Apple finally ran out of ways to resell us the same product
It's a good thing that Tim Cook alluded to the company's pitched battle with the FBI at the beginning of Monday's keynote, and not just because it's an important issue.
Bringing it up was the equivalent of holding a newspaper in a ransom photograph. It's about the only thing that proved the event was actually taking place in 2016.
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Otherwise you might think you were living in a Groundhog Day of Apple keynotes -- where we keep seeing the same products launch, over and over.
The "Apple launches 4-inch iPhone" headlines took me right back to September 2012, the first time I saw and wrote them. (Ironically, I could be found at that event imploring Apple to make a truly new and outside-the-box product; the company has since introduced a smartwatch).
Meanwhile, the company announced a new 9.7-inch iPad, which took me all the way back to January 2010 and the launch of the first 9.7-inch iPad.
Before my fellow Apple fanboys start frothing at the mouth: I know, I know. That was the iPad, this is the iPad Pro. New features, new specs, all very cool stuff for us nerds. I'm seriously considering a 256GB iPad Pro in rose gold, and the last thing I need is more Apple devices.
What I'm concerned with is how the company is perceived by the general audience. It's getting harder to ignore the fact that Apple is simply repackaging the same iOS machines in differently sized boxes, no matter how cool the anodized aluminum on that box is.
My colleague Heidi Moore joked that Apple was gaslighting -- the act of convincing people that previous events did not happen. This actually isn't too far from the truth. Tim Cook and Co. never once mentioned the 4-inch iPhone 5 on stage today, for example.
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End of the line
With the launch of the iPhone SE, Apple now basically has an iOS product in every size you can hold with one hand, all on sale together for the first time.
Maybe some day the company will give us the iPhone SSE, a 3.5-inch device for those with extra small pockets and hands. (Insert your favorite Donald Trump joke here.) Or we might see the iPad Super Pro, a 20-inch tablet for when you basically want to carry around a small TV.
Maybe some day the company will give us the iPhone SSE, a device for those with extra small pockets and hands.
There are other options, I suppose. You could custom-make an iPhone to fit the exact dimensions of your pocket. Maybe the iPhone Square, for taking the perfect Instagram shot.
But somehow I doubt it. This is it for iOS devices -- the end of the product line. Indeed, if you include the Apple Watch (technically a different OS, I know), Apple makes pretty much the same touchscreen device in size increments from 1.5 inches all the way up to 12.9 inches.
It's a lucrative business to be in, the iPad's slow sales growth notwithstanding. The iOS ecosystem remains the world's best mobile OS (Sorry, Android). Just because the category isn't going to grow any more doesn't mean it is going away.
But the strain of Apple trying to make iOS be all things to all people is starting to show. You could see it in Monday's keynote, where Phil Schiller tried to persuade users of Windows PCs to come on over to the iPad Pro.
But as great as many iOS apps are, it's never going to replace the laptop. There are just too many finicky little things you can't do on it, usually for workplace security reasons. For example, I can't write this story without access to certain browser extensions that just don't exist on iOS.
To recap: Apple is a company that makes touchscreens and Macs. Their sizes are now pretty much set in stone. There will be incremental software and hardware updates from now until forever. The end.
For all we love to huddle around our screens for Apple launch events, this may be the day they stopped being about anything that was truly, categorically new. Well, until the much-vaunted Apple Car drives into our lives -- an unveiling of something truly new that can't come soon enough.
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Chris is a veteran tech, entertainment and culture journalist, author of 'How Star Wars Conquered the Universe,' and co-host of the Doctor Who podcast 'Pull to Open.' Hailing from the U.K., Chris got his start as a sub editor on national newspapers. He moved to the U.S. in 1996, and became senior news writer for Time.com a year later. In 2000, he was named San Francisco bureau chief for Time magazine. He has served as senior editor for Business 2.0, and West Coast editor for Fortune Small Business and Fast Company. Chris is a graduate of Merton College, Oxford and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a long-time volunteer at 826 Valencia, the nationwide after-school program co-founded by author Dave Eggers. His book on the history of Star Wars is an international bestseller and has been translated into 11 languages.
