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The iPhone 5 Is The Next Apple Screen Built To Consume Paid Media

This article is more than 10 years old.

This shaggy dog is about to get shaved. After months of speculation and rumors, the matted tufts of fur are about to get clipped to reveal the iPhone 5. And the resemblance is more than skin deep to last spring's "The New iPad" launch.

Experts like to describe the differences between the iPad and the iPhone—between tablets and smartphones in general—in stark terms. Tablets are "lean back," while smartphones are "one eyeball, one thumb." Passive vs. active. Consumption vs. communication. Fill in the blanks.

But beyond the contrasting form factors and use cases there is a striking fact observed by anyone who really studies mobile devices: people use all devices for everything, everywhere at any time of day. Sure, there are patterns. More people use their tablets at night, after work, smartphone data usage spikes during the morning commute, etc. But from a brand perspective, we are developing a symbiotic relationship with this profusion of screens in out lives—and Apple wants to make sure that it's the one making those screens.

Although from a pure platform perspective, the new iPhone's taller screen introduces another level of fragmentation—and blunts the contrast with the hyper-fragmented Android market—from a user experience perspective it makes perfect sense. If I am going to carry a portable video screen around with me all day, shouldn't it be optimized for full HD? And if I am going to have a video game console in my pocket, shouldn't it display wide-screen games like my TV?

And speaking of TV, if my Apple TV box will allow me to control my big screen with my iPhone, doesn't it make sense for my phone to assume a shape closer to that of the remote control I have a love-hate relationship with? And if I can use it to play games on my TV, doesn't more of a game controller proportion make sense, as well?

You'll notice that none of these thing have to do with using the phone as a phone—something that has always been a bit of a weakness of the iPhone. And they don't have much to do with work, text communication or being productive either.

My contention here is that the iPhone 5 represents not so much a turning point for Apple, but an inflection point, in its competition with Google for our love and attention. Simply put, if Google (as the master of search) helps us to be better "hunters," Apple (as the master of paid content) wants to reinforce its media rainforest (not Amazon's, and certainly not Google's) as the preferred ecosystem for us as "gatherers."

So in contrast to a more differentiated notion of device usage, Apple is aiming for a unified one. This is where iCloud and Apple's various stores come in. For the pleasure of cloud-based convenience, Apple wants us to buy more and more of our media through its devices—and to consume it through the whole fleet of its devices that we (will) own.

It's a compelling vision, until you do the math. Anyone who has a large media collection (legitimate or not) will find the all-encompassing iCloud solution prohibitively expensive. Having Apple host your media in the cloud and being able to access it on any device is great in theory, but do you really want to be paying rent on music and movies that you have already paid for once? This kind of critical thinking about the iTunes model (inspired, or not, by Bruce Willis!) is exactly what Apple is trying to avoid through making cooler and cooler hardware devices. If you have the sports car, why stint on the gas? (Or show dog and puppy chow, to follow the canine metaphor)

We will find out about all of the actual hardware details tomorrow, and about whatever other new products Apple may be releasing. Will there be a first WiFi enabled iPod Nano that can connect directly to iTunes for shopping? Will Apple reveal a refresh of iTunes and the App Store to take advantage of iOS 6 and the iPhone 5's capabilities? Whatever it releases Wednesday, I believe that one of the underlying motivations for all of it will be to reinforce our consumption of content through a myriad of "Apple screens." As we have seen with the Apple TV, Apple doesn't have to actually make the screen to control it.

But the making of screens, like a good magic trick, helps to redirect our attention from what is happening behind the scenes, where Apple is finding more ways to pump its media to us, for a fee. Really, though, there's no problem here. The dogs like the dog food!

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