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Notes From Today's Apple Event

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Listened to the great team at CNet covering today's Apple event. Some notable points:
  • 38% of tablets now belong to non-Apple manufacturers. Whoa. Those are huge inroads against Apple.
  • 91% of tablet web traffic is coming from Apple. So where are the other tablets? Methinks there are some accounting shenanigans, or a lot of disappointed non-iPad owners who've given up.
  • Nice point on the "time shifting" of gaming: able to play against your friends, but not necessarily in real time. For instance, a racing game where you can run your race, then hours later, your friend can race against your race as if it were live. Nice.
  • Good points by the CNet crew: there was a slide on the battery life, but did not mention the impact of 4G on it. 4G is a notorious battery hog; sounds like Apple wasn't able to lick that one.
  • Regarding that "Lightning" connector: Phil Schiller prefaces the intro with this comment: "Many things we do over the wire we now do wirelessly." Then why the hell isn't Apple able to push this with inductive charging?? Good move on the adaptor, though.
  • No mention of the new "nano-SIM" card. True or no? Update: yes, it is. Just not mentioned.
  • Interesting timings:
    • iOS 6 update on the 19th
    • iPhone 5 pre orders on the 14th
    • New iPhones available on the 21st
  • New iTunes: yes, that bloated, lumbering, clumsy beast now gets a facelift. Sigh.
  • Love @MollyWood's response to the new Nano: "HOLY Bubble gum!"
  • The team agrees: the Nokia 920 (Windows Phone) is definitely a better phone than the iPhone 5 on many fronts. Will this be a watershed moment for Windows Phone?
My thoughts:

This version of the new iPhone offers very little that can be even generously classified as "revolutionary." The lack of NFC means that we will limp along with ancient payments; that could have shifted dramatically with the iPhone and Passbook. The fact that there was, quite literally, not a single detail of this phone that had not been leaked in advance is either a sign that Apple is no longer able to exert the level of control they were legendary for, or clever marketing against the new Android and Windows Phone news: keeping the conversation on iPhone 5 going.

In short, I'll be spending some time to compare, once again, the major apps I use on an every day basis to see if there is a critical mass of support on another platform before making my purchase decision. Yes, no longer a "must have," but a "might have."
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