Nik Rawlinson
Forget the iPad hype – it’s the iPhone 4 that’s taking the world by storm…
One of the perils of working on a magazine – any magazine – is that you eventually have to press print. There comes a time in every production cycle when you have to down tools and send your pages off to the paper and ink merchants and turn your attention to whichever issue comes next.
Why is that a problem? Because sometimes the story you’d really like to include in the magazine happens just a few hours after you step back from your pages.
And so it is that I find myself today writing this editorial column just 22 hours before Apple’s biggest launch of the year: the iPhone 4. No, I haven’t forgotten the iPad and the razzmatazz that surrounded it, but the hype and speculation surrounding the new smartphone looks set to trump even that.
Indeed, one of the UK carriers, O2, expects demand to be so strong that it’s only selling – initially – to existing customers as an upgrade. US cellphone network AT&T claimed its busiest day ever when it started taking pre-orders. iPhone 4 is shipping in four countries simultaneously, not just the US, and as one Twitterer put it: ‘The question is not “are you getting an iPhone 4 tomorrow?” – it’s “how early are you getting to an O2 store to ensure you get an iPhone 4?”‘ (hat tip to nikf).
This, then, is the calm before the storm, and by the time you read these words, the tempest will be in full flight. iPhone 4 has struck a chord in the same way as the iPhone 3G did. Somehow it didn’t happen with 3GS, which was too much of a me-too product to register. 3G was the iPhone we had been waiting for: the one that plugged the gaps in the initial release and, crucially, dispensed with the silly cuff on the headphone jack.
So what is it about iPhone 4 that has reset the clock? Why is this one so special? It’s not the Retina display, which is impressive, but not a fabled game-changer. It’s probably not FaceTime, which I love the sound of, but would like to be able to use on 3G while talking to none-iPhone 4 owners. It’s unlikely we’d find ourselves swayed in such overwhelming numbers by a higher-resolution camera – or, indeed, a second camera mounted beside your ear. iOS 4? Well, no. That’s yours for the asking if you already have a 3G model.
It’s all of these things and none of these things. Add them all up and each contributes a little to the success of the greater whole. The iPhone 4 is the right product with the right features at the right time, and is very much greater than the sum of its parts.
But by now, of course, you know that already, don’t you?
