Apple’s iconic product reveal devolved into a diversity hiring show and climate change pep rally. Little was said about the new products themselves and for good reason.
By way of disclaimer, I will admit that we are an Apple family. We currently have five iPhones of different generations in use as well as several Airpod Pros, four iPads, a watch and a few older iPod Touch devices. So we like Apple products and generally replace one with another. We thus eagerly awaited last night’s product reveal which included two products of personal interest—new Apple watches and iPhone 15 models. The show was an exceptional disappointment.
I did not watch from the beginning but joined my son when Tim Cook and his lieutenants were sitting around a table having an intense discussion. I was certain that these were actors as it looked like a campus DEI officer’s dream, but no, these are the VP’s running the company. Then entered “Mother Nature” in the form of a black actress who could change the weather outside the office. The Apple staff was terrified of her and they had to convince her how much they were reducing their carbon footprint and use of materials. I am not making this up; you can watch the video of the product reveal for yourself. For about ten minutes, the highest officers of Apple discussed not using leather, reusing aluminum and other materials, shipping by sea and not by air. During this entire discussion, there was no mention of the quality of Apple products, the unique features that distinguish them from the competition, or how Apple is simply the product to have. Each VP cowered before Mother Nature and promised to become carbon neutral by 2030. Mother Nature had a staring competition with Tim Cook to end the scene and waltzed off, promising to be back next year. I hope that Apple’s customers make such a promise.
I could only imagine Steve Jobs hitting 1,000 rpm’s in his grave. I don’t think that he had anything against the environment, but he understood that customers want performance. He famously switched one million plastic iPhone 1 screens with glass after manufacture because he would not tolerate a product that could get scratched. The environmental stuff should be running in the background—yes, people will notice that the packaging has gotten smaller or that the leather products are gone and are replaced with something pretty close. But to make those features front and center means that the first $3 trillion company has lost its way.
I mention here something I previously wrote in these pages: according to the US Department of Energy, natural sources of carbon dioxide release are greater than human-caused, and the largest source of the much-maligned gas is the ocean. Thus, the efforts to reduce human-produced carbon dioxide will have little effect when natural release dominates. The climate change hoax has always been a scam, but even the US government admits that it is not humans that contribute the most gas and as such, forcing people to change cars, water heaters, stove tops and now Apple wristbands.
The big emphasis on the environmental efforts at Apple was apparently necessary as the products introduced were underwhelming. The much-anticipated iPhone 15 models looked like their predecessors—11, 12, 13, and 14. The back cameras are still raised, there is still the island on the top of the screen. Yes, they have moved to titanium and there are improvements in camera, processor, and other features. One of my sons pointed out during the iPhone 15 camera reveal that all of the pictures shown during the event had either a black or Asian person in the picture. Every picture shown. Are white people that ugly? Are they that desperate with China after the latter forbid all government workers from using Apple phones for work? If there were DEI and climate change advertising prizes to be handed out, Apple would have the inside track for both. As to the phones, the big new addition was that satellite service has been extended from pure emergency to roadside service. So for the less than 1 percent of Apple users who might have their cars break down in the middle of nowhere, their iPhones will get them a tow truck. Bravo.
The watches also had no new features to speak of. They have the second generation of their big new titanium watch, but other than having longer battery time and a faster processor, it did not seem to offer much in the way of new, exciting apps or functions. This situation does not surprise me as the last watch reveal had as its big new improvement the ability to measure a slight increase in a woman’s body temperature, thus suggesting that she would get her period. The world had been waiting for such a functionality.
Apple even tried to spin the USB-C connector as a great improvement. They were forced by the EU to make their connectors common with Android devices, so this outcome was forced upon them, but they tried to say how much faster the devices will charge and transfer data. When USB-C is one of your biggest selling points, it means that you have very little to offer in the way of innovation. The innovation people are working on carbon footprints and not on better devices.
Apple is clearly on top of the world. They are the most valuable company on the planet, their quarterly profits are measured in the tens of billions of dollars, and people line up days in advance to get their newest gear. But other companies before them like IBM, K-Mart, Sears, RIM (makers of Blackberry) and others were also on top in their day but could not hold it. Oftentimes, they took their eye off of the customer and started to chase after fads or go in directions that did not match their customers’ interests. Before I stopped watching the woke presentation, I told my son that Apple’s stock will go down after the reveal. And it did ($3 or 1.7%). The market wants profits. What investors clearly saw was a preening left-wing company, not any great improvements in the actual products offered.