“If you felt uneasy through Apple’s keynote, you’re not alone. Something felt off. It wasn’t the features or hardware but the messaging,” Jong-Moon Kim writes for Jiggity. “Let’s review parts of the keynote that felt weak and see if Steve can make it shine.”
“The keynote starts with a real-life Prezi presentation with little substance. The most damning line comes near the beginning: ‘Where other perceive first as valuable, you value the first thing that actually matters,'” Kim writes. “Assuring people that ‘It’s not about being first, but being ‘first with meaning” reeks of being defensive,” Kim writes. “Even with companies we respect confidence—not insecurity. A Jobsian Apple would have never said something so weak.”
“There should have been one obvious, visceral reason to buy an iPhone 6. 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,” Kim writes. “The trouble now is that the iPhone 6 must depend on its host of secondary features to make the sale… This happens when product creators play it safe. There’s a chance the single X might be wrong. The obvious solution is to be add enough features until there’s Something for Everyone. 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.”
“Apple iWatch: Messy. Too many options. This is such a huge blunder,” Kim writes. “Instead of a single, perfect product, we got a jumble of features and choices. There should have been just The One that people call ‘The Jesus Watch’ like the second coming. It’s easy to fall in love with The One. The iPod launched with The One. The iPhone launched with The One. The Apple Watch launched with The Sixty.”
Kim writes, “Without further ado, let’s join Steve Jobs as he introduces the new iPhone and the rumored new wearable.”
Check out Kim’s imagined Steve Jobs’ September 9, 2014 special event keynote, in which Jobs unveils only one, 4.5-inch iPhone 6, here.
Jong-Moon Kim writes about the intersection of psychology, technology and artistry. He graduated from MIT in 2010 with an B.S. and M.S. in computer science. He was the winner of the MIT Web Programming Competition in 2010. He is a Y Combinator alumnus. He is currently working as a founder at an unannounced startup.
MacDailyNews Take: There are parts of this essay that ring true and work so well (the “heartbeat” section, for example) that Apple would do well to have their keynote writers read it and incorporate some of Kim’s ideas going forward.
Other ideas, such as having only one “iWatch” (not “Apple Watch”), not so much.
[Attribution: Cult of Mac. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]