Apple occasion underwhelming? Look ahead to the iPhone 17.

Are you an Apple person who discovered the iPhone 16 launch occasion to be uninteresting, disappointing, a let-down? Did it seem to be it targeted on area of interest merchandise, just like the black Apple Watch Extremely 2, earlier than it received to the principle meat … of what turned out to be comparatively minor iPhone {hardware} updates?

Then, frankly, you were not the target market, even for those who’re an iPhone person. Your present mannequin is probably going doing simply nice, and also you’re most likely hooked up to its colour (as with mine, a year-old deep purple iPhone 15 Professional). You are not able to pony up for a barely higher system, and all of the Apple Intelligence on this planet will not make you.

Wait till the subsequent hype cycle — which on this case, is already constructing across the 2025 mannequin, a reportedly thinner iPhone 17 “Air.” By then, you may discover your cellphone’s declining battery and tiny-seeming display to be a humiliation, and the Apple trade-in provide will out of the blue make much more sense. Simply as homeowners of the iPhone 14, and earlier fashions, had been predisposed to search out one thing to love within the iPhone 16 announcement.

Within the meantime … are you positive you do not need to take a look at your listening to loss (requiring new AirPods) or discover out when you’ve got sleep apnea (requiring a sequence 10 Watch)?

Apple, a $3.3 trillion firm, has been at this recreation a while, and the sport is known as “get customers into our ecosystem.” As every market that the tech large has entered matures, it turns into more durable to get present prospects to improve particular person units. The extra the iPhone turns into a luxurious merchandise, and the extra conscious customers change into of its environmental price, the much less doubtless they’re to improve yearly, and even each different yr.

So for those who’re Tim Cook dinner, and you’ve got a fiduciary responsibility to continue to grow the corporate, what do you do?

Positive, you be sure you’re within the recreation in the case of new know-how. Cook dinner has received a agency toe-hold in digital house now with the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional; if VR or AR out of the blue seem like the longer term, Apple is prepared. He additionally understands the task with AI, which (for the second, at the very least) is basically a matter of rebranding your machine-learning software program so you do not seem like you are falling behind: enter Apple Intelligence.

However most of your job as Apple CEO is to make a number of Apple units appear extra interesting to each person, even in a world of extremely fragmented client teams. You discover extra teams served by the probabilities of latest hardware-software combos: listening to loss and sleep apnea victims are big and rising well being niches, which is why producers of listening to aids took a success on the inventory market within the Apple occasion’s wake.

If you happen to take a look at the steadily rising Apple person base for non-iPhone objects, then front-loading Apple occasions with tedious-to-you Watch updates, for one, makes much more sense.

Credit score: EMarketer

Furthermore, to replace a phrase that has differentiated Apple since its Jobs-Wozniak days, Tim Cook dinner’s job is to ensure every little thing simply works … collectively. As soon as upon a time, when Home windows working properly with Macintosh OS was what mattered, the Apple “walled backyard” was a millstone across the firm’s neck. Now, the walled backyard could be the firm’s greatest asset.

Take, for instance, the Apple AirPods Max: beautifully-designed, massively costly over-the-ear noise-cancelling headphones saddled with a horrible title. After they had been launched, I scoffed: Why would I purchase these once I may seize a comparable Bose pair for a lot much less?

I found the reply this yr: as a result of the Max cans join and change so simply to and between my MacBook, iPad and iPhone — and most significantly, to my Apple TV — whereas offering unbelievable spatial audio.

I wasn’t available in the market for normal AirPods, as a result of I do not like wax-producing earbuds (for train I take advantage of these Bose open-ear fashions as an alternative). However the Max turned out to be completely my jam, a lot in order that right here I’m, significantly contemplating buying and selling in my two-month previous inexperienced headphones for the brand new USB-C mannequin in purple, to match my iPhone.

I most likely will not — not this cycle, anyway. My Apple price range for 2024 is fully spent. But when Apple brings out a purple iPhone 17 subsequent yr, then it can virtually definitely be time as soon as extra to hook up their vacuum cleaner to my pockets — it doesn’t matter what new options are overrated on the 2025 iPhone launch occasion.