Apple - losing it

Those who know me will be aware that I am a big fan of Apple. Over the years I have been seduced by their sexy kit that does what it says on the tin and has, by and large, lead the market with some great innovation. I have been at the stage where I am almost locked in. In the house we have a main Mac, several i-Pads, i-Pods, Apple TV as well as a couple of i-Phones. All function around our i-Tunes library.

Over the years I have slavishly updated this kit to gain new functionality and all has been well with world. However, for some time now Apple has been struggling. The gap between product launches has increased and the level of practical innovation has slowed. I have increasingly been eyeing larger, brighter and more attractive looking Samsung phones and have even been considering getting another PC although Windows 8 has not encouraged me.

In terms of the phone, I have been prepared to bide my time and set my sights on an i-Phone 6. My existing i-Phone 4 is a couple of years old (maybe more?) but the i-Phone 4S didn't justify the change and, frankly, neither did the  larger i-Phone 5.

The announcement yesterday then that the next mobile phone product would be an i-Phone 5S which appears to offer little more than a finger recognition security feature is a major disappointment. What it really says is that Apple have run out of new ideas and can't justify an i-Phone 6. They have also launched a "cheap" i-Phone with a plastic case which they are calling the 5C (for "Cheap?"). Plastic isn't an improvement on aluminium and it simply isn't cheap at just short of £500. My guess is that this will justify even higher prices for the real deal as launched going forward - the UK price for a 5S with 32g memory will be £629 and the 64g at over £700.

There's something else too. Apple have always delivered improved functionality free-of-charge through their main software releases and it has been available to all Apple customers across the device range. They are now saying that iOS7, will now be released at least initially only to Customers with latest devices. Big mistake Apple. 

I will now look even more closely at those Samsungs. I love the i-Cloud updating across my devices, but it's not a killer application and I can live without it for a better phone from a company that now innovates faster than Apple.