A spate of breathless reports claim Apple is in some kind of ‘panic mode’ because some unannounced features of a product the company hasn’t yet announced are apparently behind some (unrevealed) schedule.
Same old, same old
It’s the same thing every year these days. It’s incredibly predictable.
It goes like this: Having reported every claimed product feature people then switch to criticizing all those features, and – when the shelf life on ‘anti-reports’ of this kind time out, the self-same sources swiftly shift to shuffling speculation saying such-and-such features will apparently be ‘delayed’. Seriously!
All of this drama and Apple hasn’t even announced anything yet.
How can something that hasn’t been announced ever be delayed?
What are the claims?
The allegations are that Apple has hit some technical problems in the support of claimed future features, face detection and wireless charging for the fabled iPhone 8.
These software problems mean these features “may not be available” when it is announced. They may even be delayed pending a subsequent software update, as happened last year with Portrait Mode in iPhone 7.
There have also been claims and counterclaims Apple may choose not to include a Touch ID sensor in the next machine. I find those claims incredibly hard to accept, given the importance of the verification system to Apple’s rapidly growing Apple Pay service.
What to do?
We think we know almost everything we need to know about what Apple is planning with the next-generation iPhone.
I believe we know a lot less than that.
Why?
Because when I watched the watchOS 4 and Apple TV announcements at Apple’s recent WWDC I experienced a strong gut feeling that we weren’t being told everything about either platform or the company’s wider plans.
I also think it makes sense to believe that some of the secrets it didn’t discuss (which don’t seem to be being speculated upon elsewhere) will have implications on Apple’s other solutions, including the iPhone.
On hearing the latest speculation key technologies may in some way be delayed, I find myself experiencing the same gut feeling – as such, I think we’ll see more evidence of the company’s wider plans later this year when it announces them.
A ‘sense of panic’
Fast Company claims its Apple source is describing a “sense of panic” inside the company as team’s rush to bring all the new technologies together.
I'd argue that one person’s sense of panic is another person’s sense of excitement and/or optimism.
Think about how the original Apple iPhone team felt when they were closing in on the introduction of that device. They knew that some of the features of the device Apple’s Steve Jobs was about to introduce didn’t yet work.
I imagine feelings were pretty tense.
Believe it or not, Apple is not actually defined by the speculation industry that surrounds it. (It’s just some of the people inside that industry think it is).
The company has been known to drop features from products if it can’t make them work, and with 12-months or so between product launches of the world’s most popular consumer electronics product, it is surely not so very surprising that development can sometimes go to the wire.
The Fast Company report ends with the helpful observation that, “new iPhones’ features can remain fluid until deep in the summer before a launch.”
This is business as usual.
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