The Internet has been buzzing with stories that Apple’s iPhone 5 has been delayed, but is it actually? Not really.
[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]The Loop first reported last month that Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) would not feature any major hardware news. Instead, the conference would go back to its roots and showcase what’s new for iOS and Mac OS X. In other words, things that are relevant to developers.
Coupled with Apple’s recent history of introducing a new iPhone at WWDC, many news outlets have determined that Apple has delayed the iPhone 5.
While I understand the reasoning and the methods used to come to this conclusion, it is flawed in one very basic point — Apple never said when it would announce the iPhone 5.
Some people will say that I’m playing word games by pointing out that Apple never announced a ship date, so the iPhone 5 can’t be late, but isn’t everyone else playing the same game by saying it is delayed.
Reports surfaced earlier this year that the iPad 2 was delayed too. It actually shipped earlier than expected and before the iPad’s first anniversary date.
From what my sources have told me, the iPhone 5 is right on schedule. Who’s schedule? Apple’s.
Like it or not, Apple doesn’t have to say when a new product is coming. If for some reason they have decided to change the release schedule to better suit its strategy, that’s a change, not a delay.
Thank you, thank you, THANK you. I could not agree more strongly.
One flaw with your theory, though. If Apple were shipping the iPhone in July (after a June announcement) like they usually do, shouldn’t there be a spike in supply shipment records showcasing that they are ramping up for production of a new product?
Show me those numbers and I will believe you.
What “theory” are you referring to? The idea that the tech community somehow believes it can decide what Apple’s unannounced release schedule actually is?
I feel sorry for respectable news outlets for having to repeat this message every time we come closer to the presumed announcement of yet another new Apple device.
Apple doesn’t give a bag of poo about when the tech press wants them to release new shiny stuff. What hasn’t been announce can’t be late.
You can blame other tech companies for this approach. Most of Apple’s competition telegraph their moves two years out. They announce vaporware as living projects (I’m looking at you, Microsoft) and use product announcements as a means of getting press.
As well, Apple has a very predictable upgrade cycle, but there is no where you will find Apple committing to regular, predictable hardware cycles. So Jim’s point can be dismissed, but it’s simply a fact: a product never announced can never be late.
It sounds like you didn’t read what he wrote. Whether they release the iPhone 5 in July, October, or January of next year is immaterial since it isn’t delayed until they announce a release timeframe and then miss it. Jim was merely pointing out that fact, not theorizing about its release date. In fact, Jim was the first one to credibly break the news that there would be no iPhone 5 hardware to show off at WWDC, so you’re arguing with someone you should be agreeing with.
Not necessarily. THe components in the iphone 5 may all be things being used in the iphone 4 or the ipad 2 and so suppliers would have no way of knowing what they are being used for.
But the real point is you can’t call something delayed if you don’t have a previously announced date to have delayed it from. Folks assume cause the last 4 phones came out during X period and were announced at Y time that it must happen that way but it doesn’t
The 2011 iPhone shipped in February … 4 months EARLY. It doubled sales just like all previous iterations. It was the most anticipated iPhone release ever. People were literally asking for this device right after the iPhone introduction in January 2007.
Expecting more than one a year has even less justification than expecting you can pick the ship dates or define the features. If you are saying 1 model every June you are wrong. That pattern has already been broken. The latest iPhone shipped 7.5 months after its predecessor. The next iPhone is “due” in September or October of 2011, after another 7.5 months. But Apple can ship whenever. They dropped out of events like Macworld so they could set their own ship dates.
Probably the best compliment the iPhone could get is how weak the criticisms are:
• shipping the 2011 iPhone over 4 months sooner than expected is “late”
• running the most popular mobile open source project — Apple WebKit — is “closed”
• bringing the HTML5 specification to mobiles in place of baby WAP browsers is “not the full Web”
• running W3C standard HTML5 and ISO standard MPEG4 instead of proprietary, nonstandard Adobe Flash is “closed”
• exhibiting the same antenna nullification problem that all phones have is “Antennagate”
• climbing to 25% of the smartphone market after only 3.5 years in the business and in spite of having only 1 phone that is only available to about 40% of consumers is “dead in the water”
• running the most successful and highest revenue application platform, with over 80% of the usage and over 90% of the revenues, providing developers with the only native C development on mobiles, and paying them well over $1 billion is “hostile to developers”
• Verizon turning down the iPhone for years is being “locked to AT&T”
• having more 3rd party developers than any other mobile, and giving those developers native C API access that nobody else provides, i.e. much deeper, lower-level access than other platform’s Java applets, is a “walled garden”
• taking over 50% of all mobile profits and over 60% of all touchscreen production capacity and over 70% of all flash storage capacity is “doomed”
… the level of BS is astounding.
But when you look at Apple you see the best-selling phone, best-selling tablet, best-selling media player, best-selling notebook, best-selling all-in-one, best-selling workstation, best-selling UNIX, best-selling consumer video editor, best-selling pro video editor, best-selling music and movie and TV and app downloads, the highest dollar per square meter retail stores in the world, and the highest market cap of any technology company. So you can understand why the criticism is so weak. You can understand how hard it is today to steer consumers away from Apple.
So we have to try and be forgiving of the haters, pat them on the head, say “nice try,” and get back to our virus-free, crash-free, frustration-free work and play with Apple products.
How about they release it early then freeze the sales.
I just want Steve to walk out on stage at WWDC with the iPhone 5 and announce the new iPhone is here.
“One more thing…. you can’t have it, you bitched about the old one too much so see you next year if you behave maybe we’ll release it then….”
So I should wait till June regardless of the rumors?