After much hype, supposed leaks and predictions, Apple announced the iPhone 4S. No iPhone 5, just the iPhone 4s. Many people are disappointed that the company didn’t rename the 4S to a 5. Frankly, for Apple, that’s not much of a surprise. They did the same thing when they went from the iPhone 3G to the 3GS. The device looked the same, but the internals were brand new.
While most of the upgrades in the iPhone 4S are standard — newer camera, faster processor, etc., the biggest improvement of the device is Siri.
Apple purchased Siri a while ago. Between that time and yesterday, not much had been done with the product. However, Apple revamped the application and made it part of the core functionality.
And, frankly, it is impressive.
It recognizes accents and it learns who you are.
For those claiming it’s voice recognition technology — they couldn’t be more wrong. It is much more than that. And it will continue to evolve over time. Voice recognition technology is good for dictation and not much else. On the other hand, artificial intelligence (Siri) is a complete game changer.
As far as rest of the enhancements go — meh. Not big enough.
Media has drastically changed over the past few years. Decades ago, people bought albums. Then came CDs. Finally, it came down to singles and MP3s.
The same applies to video properties. Few years ago, people paid for what they wanted to watch. Blockbuster thrived on that model, but failed to innovate. Other video stores suffered due to their lack of scale.
However, with introduction of online media, individuality has gone out the door. Services like Pandora, Spotify and Rdio have started a trend towards unlimited access. Netflix has been leveraging the same model — unlimited access to a vast catalog. Not necessarily the choice you want. But the only choice you have.
Amazon has taken the same approach with their Prime offering. Unlimited access to a small library of content. Just like any media property, a catalog grows slowly. And you can bet that Amazon will leverage its bargaining power to make their MP3 service unlimited and fight aggressively to grow its video library as well. In the next few years, it won’t be surprising if Amazon’s media offering is larger than the entire Netflix catalog.
Overall, this trend towards unlimited media is only going to benefit distributors and not customers. There will be a point where consumers and passionate fans are no longer going to accept fragmented offerings. Knowing the media licensing model, there will never be content parity across platforms. And sadly, that is one thing that will continue to hold digital distribution back.
