Apple - Lifestyle or technology?

The last Apple keynote was remarkable because of the way it showcased stuff. New campus, new shops, new watches and at the very end, the new iPhoneX. You might say the best for the last, but is how the shops look really more important then new technology and innovation?

Apple is different

Apple always prioritized design. And it always tried to be different. While Apple is primarily a technological company, the technology was always a bit in the background and the design and usability (at least how Apple sees usability) were more important.

Interestingly, this year Apple focused a lot on it’s new shops. They don’t even look like shops anymore, more like design community centers, where the users go to admire both Apple and themselves. Now it’s almost like a old time market, where people go not only to shop, but also to meet others, create, learn and see artists. The focus on the community shows how Apple uses the need to feel social to build a base of incredibly loyal customers.

Evolution and innovation

Many of the newly showcased products, like the Apple TV 4K and the iPhone 8 are just evolution, bringing Apple’s products closer to their competitors. Yes, the services are nice and fully integrated. For example, any movies you bought get automatically upgraded to 4K and HDR (if available) for the new Apple TV 4K. But this should be the industry standard, you paid for the movie so an upgrade should just be automatic.
But this doesn’t change the fact that these products are pretty boring. Innovation here, enhancement there - nothing exciting. Probably the biggest change is the newly fully-glass body, which may just be a necessity because of the Qi wireless charging.

The only real exciting innovation comes with the iPhone X. Well, innovations when it comes to Apple products. Finally we get an OLED display, no frames around the display and the new FaceID. This is the new and interesting technology, though many people are rightfully a bit scared of it, it definitely took a lot of work and development to make it work.
This technology even uses neural networks and the new CPU even has Bionic in it’s name and unless I’m wrong, it’s the first CPU that is capable of hardware acceleration of neural networks.

Apple lifestyle

In the later years of Steve Jobs’s reign I understood some of the things he remove, but today it’s getting harder and harder to justify them. Somehow I feel like we went past the point of hardware excellence and Apple is just blindly following the ideas of minimalism.
It’s just different, everything is dominated by design. Just the concept of the new shops seems weird to me. Maybe I’m just not the typical millennial.