I recently watched the video of Apple’s announcement of the new iPad. It was, like all Apple product announcements, a familiar affair. It started with statistics, it teased features, it detailed specs, and demonstrated new programs designed to take full advantage of the new hardware. It was polished, professional… and kinda boring.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, who oversaw the presentation, is a good public speaker, but… he’s not Steve Jobs. In fact, the whole thing suffered from everyone on stage not being Steve Jobs. For years, Jobs famously presented new products with an enthusiasm and a passion that showed how proud he was of what Apple was delivering to the buying public… and when you combine such passion with his charisma and pitch-perfect presentation style, well, it was not just a product roll-out. It was an event. It was special… and you didn’t even have to be an Apple acolyte to be impressed by it.
The management at Apple has done quite well in the post-Steve Jobs era. The Apple stock is up 60%, the company has more cash-on-hand than ever before (enough to buy some countries), and products such as this new iPad are selling exceedingly well. But here, in their product presentations, we see the ghost of Steve Jobs at every moment of the agenda. The Apple braintrust are slavishly following the same script that Jobs perfected, and… it’s not the same.
Apple needs a clean break from the past. Even if these media events do exactly what Apple hope for, they need to change how they do them, because Steve is gone and nobody can ever do these things better than he did. Trying to follow the same approach comes off as being stuck in the past, dated and not forward-thinking… something that Apple clearly does not want people to think they are. So for that, and to move on… Apple should say goodbye to Steve’s way of doing these things, and try something new.
Like, maybe, just releasing a product and letting it’s qualities speak for itself.