown) to most users.
It's this generation's Carousel view.

~~~
ryannielsen
How many people have tried using Siri? Until it's actually in our hands and
put to the test in real world situations, it's hard for anyone to make any
claims about how well it works.

It could be reliable, useful and effective; it could be sometimes useful given
the right environments and inputs; it could be a complete flop. No one outside
of Apple knows right now.

~~~
Kylekramer
This is different though. Plenty of people have used Siri. The new version
adds a few Apple app based intents, but we have been able to use what was
essentially a beta of Siri for years. And the parent comment is right. In its
current state, this is Facetime 2. Good demo, fun to play with, but ultimately
inconsequential for the majority of people.

~~~
glhaynes
But when Siri was in app form, much (perhaps most) of the benefit that it has
now wasn't possible.

Not only could app-Siri not do some of the things that people will most often
do with iOS-Siri ("wake me up at 7 o'clock", "remind me to call my girlfriend
when I get home", "note that I need to buy lettuce"), but you had to unlock
your phone and navigate to the app icon before you could even do those things
that you _could_ do with it. If you're already using a touch/visual interface
to do things, it's cognitively easier to just stick with touches to finish the
job. If the interface is entirely spoken/audible, there are a whole other set
of things that start to make sense to use voice for.

------
flyosity
I think we all saw what we wanted to see. I wanted an iPhone 5 and journalists
wanted to write about an iPhone 5 so that was the story we all focused on.
Looking back there are multiple signs that the 4S was going to be the only new
model introduced, but just like Fox Mulder, we all wanted to believe.

~~~
emilsedgh
Why does your comment sound like coming of 'iphone 5' is the most important
thing on earth that humanity couldnt survive without?

Seriously, I dont want to troll and I understand that iphone's are cool,
people want them and even many people in HN have businesses based on it, but
"we all wanted to believe"? is iphone5 that important? This is beyond simple
fanboism. This is a disaster.

------
gamble
The advantage of operating at Apple scale is the ability to buy components in
vast quantities, giving Apple better deals and exclusivity that their
competitors can't match. The downside is that they _have_ to buy at those
scales. Apple can't afford to ship anything that contains components they
can't source by the million.

If one HTC handset is delayed by six months thanks to part shortages, that's a
problem for them. They have plenty of other products to fall back on, though.
If an Apple product is delayed six months, it's a disaster. Apple would lose
billions of dollars in revenue and suffer a PR holocaust. So when I see rumors
like the Retina iPad 3, I always filter them by asking, "Can Apple get that
part in increments of a million units?" Given that, it should be very rare for
Apple to ship the first product containing any given component.

~~~
cwp
Actually, I think Apple could ride out a 6 month product delay quite easily.
It would seem that the 4S was delayed 3 or 4 months (part shortage resulting
from the earthquake in Japan?) from the normal summer release with no ill
effects. Releasing it in December would have been bad, sure, but that has more
to do with Christmas than the length of the delay.

~~~
gamble
I'm thinking more the kind of delay where the product is already on the market
and a part shortage stops production, leaving Apple with nothing to sell.

------
Tichy
One of these days I really must create a bunch of alter egos and make them
predict different things. Then I can style the remaining ego that predicted
the right thing into a prophet and make big money.

~~~
jsavimbi
Too much hassle. Start with one persona and just keep revising estimates as
word comes out without mentioning it. Then obfuscate by "calling out" other
experts. Nobody can be arsed to click the link you provide and wade through
commentary to refute you anyway.

Just remember to answer any question with "It's what I've been saying all
along..." and use short, choppy sentences.

~~~
wanorris
IMHO, the most shameless was Jonathan Geller at BGR, who not only hyped the
supposedly impending iPhone 5 to death, he released a story on Monday pushing
a rumor that Sprint was getting an exclusive 4G iPhone 5.

Yesterday, his iPhone 4S story offered this astonishing course reversal:

"While confusion was sprinkled throughout the industry on exactly what Apple
would announce, most seemed to agree that the iPhone 4S would be the
smartphone that Apple ultimately would unveil."

