Davide Cassenti

Yesterday was the day everyone was waiting for; well, at least the day every Apple fan was expecting more than they’d wait a son. It’s always interesting to watch their keynote: despite what non-Apple fans say, I do not have the idea that Apple never innovates; on the contrary, even if their products are not always the top in terms of hardware (nor price), they have a great ability to sell you a technology that probably already exists, but nobody pays attention at.

The big day came after months of rumors: anyone was forecasting different things, from the voice recognition to the new camera, from low end devices to a full integration with Facebook; what almost everyone was sure of, however, was that Steve Jobs Tim Cook would have shown to the World the new iPhone 5. Now, the device is called iPhone 4S, and it’s still better than the previous one; I agree that calling it “5″ would have been too much for what they introduced new, but I also believe that many people are disappointed; most of them just because of the name, unfortunately.

The device is definitely a great one: its voice recognition (named Siri) looks amazing from the demo (well, my 1995 Nokia’s seemed great as well from demos, so should see it in action) – although it won’t be available in Italian for a while – the camera is impressive with an f/2.4 aperture and a set of software/hardware enhancements that would make it one of the best on the phone-market, the CPU has been upgraded.

So, what? This time the word innovation was definitely not on the plate; the new iOS is improved a lot - taking lot of features from Android, yes, but this is part of the game – but you don’t need a new device to run it; I was quite impressed when they started to talk about a new greeting card service: come on, we’re talking about amazing features and you propose me a 25-year-old idea? Totally disappointed this time, Apple. I always preferred Android, but it’s good to see new features coming out, since the more Apple innovates, the more competitors create great devices to win the war.

But what do we have now? This interesting comparition table from Talk Android shows a comparision with the device I currently own – a Samsung Galaxy SII – with the new iPhone 4S: there’s really nothing particulary amazing in the new device. The voice recognition is amazing, but Android’s is great too and supports even more languages; also I do not think it’s a feature most of the people would really use in real life: a wonderful support for people who can’t easily use the phone otherwise, but would everyone else just going around arguing with their device? The same I can say about the camera: yes, specs are impressive, but the quality of my phone is impressive as well. And Apple-fans’ usual comment is: “this device came out X months later, that’s why it is (almost - they can’t admit it) better than the iPhone”; what’s your comment now? This came out half a year later, what does it have to scare Samsung, which is ready to release their next model too?

I’ve already seen lot of disappointed comments about this last announcement; if you love Apple and do not have an iPhone, this is definitely a great device and it’s worth buying; if you have an iPhone 4, I believe the only reason to upgrade is to throw away money (in that case, I can give you my PayPal account); for everyone else, take a chance to look at the Google Episode event next week, where Samsung and Google promise great announcements. Hoping they won’t disappoint us as well.