I hate this stuff.

Steve was pretty explicit to Tim Cook and others that they should never ask "what would Steve do". He knew what that kind of attitude did to Disney after Walt died. It destroyed their creativity for years.

>What we want from Apple isn't new technology. We want human warmth—a possibility of living a more fulfilled, meaningful life

Perhaps you shouldn't go looking for it in a tech/consumer electronic company then?

Apple was never about "living a more fulfilled, meaningful life", which is something you can even do without any smartphones or even computers in your households...

>A larger screen size alone is a weak proposition for the company's flagship product. It's derivative of existing products and doesn't say anything differentiated from its competition.

So? Apple has always been about iterating and refining -- with the occasional new type of product (iPod, iPhone, iPad, MBA, Apple TV, Apple Watch, etc thrown in every 4-5 years or so).

Most iPod, iPhone, etc releases have had small iterative differences from the previous generation.

>The fact that it also contradicts Steve Job's original intent for the iPhone, "No one is going to buy a big phone", squelches the voice of the product and makes it come across muddled and confused.

Again, so? Jobs said many things, including that they'd never get into market X (e.g books, because "people don't read anymore") and then Apple went ahead and did it. And, of course, he also changed course when his team or the market convinced him otherwise, despite being adamant against something at first.

>The trouble now is that the iPhone 6 must depend on its host of secondary features to make the sale (...) Instead of: Apple: We have the perfect product that does X. You: OH MY GOD, I NEED THIS.

Some people have this magical unicorn idea in their mind that each time Apple presents some new iPhone people salivate and drop down for its advancements -- and that this time "it didn't happen", but in reality it just gets better and better iteratively.

That actually has been the case with EACH AND EVERY subsequent iPhone release. People and articles said the same things for 3G, the 4, the 4S, the 5, etc.

Heck, people even said that about the original iPhone, that they expected more, ain't gonna fly etc. Or even the original iPod "No wireless, less space than a nomad, lame".

>With Steve Jobs, there was no fear. There was an unassailable, almost divine level of confidence that he had something you will love. We had a crisp, singular exactness to why we'll be marching to the Apple Store after the keynote and buying that phone.

BS mystical thinking, and probably never having followed the original scene that well...

(The following fake-Jobs presentation is good though).

Over the years, I saw many presentations from Steve that I thought were bland or off in some way.

Pointing out Steve's statement that nobody would want a big phone, implying that a big iPhone isn't something Steve would have allowed to happen, ignores Steve's famous habit of dismissing something and then doing it anyway. I remember when he said nobody wanted to watch movies on an iPod, and then new iPods came out with the ability to play movies.

I often see complaints that "Jobsian Apple" would never release multiple versions of something, even though there was the iPod, iPod mini in several colors, and the iPod photo; later there was the iPod nano, iPod classic, and iPod touch. A watch is a fashion device, and it would be strange not to have style options.

Steve got too much credit. Apple was led by a team, and many of those people are still there. Some of Apple's most successful decisions were choices Steve opposed or had to be convinced of.

Connecting technology with emotion was the key to what made keynotes and Apple so special. But there's just one steve jobs. You need to be sincere when doing that or the effects are absolutely counterproductive. Tim Cooks looks like a cold man, it's better that he does it his way rather than copying steve and looking like faking.

But like many people I guess, I do miss Steve Jobs.

The One vs The Sixty point is spot on.

It made me realize that I get an image of the Mickey Mouse watch face whenever I see an "Apple Phone" mentioned. Apple just absolutely royally f#cked up the introduction of the Watch. They look neither confident in it nor excited about it. It's just ... so disappointing. Apple seems to back to where it was before Jobs' return.

I agree with the first point about being defensive towards samsung. It's well known in marketing that the Alpha brand never acknowledges the beta brand... even implicitly.

For instance, Pepsi did a taste test against Coke. But no Coke commercials ever acknowledge that Pepsi even existed. Coke commercials are always about their brand.

Apple's always offered various style options for their devices, just not at launch. I get that the author is saying there could be more focus on the device's "soul" without the aesthetic options. That's a fair point. But with a wearable, I wonder if it's more important to have style options from the get go.

The author misunderstands just how much people care about screen size and completely misses the point of a watch. Choice is not confusing in that product category - people want something PERSONAL and that isn't likely to be the exact same thing their friends are wearing.