Apple's mojo on the line at unveiling
SAN FRANCISCO – Apple's big event Tuesday is being called a lot of things by consumers and industry wags alike. Coming out party. Inflection point. Critical moment.
But the best analogy perhaps comes from the world of music, which the Cupertino-based iTunes-and-Beats-proud company considers integral to its DNA. (Rumor du jour: U2 will make an appearance.)
What the new-product unveiling at the Flint Center recalls is a monster band unveiling a new album with a new lead singer. Say, Van Halen bowing with Sammy Hagar after dispatching David Lee Roth.
Can they still rack up the high-tech hits with CEO Tim Cook at the mic?
The consensus: Apple has so much mojo from its Steve Jobs-era successes – iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad – that its place in the tech culture firmament continues to be its to lose.
"For all the gnashing of teeth and criticisms about how Apple hasn't invented a new category since the iPad in 2010, I think they know they can do it whenever they please," says Fortune's Adam Lashinsky, author of Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired – and Secretive – Company Really Works.
Lashinsky points out how Apple's "gagillion iPhone sales have helped its stock price shoot back up," specifically, nearly 500 million phones to date, which has helped double its stock price in the past year to around $100 a share.
"The pressure ebbs and flows from the outside, but they certainly believe they can do something big when they're good and ready," he says.
Nevertheless, whatever gets unveiled Tuesday must wow on some level, says longtime Silicon Valley futurist Paul Saffo: "This is the moment when Apple has the opportunity to answer the question, 'Do we have a future after Jobs?' Or put another way, is the vision-thing still alive at Apple."
To date, the speculation is that Apple will unveil two iPhone 6 smartphones on Tuesday, boasting larger screen sizes and a new sapphire crystal screen that improves touch response. The bigger question surrounds a wearable device – the so-dubbed iWatch or iTime – which could in turn serve as a health monitoring device that feeds information back to the phone for app-based analysis.
The arrival of a new iPhone and even just a preview of a wearable could be enough to trouble rivals such as Samsung, says Matt Margolis, senior analyst with PTT Research.
"They have the potential to create a new market with a watch-like device, much like they did for the tablet segment when they introduced the iPad," says Margolis.
The analyst does offer a few cautionary warnings. He says that while the two rumored iPhones – one with a 4.7-inch screen, the other 5.5-inch – clearly will carry different price tags, "they can't be too different in terms of their overall features, because when the iPhone 5s and 5c came out, many consumers were upset that they didn't overlap as much as they could have."
Margolis says the much-touted sapphire glass screen ideally should be offered on both new iPhones, so some consumers don't feel left behind technologically. He also says while a larger screen could steal customers from Samsung, it's critical that the new iPhones showcase a leap in terms of software development.
"The new phone really should be a motherboard where lots of personal computing about your life is taking place," he says. "Everything is on the table for Apple, so they need to land and get it right."
Like other tech industry veterans, Saffo draws significance from the unveiling being held at the Flint Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of De Anza College not far from Apple HQ, and not at the company's typical event venues of its own on-campus auditorium or San Francisco's Moscone Center.
It was at Flint that Steve Jobs famously introduced the Mac in 1984 and the iMac in 1998, both watershed products for the company.
To hit another home run here, Saffo says Apple has to do two things, "dazzle the faithful as well as pave the foundations for future competitiveness."
The former can't simply be a matter of a sleek new gadget, "since the idea of a supercomputer in our pockets is old hat by now." Rather, success will be linked to alleged new features such as a payment system using near field communication (NFC) and baked-in security measures that help quell recent concerns over leaked nude celebrity photos that were obtained via user iCloud accounts.
"Apple has to have a definitive security solution," says Saffo. "Nude photos are one thing. But hackers cleaning out your bank account is quite another."
All will be revealed on Tuesday. It is safe to say that when Cook takes the stage, he won't just be another company executive unveiling a slate of new products. Rather, he'll be cranking up the volume on a new tune, waiting to hear a roar in return.
"Back in the day, Apple products really were for fanboys, for diehards, but these days they're for all of us," says Fortune's Lashinsky. "In a sense, you're trying to answer an existential question when it comes to Apple. Which is, how long does cool last?"