Apple's week February 27: Chasing the puck

Steve Jobs once quoted Wayne Gretzky when he was introducing the original iPhone. Nearly 20 years later, I think it still applies even as many Apple fans and reporters grow cynical.

Here's the news of the week:

• Three days, five announcements, one experience
• We're still waiting on an iPhone Fold leak
• Steve Jobs would have been 71
• "Muppet*Vision 3D" is coming to Apple Vision Pro
• Apple and F1 synergy continues with Apple Maps
• Samsung announced a phone

Not your father's Apple

There has been an underlying narrative for some parts of the Apple fan base in recent years. It's usually something like "This isn't the Apple I remember."

It doesn't matter if you were cognizant of Steve Jobs introducing the Macintosh or didn't know what Apple was until the iPhone 4. You've developed an idea of what you believe Apple is, isn't, or is capable of.

Some might say that advertising poisoned the company they love. Others might say that they've grown too big and it was better when they were the underdog.

I've even heard people say Apple should never have moved beyond the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. They see the pursuit of wearables, services, and the smart home as problematic and soul-sucking.

The thing is, we're all wrong. The Apple of 1984 was the version of itself that it needed to be at the time, just like it needed to be what it was in 2014 and today.

The Apple of today is still Apple

I know this might seem silly to say, but it's something I've been thinking about. What is it exactly that makes us care about this company? Why is it held to such a high standard while its competitors are ignored for basically committing war crimes?

After all, Apple is just a cold entity that exists to make money. It's a corporation that's just as uncaring and unfeeling as the rest.

However, us Apple fans have a problem with that description. Something about it doesn't seem right. I think it's simply that we hope, or even need, Apple to be better than that. It promises to be more, so we expect more.

That's why it hurts when it fails to meet our expectations. Like Tim Cook posting on X.

I know this makes it sound like some kind of cult or I'm a kind of fanboy, but I think that's just human nature. If it's not Apple, it's something else. If you don't feel that way about something in your life, I'm not quite sure what you're doing.

We all have our passions and things that make us happy. Apple continues to be a good source of interesting technology that protects my privacy. The openly gay CEO talks about its employed dreamers, Apple's goal to leave the world better than they found it, and its continued enforcement of DEI policy and green energy initiatives.

That has to count for something, even when everything else can feel so wrong.

The constant threat of a slippery slope

I find it amusing when people freak out that Apple has decided to advertise Apple Creator Studio somewhere in an app. Or perhaps they're angry that Apple promoted discounted tickets to F1 via a push notification.

I agree that users should be able to stop those things from happening with more granularity, but I'm also not that upset by it. These minor annoyances and inconveniences can add up, but they're paper cuts compared to what I've witnessed other companies do with their products.

That doesn't excuse Apple from accountability. I'm glad we can complain about these things in the hopes they improve. Apple is actually quite good at listening to users, whether they believe that or not.

I think what bugs me is how every little thing is treated as a travesty. Perhaps it's the world we live in today that's powered by controversy and clickbait.

As much as I enjoy technology and writing about it, I'm just not feeling so emotionally charged about a notification. I've also not felt the need to throw away all of my Apple products simply because Tim Cook ate dinner with the idiot president.

I don't have a grand finish to this brain dump or a specific point. I just find it amusing that people feel so strongly about Apple regarding some things, but turn around and ignore everything about the other companies they interact with.

Apple is going to keep growing and changing, and one day it too shall disappear. It's the only one that's making products in the way that it does, so for that reason alone, I tend to be a bit more forgiving of its faults.

Do we care about competitors anymore?

This came up during the AppleInsider Podcast today, and it's a question I've been asking repeatedly in recent years – does Apple have a real competitor?

Samsung revealed its new Galaxy Ultra smartphone this week, and I barely noticed. People in my circles mentioned the new privacy display, and that seems neat, but there's little discussion otherwise.

Perhaps smartphones are just so boring these days that a flagship from Samsung is just another Wednesday. What used to be weeks of discussion in the Apple news space is now just a footnote.

It's not that some other competitor rose up to dethrone Samsung either. Pixel doesn't get that much attention outside of the Android fanbase it attracts.

If I had to guess, it must be a shift in how we think about technology. The tech blogosphere was driven to compare every new smartphone to iPhone and call it "the iPhone killer."

That must have finally stopped attracting readers, because I haven't seen that kind of reporting in a while. It's either that or I've filtered what I see to the point that those posts don't make it to me.

I did see a few "Apple must steal this Samsung feature" this week. Just cringy stuff.

Whatever "smartphone war" was going on in the 2010s has seemingly fizzled out. People buy what they buy. Apple's numbers still show that more people switch to iPhone than switch away to Android.

A decade of those kinds of numbers and a loyal fanbase, it's easy to understand why comparing iPhone to the latest Android flagship is kind of pointless. I'm sure the market still exists, but it's shrinking, and those remaining watch out of curiosity more than purchase intent.

I still believe Apple would thrive with a real competitor. While it would be tough for me as a consumer, I'd love the challenge of having to actually choose between Apple and someone just as good. Today, there's only one real choice for me – it's Apple.

We bought a house!

I mentioned it before, but now we've made it through the process and will be finalizing our purchase soon. It's very exciting to finally have a home that is ours.

I'm planning to focus some projects around the smart home and such for here and AppleInsider in the future, so stay tuned. It's been very busy these last few weeks, but I'm glad I've found time for the blog. Things will only get busier for the next couple of weeks as we move, so forgive me if I don't quite nail down a daily posting cadence.

I hope this was a good read. I expect I may have rambled a bit too much. There's a lot on my mind, if you couldn't tell, and I couldn't quite land on an exact topic. If you like what I've written here, say so! I don't mind getting a little more abstract in my topics when the time allows.

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Thanks again for reading. I'll be back Monday with thoughts on the first of Apple's releases.