The New iPhones

As in previous years, Apple’s CEO stood on the stage and announced the new generation of iPhones.

Details of the launch, the phones themselves, the new services, and the specifications were already known to all, but a more in-depth look reveals a little about the innovations of the iPhone 5S, and of Apple’s strategy in launching color devices or the iPhone 5C.

History Repeats Itself

In 1999, Steve Jobs announced the new iMac computers. Initially he announced an upgrade of the hardware, and then he quoted Henry Ford, who said, “You can have any color you want, as long as it’s black.” He said that this had been the standard in the industry, until the arrival of the iMac, which was blue. “Megabytes, megahertz, gigabytes. People don’t care about that stuff. They wanna trust us to give them a really great computer. What they want is to express themselves and choose the color they like.”

The new color offerings contributed to a rise of about 20% in sales. The color strategy repeated itself with the iPod Mini line, and now again with the iPhone 5C.

It seems that Apple is doing better at describing the iPhone 5S, with the new device’s slogan “Forward-Thinking.” The new iPhone may not include a significant upgrade to its specifications, but on the other hand it does include a number of innovations that are certainly worth paying attention to.

First, of course, is the fingerprint identity scanner built into the Home button, which provides a simple, easy solution to the problem of user names and passwords. For security, a segment of the processor is allocated for the storage of biometric data, and the interface with the operating system can be summarized in one question: “Has verification taken place or not?”

Notwithstanding the rumors (that began with the earlier models) that Apple would install NFC, and unlike all the major manufacturers, Apple again chose not to make use of NFC, but to focus on Bluetooth technology and iBeacons, which would serve as location-defined sources for providing data to users (the American MLB baseball league has already announced that it would try the technology in the coming year.

More on the innovation side:  Multi Path TCP  will help to provide a more reliable, constant, internet connection, by automatically transitioning between the cellular network and local Wi-Fi networks; a 64-bit processor; an M7 chip that monitors the device’s movements at all times (even when not in use, and sitting in the owner’s pocket); and low power consumption (for which Motorola have also presented a similar innovation).

The iPhone 5S may not offer a great deal of new stuff to the consumer at this stage, but it does incorporate a number of interesting technologies that may catch on, and to which users should pay attention.