<http://www.bgr.com/2011/10/04/apple-iphone-4s-unveiled/>

~~~
jsavimbi
See? If you didn't know who he was or read his Apple-related articles previous
to the release, you'd think the guy was no moron.

Admit nothing.

------
ChuckFrank
It's called phased obsolescence.

It is a terrible time to find a replacement for a lost ipod. I've been waiting
until today's Apple event before getting anything. I was ready to be
pleasantly surprised.

Turns out Apple has just enough market share and momentum to waive their hands
around for renewed sales. Why break ground when you can still make great
profits off the old stuff?

Nano is a software update. Touch has a new color (wowsy!). Phone has speaking
app installed, a slightly faster chip. It is new technology at the slowest
drip possible. Give me a small ipod with tons of storage. Easy enough, right?
Look at the cost of memory these days. You can buy a 32GB SD card for $40. But
Apple won't do that. The whole iCloud business looms. The iCloud is just a way
to capture and sell you data. So they provide iTunes, integration with
everything, then reel in the fishes. They haven't updated the capacity of any
of their devices for four years. The ipod nano no longer has a camera, no
longer shows videos, has a smaller screen than ever before, and the maximum
capacity remains 16GB. But they come in a dazzling array of colors; come and
get them while they last!!!

Should I wait another 6 months? 12 months?

I've thought about getting one of the old nanos, but I'm learning something
about the mac I use for work. The computer itself is awesome, even though it
is about 7 years old. It is actually faster and more stable than the 64-bit PC
I got a few months ago. The thing is, fewer and fewer programs work on it.
Google Earth was automatically updated and no longer works. A bunch of other
programs are the same. This old architecture (PowerPC) doesn't support any new
Adobe products or really any thing else that is new. Even browsers are
starting to act weird. But it isn't the hardware, its great. It is that new
software doesn't communicate with it anymore.

So, I suspect the same will be true with these mac devices. Software will be
designed specifically for new devices. So on older devices, either you won't
be able to get the newest software or software will be automatically updated
and cease to work. For instance, the click wheel now only exists on the ipod
classic. Once the classic is discontinued, you can bet that any ipod with a
click wheel will start having problems with any new OS. And they update the OS
at least once a year. So you can't go back, even if the device remains
superior.

Welcome to Apple's vision of the future, the - phase it out, throw it away,
buy it new - society.

~~~
gwright
_Apple's vision of the future_?

Lots of room for different opinions on the life cycle of electronics but:

1) What you are complaining about is a decades old, industry wide phenomena
and not something vaguely unique about Apple.

2) Apple products tend to retain functionality and re-sale value much longer
than their competitors.

------
saddino
The problem for big (and small) media is that hype (and its counterpart FUD)
drives page views. Even good writers are more apt to fall for the "big" story
even if they know it sounds fishy. Wishful thinking and greed (for clicks)
leads to speculation run rampant.

------
protomyth
It seems like, with most of the tech media, if they had called it a 5 it would
have gone over better. The A5 processor in this thing is nothing to sneeze at.
I am hopeful about the new antenna system, but will need to see it in action
in a rural environment. Never mind the adding of Sprint and the price
reduction on the 3GS and 4.

The screen is dense enough pixel wise, and consumers don't have to wait for
new cases, bumpers, etc. since the iPhone 4 stuff works well. It is a good
thing for consumers.

I am more and more convinced most of these stories were pre-written as soon as
the 4S designation was found in iTunes. I am particularly down on All Things D
and feel their reporting is pretty much useless.

------
nextparadigms
Wait a minute. What's all this "the iPhone 5 didn't arrive because LTE chips
weren't good enough" ?

It wasn't mandatory for an "iPhone 5" to have LTE in the first place. Just
because it wouldn't have had LTE ,doesn't mean they couldn't have made an
"iPhone 5".

And if it's all about economics, then I guess it makes even more sense to keep
the same design for 3, or even 4 years, no? That's probably what would happen
if the iPhone had no competition, seeing how even with strong competition from
Android, they still don't seem to care about using the same phone over and
over again.

What's funny is that when HTC releases a more "refined" design (but still
basically the same), the media is all "oh, same old design from HTC". But when
Apple does it, "well, they are just refining a work of art!" or "It's the
inside that counts!"

Yeah right. Most people buy phones for 3 main reasons:

1) design - and they don't want the same old one over and over again. It's no
coincidence the iPhone 3GS was the most disappointing iPhone launch so far,
too - until now that is

2) price - people will buy the phone they can afford

3) value - the most bang for the buck

~~~
azulum
you are conflating many different people into one. so here's me: i like apple
products. i like HTC's variations on a theme. i was disappointed by the 4S
because i like new things, even if only on the outside. (though the 4S has an
S on it, like superman, heh)

apple has its reasons for not changing the design and they are sound as
ever—evolutionary, not revolutionary. and it makes so much sense for the
2-year upgrade cycle. considering too that apple is trying to make as many
devices as possible, the same old design really helps them to that end. i am
disappointed. but the product is by no means a disappointment.

(i really wanted an ipod touch 3g with upgraded internals that could go month
by month like the ipad and do facetime/skype over wifi/3g)

------
flocial
I expected the 5 but I really admire how Apple stuck to their guns. With the
CEO change any other company would have rushed out a new design to keep
analysts happy considering the hardware boost (it's a bigger jump than 3S was
to 4). While I prefer a rounder design personally I also don't want a mediocre
iPhone. Apple won't refresh a design until everything is right. Also people
fail to realize that the 4S comes with an improved antenna so they did improve
the things that matter.

The downfall of Japanese manufacturers was adding features for features sake
and switching up design to manufacture demand for the "new" model. Sony would
have some nice products with promise but they always managed to screw
something up with every iteration, never quite getting it right or abandoning
product lines with passionate fans altogether. They're all struggling to stay
alive now. The Koreans are doing the same only a little better (more
innovation and focus on technology but still the same frequent changes).

When the dust settles I think you'll see that people who purchase or upgrade
to 4S will be more than satisfied with the end product.

------
farrel
Outside of the case this is a brand new phone. A5 CPU, new GPU, better camera,
better battery and better software (I believe Siri is 4S exclusive).

------
SeanLuke
Isn't there also something about a promise Verizon gave the government when
they won their LTE spectrum? That all devices on the network would be open to
any application? I recall Google using this as a club over the iPhone 5 on
Verizon.

------
wallflower
The real reason (according to a CNET blog) is that iPhone 4 users are still
locked into their 2-year contracts. The iPhone 4S is a good intermediate
product which might attract former iPhone users (out of contract) or Droid
users.

