Apple’s Plans for the iPhone 6S and iOS 9

iphone6

Let me tell you Apple’s plans for iOS 9 and the iPhone 6 Plus. This isn’t a spoiler post. It’s strategy prediction post, and I’d like to think I’m good at those.

iOS 9

  • iOS 9 is all about stability and performance. They’re basically just making the system perform faster and more smoothly. This isn’t a secret; Apple has basically said this about both iOS 9 and El Capitan

  • Apple Music will have had some time to mature by the time iOS 9 is released to the public, and it will have also been through the iOS 9 public beta process as well, so it should be pretty solid by then

The iPhone 6S

  • Just like iOS 9, the 6S (including the plus) will be focused almost exclusively on improving the quality of the user experience. That’s stability, speed, and just general dependability

  • A dramatically improved Camera

  • 2GB of memory

  • Better voice quality by adding another microphone

  • New LTE radio

  • Force touch

I think Apple’s approach is to basically redefine the standard for mobile devices. They’re going to set the bar so high that nobody else can reach it. But they’ll do it in a quiet refresh.

The way I see this is that there are several lines of advancement Apple has been working on over the last 3 years, and only now have they all come together. The 5S got us TouchID. The 6 brought us the size upgrade. We’ve had some camera improvements, but nothing spectacular.

With the 6S it’s like they’re finally converging the various lines. They’re finally releasing the product they should have had all along. Imagine that Apple only releases mobile devices every five years: the 6S would be their 2015 release. Not the 5S. Not the 6. The 6S.

What’s going to happen is Apple is going to stabilize the operating system, increase the RAM, add the force touch, make the LTE twice as fast, and turn the camera into a DSLR-killer, and they’re going to do it quietly.

This becomes the stable platform that they start adding features on, now that they’ve caught their breath.

And the competition…well, they’ll have been lapped. Completely dominated. Not by fireworks and whip antennas and hand gestures and styluses that are fleeting and different across all brands, but by an extraordinarily refined product that everyone knows and everyone knows how to use.

You basically have a single, gold standard, with maximum user satisfaction, top performance, top resale value, and the most stability between models of any device. And then you have a collection of fad devices that do nothing but poorly emulate that gold standard and have little or no resale value to speak of.

The 6S solidifies this. It locks it in not through feature additions but by cleaning up everything they’ve done in the last 3 years into a final release. A steady-state standard of fit and finish that will magnify the brand’s reputation as the premier hardware maker in the world.

TL;DR: The 6S will bring the previous 3 years of advancements together into a focused point of quality and stability, solidifying and magnifying its lead in the market.

Notes

  1. There are plenty of other good mobile devices out there as well. It’s not like Apple is the only player doing anything solid. The OnePlus One phone is a good example of real innovation coming from companies other than Apple.

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