Today, in a streamed presentation, Apple announced the latest version of the iPhone, as well as upgrades to the AirPods and Apple Watch. As it has since the start of the pandemic, the presentation was a taped show, with lots of camera movement and an extremely rehearsed performance by Apple employees. For more than 100 interminable minutes, Apple demonstrated tasks both mundane (email, photo management) and professional (movie-making, audio recording) made easier by modest updates to essentially the same devices the company has made and sold for a decade. “What a remarkable day of announcements,” CEO Tim Cook concluded, but I find it hard to believe he meant it. This was, let’s face it, just a day of announcements.
I admit that various changes and improvements to the lineup are indeed on offer. What they are exactly is tedious to explain – the annual announcement has become so jargon-laden that my brain shuts down for self-protection. Apple executives and senior vice presidents have certainly rattled off many features: a thin insulation split, a 16-core neural engine, the most advanced H2 chip. As usual, the numbers for these updates are increasing: this is the 16th generation of the iPhone and the 10th of the Apple Watch. We’re at A18 in Apple silicon, a step up from the A17 chip that preceded it; the iPhone 16 Pro is made from Grade 5 titanium, which has to be at least a couple of times better than the shoddy eggshell cases of its competitors made from Grade 2 titanium. The metal used to make Apple’s devices remains aerospace-grade (a fact made not so heavenly by the aviation industry’s increasing inability to make planes fly properly) and the iPhone Pro now features a 48-megapixel Fusion Camera, unleashing a second-generation quad-pixel sensor that allows for, well, better images to be captured within a wider focal length range.
It’s no longer news that new smartphones don’t offer anything really new. Annual updates, even from the world’s largest smartphone maker, have become increasingly modest. In fact, iPhone-scale success now requires a certain level of mundanity: mass appeal doesn’t withstand rapid change or wild new ideas. Progress tames and domesticates. That’s how it feels.
I’ve been “overdue” for an update to my iPhone 12 Pro for a long time, a feeling that makes little sense, although I feel it very strongly. I bought mine in 2020, a fairly recent year that still feels far away. What exactly should I update? My phone works fine in that it allows me to send and mostly delete emails, watch overproduced how-to videos on YouTube, order license plates, tibs or boxes of Bobo’s Pumpkin Spice Oat Bites through DoorDash, and I even make the occasional phone call that sounds worse than ever once I manage to get a proper connection between my AirPods.
Ah, but the iPhone 16 Pro is not just supposed to be one, but four “Studio-quality” microphones with improved signal-to-noise ratios. Plus, I can’t run Apple Intelligence—that’s what the company’s generative AI looks like—with my outdated processor. Eleven years ago, when I covered the debut of the iPhone 5S—the first model with fingerprint recognition!—I compared the iPhone’s annual updates to a seasonal fashion catalog: Even then, the updates had less to do with innovation than with calendar compulsion. Apple Intelligence could well be something else. It’s already more than fashion: The technology allows the phone to summarize your emails, prioritize your notifications, and help you spontaneously create your own emojis in the middle of a text exchange. It seems cool, well-designed, and effectively integrated into the operating system.
But it’s also a kind of fashion. Updating means joining the discourse about updates — experimenting with features rather than utility. Do I want email summaries and bespoke, spontaneous emojis? Sure, but I’m also disappointed by Apple’s lack of ambition. Is that all? Of course it is. What did you expect? The company that sells pretty pocket phones has a new one, and you need it, or you want it in a way that feels like needor you may get it as part of your permanent lease.
This year, the designs of these glass rectangles and earbuds, long characterized by their smooth and futuristic finishes, seem to be crying out for the features of ancient technologies. Take, for example, the latest Apple Watch, which can be viewed from oblique angles, with an always-on screen that includes a ticking second hand even when the hand is down. These features have, of course, been features of wristwatches for hundreds of years. Or think of the latest AirPods: these devices were already intended to be in your ears more or less constantly, but now they can function as earbuds.Plug as well – or even as a hearing aid. The iPhone has finally admitted that it wants to be a camera, and has added a new, dedicated button for taking pictures – a fancy, Apple-fied version of the shutter button on a classic rangefinder or SLR camera. According to the presentation, an iPhone software update coming later this year will make that button also recognize half-presses for exposure or focus lock, as such buttons did for decades before cameras were included in phones.
Future smartphones will continue to consume forgotten innovations of the past and then present them to us as new. And we will continue to devour them – partly because they will be new, and partly because we will have no alternative.
