Duncan Bell is iPhone-less

Another year, another big Apple launch event. But this is no ordinary year…

pple iPhone launches are possibly my favourite big event in the tech calendar. Admittedly that’s not saying much as I hate all trade shows, but still. This year’s was a vintage one in many ways, but also very different. For a start, there was no iPhone.

This, it is said, was due to COVID. Given that the coronavirus pandemic has brought death in its wake and pushed the world to the brink of social and economic chaos, I am not going to claim that a delayed phone is all that big of a deal, but it was a decidedly sombre affair nonetheless.

The Apple spokespersons were as cheery as ever, but the way the camera tracked them through the corridors and up and down the levels of Apple’s gleaming yet eerily deserted Cupertino lair – sorry, ‘campus’ – gave the event the air of an artsy horror movie. Or perhaps an episode of ’80s kids ‘VR’ show

Knightmare. You don’t remember

Knightmare? Trust me, if you did, that joke would be funny AF.

One moment in particular where the camera seemed to plunge downwards, to cut to someone telling us about the new Apple Watch, made it appear that the spokesman had for some reason been imprisoned in a dungeon for some unspeakable crime.

Of course many of Apple’s rival brands probably think they are guilty of unspeakable crimes. Most particularly, the crime of announcing ‘new’ products, services and features that are uncannily similar to ones already out there… And then making a huge success of them. “Ooh! Nasty…” as

Knightmare host Treguard probably would have put it. Remember that?

AThere’s always a classic moment in every Apple event where they turn the chutzpah and brass neck up to 11. Here, it was in an advert segment for Apple Watch Series 6. The conceit of this was that an off-camera interviewer was asking people about futuristic features that a watch might one day have, only to be told, “It already does that.” I know, right? My sides.

Many a maker of rival, less successful wearable must have watched this whilst grinding their teeth, thinking ‘We already did that.’ Most particularly, the way that Apple kept implying it had basically invented the idea of testing blood oxygen via your wrist must have had everyone from Withings to Fitbit quietly seething. Or, indeed, noisily seething. I also don’t think FIIT or Peloton were jumping for joy at Apple’s new Watch-integrated streaming fitness class service.

But the secret of Apple’s ongoing success is not ‘stealing ideas’ outright, as some have claimed. It’s that it takes existing ideas, hones them, and delivers them in a way that people can understand and use easily. Also it plonks the whole shebang in a beautiful device that is immaculately marketed to the ‘affordable premium’ market that Apple knows best.

Their annual marketing campaign is defined by these iPhone launch events, and that was true this year despite the absence of an actual iPhone.

Having been doing live events for years that have become pretty slick, it’s no surprise that this pre-recorded one was extremely slick. Gone were the awkward pauses and occasional technical glitches we’ve come to cherish.

Tim Cook was in his black clothes, to indicate both that this was a serious matter, and that creativity was high on the agenda with Apple Pencil+ – creative people wear black, you see.

The lurking doubt this year was whether what seems like a certain, looming recession will torpedo that ‘affordable premium’ market. It may be that Apple is pinning more hopes on the cheaper iPad Air and Watch SE than it is on their rangetopping counterparts. Will they be affordable enough to defy a deep recession? We’ll see…

Still, there was one bit of very good news for Apple event lovers. The delay to the iPhone launch can only mean one thing and that is… another Apple launch event very soon! Try as I might, I for one won’t be able to resist tuning in.

“Tim Cook was in his black clothes, to indicate that this was a serious matter”