Yesterday, like half the rest of the tech world, I waited with bated breath for details on the next iPhone. It had everything I expected. It was running Ios5. It had a faster processor. It had a better camera. It also had the added bonus of having a 64GB option (something I wanted the iPhone 4 to have). In the middle of the announcement, someone came back in the lab and was disappointed there was no iPhone 5, that it was only a 4s. Later on Facebook, I saw similar complaints. I heard that Apple’s stock dropped 5% at the close of business yesterday because there was no real iPhone 5 released. I don’t understand it.

So much of the expectations were built on rumors that the iPhone was built up to the point that it was a device that would perform sexual favors on you. It would print money. It would allow you to fly by working as an anti-gravity device. None of these things were going to come to pass. ZDNet has an article that had 5 missing features that the 4S missed. Let’s take a look at these real quick:

1. NFC – the technology is not ubiquitous at all. Apple was not going to be the pioneer to push stores to upgrade to NFC systems. It won’t be until the technology is more commonplace that they implement anything like that in their device. Apple lets someone else raise the horse, then they just attach their cart to it. Anyone that truly believed this is ignorant of Apple’s history and how they do business. Remember the second iPhone did not support 3G even though it was out, which will jump to:
2. 4g – Two problems exist with 4G technology. The first is that there isn’t 100% coverage. I spend a larger percentage of my life on edge than I do on 3G. Most of America does not have 4G. Maybe quite a few cities do – but there is a lot of space between cities. 4G also really isn’t set in stone. What I would love to see is Apple wait until they can deliver the promised 4g instead of this watered-down technology that is 90% slower than what 4G was supposed to be. There are no good standards. This also brings up another issue, battery life. The current speculation (taking Apple’s business history out of account) is that 4G was not included because of battery life. I also think the competing standards would also have caused an issue (which leads to coverage problems again). Months ago no one thought there would be a 4G iPhone this generation, it is only recently that people worked themselves up to a frenzy that it may include it.
3. Thunderbolt Connectivity – this market is still so small there is no way they would have done it. There is a reason that USB is still used for Sync and HDMI is used for video out – they are everywhere.
4. Facebook Integration – Has no one noticed the stand-offs and issues that exist between Apple and Facebook? You had better luck getting Microsoft LiveDrive integration.
5. Tear Drop Shape – this is the big one isn’t it? If everything else stayed the same and this was the only thing that changed, it would have been a win. More exactly it would have been a win if it was shaped like this and called iPhone 5. It doesn’t matter if it was actually smaller or lighter. The only thing that mattered was it didn’t have a different design and it was not called the iPhone 5. Every other feature screams the next iteration of the iPhone – just not to investors and some of my friends I guess.