Wonderlost

Apple's worst event of the last decade

Image: Badly edited by author

It was nothing if true to form. Flashy visuals. Slick product reels. The “Apple hands.” Robotic presentations with so little charisma it’s impossible to tell if they are now AI-generated. And, of course, new iterations of products that are, well, basically the same as the last model.

But, for a keynote that Apple calls “Wonderlust,” it lacked both wonder and lust.

It might even be the worst Apple event of the last decade.

What did we get? The new iPhone is a whole gram lighter. I repeat, a WHOLE GRAM lighter! There’s a new side button to replace the old slider button. A new material. An upgraded chip. Cameras with a few extra megapixels and another level of zoom. A new range of colors. A new range of watch straps. A few new features here and there, features that other phones have had long before now. There was even time for a bit of corporate green washing with a cringeworthy video about climate change. One of the biggest changes was less innovation and more enforced by EU law; the move to USB-C, which did at least provide some laughter — it’s another excuse for Apple to sell us a $30 dongle. If you buy this, there is no hope for you.

It’s an extensive list, but if you step back, it’s all surface-level, paint-by-numbers stuff. Slightly smaller, slightly faster, slightly thinner, slightly more powerful.

The only crumb of innovation is the ‘double tap’ feature for the Apple Watch, where users can double tap their thumb and first finger to interact with the watch. It seems to work, and it’s really neat. However, I worry that the unforeseen consequences of this repetitive motion may be a whole swathe of watch users developing a tapping tick.

And that’s the takeaway, again — Apple, at present, is devoid of innovation. Or rather, the smartphone industry has gotten so saturated, and the devices are so accomplished that there is little room left for innovation. When I was a Product Design student in the early 2010s, Apple was a beacon of inspiration across the design medium. The company was a category creator: the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. These products were groundbreaking and have changed the tech landscape forever. But now, Apple is stagnating like most other tech companies, lacking direction and chasing trends. It released a watch only because other companies had entered the market. It went into the streaming market and subscription services because it makes lots of money. It announced its Vision Pro headset because it suffered a serious case of FOMO and felt it had no choice (and it’s going to be a flop.) Its one major success, born from innovation, is the AirPods, which have been so successful that the product would be an S&P 500 company if it were a standalone business. These days, the design juice is empty. It’s just incremental improvements, size or weight changes, just enough to fill a 90-minute keynote event and convince the devoted fans to part with their cash. 

Yet, on the flip side, that’s exactly why Apple has given up on innovation. We, as consumers, continue to signal with our wallets, year after year, that we don’t care. The latest iPhones will be snapped up as quickly by fans and critics alike. Apple will remain a trillion-dollar company and keep using its money to invest in and release more expensive devices that will continue to sell well and be held as a status symbol, regardless of how little innovation is present in those devices. 

That’s how Apple's business model works now, and as long as that model isn’t broken, the company isn’t going to fix it. 

There’s no question that the shareholder wealth that Tim Apple has generated is an incredible feat. Under Cook’s leadership, Apple has grown from a $364.4 billion market cap to $2.76 trillion. In 2018, it became the first publicly traded U.S. company to reach a $1 trillion market cap. The stock has delivered a nearly 1,200% return over the past decade, far outpacing almost any other investment. In that sense, it’s been a home run, and Cook does deserve praise for that.

But somewhere along that journey — one could argue it started even before the passing of Steve Jobs — the focus shifted from design to dollars. It became less about breaking the mold, and more about cold, hard numbers. As this new philosophy took hold, Apple became a company that lost its identity and, with it, its very soul. In terms of the category-defining design it was once heralded for, it’s now rotten to the core, nothing more than a corporate juggernaut pumping out near-identical products in a mad pursuit to increase its stock price.