Let’s Talk iPhone EVENT WRAP UP

Last Tuesday October 4th the morning streets of San Francisco were uncharacteristically empty on the very day of a major Apple event. By mid afternoon techie types were headed back into the city from the Apple iPhone Event.

So what did we learn? No iPhone 5 yet!

New iPhone 4S:

1. Dual-core A5 chip
2. 8MP camera and optics
3. iOS 5 and iCloud

Apple may have made a super blunder or bought themselves a little more fudge time to come up with a truly superior competitive device to debut around the holidays and CES and MacWorld. With everyone and his brother expecting a brand new iPhone 5 to be unveiled today Apple in my opinion under-whelmed everyone with a couple of lesser devices with a few interesting features.

Among the revelations:

• A Free iPhone 3GS
• Siri Voice Assistance
• An updated iPod Nano with new watch faces & fitness watch

Everyone is having their say about what went down at today at Apple’s HQ in Cupertino.

My take is:

The event had little of the glitzy super-sized announcements that we have become used to and that usually brought adoring crowds of Apple sycophants and “fan boys” to their feet.

New CEO, Tim Cook was surely no Steve Jobs, and  the actual presentation seemed to be mostly marketing hype and statistical ”aren’t we just great” chest thumping and bragging.

Apple’s “Let’s Talk iPhone” Event, was expected by most to be Apple’s best opportunity set Apple’s future in the post Steve Jobs era and establish in the minds of millions of consumers the  direction for their high-flying market leading iPhone line, but with no new iPhone 5 announced this day that certainly did not happen however hard we might have wished. I can hear all the many Android smartphone competitors breathing a deep sigh of relief and cranking up their manufacturing and development engines trying to “capture magic in a bottle”.

Regardless, Apple’s iPhone remains easily the leading smartphone in the mobile device market space all around the World, but the iPhone 5 has yet to make an appearance and one can bet their last money that Samsung, Microsoft, HTC and others are getting real busy attempting to strategically and tactivly exploit this possible stumble and Apple’s apparent failure to manage expectations.

Of course there were other issues addressed at the event including iPhone 4S, a soon to be free iPhone 3GS,  iCloud, iOS5, Siri Voice navigation/assistant, Sprint getting iPhones, a few updates to the iPod touch and Nano, but the future of the iPod Classic was not revealed nor its demise declared.

Every mobile technology and news site had eagerly accumulated long detailed lists of leading iPhone 5 rumors and imaginings. Most assumptions were profoundly wrong or way off target.

There were numerous live sources for blog coverage but strangely there was no real time on-site video available save a few select excerpts. There are a few additional newsworthy items revealed that I will detail a little later, but let me stop here and get some rest and decompress, have some lunch and a short nap.

If I sound a little disappointed, that is true! it is just that I really thought the time was right for much more than we got. That actually seems to be a feeling echoed and shared throughout our rather spoiled technology media, but then again, we always expect much more than we actually receive and do not hesitate to complain about whatever it is we get.

Reduction in prices: (Preorder 4Ss – Oct. 7th)

• 16GB – $199
• 32GB – $299
• 64GB – $399
• iPhone 4 $99 (2 year contract)
• iPhone 3 – free (2 year contract)

New iPhone 4S specs:

1. Dual-core A5 CPU
2. Antenna Reworked
3. Camera resolution upped to 8-MP – 1080p video
4. Siri Voice Assistant
5. More choice in service providers