~~~
ajross
That's never been an issue before. Other iPhone product cycles have been well
under two years and still introduced new features. Hell, the original iPhone
was dropped en masse by pretty much everyone in favor of the 3G when it was
released after just a year. That sounds more like an excuse than a "real
reason" honestly.

The real reason, of course, is that Apple didn't have anything revolutionary
to ship (other than an out-of-house software product that they turned into a
"hardware" feature by fiat). I'm not convinced that's bad, really. I think a
bigger issue is that smartphones are turning into a mature product and there's
simply less revolution to be had.

But my gut is with the many other people who have voiced similar intuitions:
this feels a lot like the mid-90's, when Apple stagnated in the face of clear
motion in the industry, chasing old markets while new ones opened. Is the
iPhone 4S the new Centris?

~~~
_djo_
"That's never been an issue before. Other iPhone product cycles have been well
under two years and still introduced new features."

Not so, the pattern of introducing an entirely new model only every second
year and a performance boost of the existing model in between is one that
Apple has followed since the iPhone 3G:

iPhone 3G -> iPhone 3GS -> iPhone 4 -> iPhone 4S

For that reason I was not expecting an iPhone 5 and was bemused by all the
hype surrounding it.

Yet objectively this is a significant upgrade with a huge performance gain,
the addition of a very exciting feature in Siri (I suspect it's limited to the
iPhone 4S as a result of the decision to add dedicated processing hardware)
and a vastly-improved camera. The iPhone 4 design is great and extremely
successful, I don't understand why people are so upset that it wasn't changed.

~~~
CamperBob
_I don't understand why people are so upset that it wasn't changed._

IMHO the iPhone 4 is already fast enough. It didn't need a new system board,
it just needed a bigger screen, and they needed to get rid of that Radio
Shack-style square enclosure.

This release was an exercise in fixing things that weren't broken while giving
the competition a break.

~~~
_djo_
That's fair enough, but it seems like more of a personal wish list than an
analysis of what the iPhone really needs. Does it need a bigger screen and a
new enclosure? The sales figures don't seem to suggest that it does.

Assuming for a minute that I'm right and the screen size and enclosure are not
market liabilities for the iPhone, then my personal opinion is that the
upgrades are sufficient to maintain sales, with the performance boost, new
camera (along with the improved processing hardware) and Siri all being enough
to keep it competitive at the high-end.

------
ngsayjoe
I think the reason there is no iPhone 5 is becoz the LTE / TD-LTE / WiMAX
hybrid-chip is not yet ready. When iPhone 5 comes out it is gonna run on
Verizon LTE, Sprint WiMAX and China Mobile TD-LTE networks.

------
mcritz
The author's superfluous use of words written in all capital letters and
liberal use of exclamation points speaks volumes towards his credibility.

~~~
ugh
Your focus on that speaks volumes about how superficial you are :-)

------
chugger
some interesting points: * More than 90% of Americans still don’t own an
iPhone. Heck, two-thirds of Americans still don’t own a smartphone. So the
iPhone 4 design isn’t “old” to them. *

<http://www.splatf.com/2011/10/iphone-4s/>

~~~
matwood
I agree with everything the article says. IMHO, the biggest announcement from
yesterday is the $99 iPhone4. I think consumers when given the choice between
a cheaper Android (not the flagship ones at $200+) handsets or an iPhone4 will
pick the iPhone4.

~~~
hugh3
On a two-year contract, the difference between a $199 iPhone and a $99 iPhone
is, what, five percent?

~~~
matwood
Most people don't think like that (last I read the average American is $8k+ in
CC debt). Also, see how many people are using the free phone that comes with
their contract.

------
ABCD_FUFU
The guy completely misses the point. The only feature missing was a bigger
screen, not LTE. The reason there was no screen is because apple pissed off
samsung. Whay would samsung give apple third gen amoled?

------
bhartzer
Honestly, I think that they wanted to launch the iPhone 5. But it just
probably wasn't ready for "prime time" yet.

