How Could Apple disappoint us with the iPhone 13?

Samir Abdalla
8 min readSep 7, 2021

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As you probably know Apple is one of the most famous companies in the world, they are really large in the Technology industry, it’s one of the companies that exceeds the billion dollar market alongside Saudi Aramco.

Apple made its name by developing computing devices, they started with PC’s, and they really competed against companies like Microsoft from a software prospective and IBM from hardware prospective. Not only that but they succeeded at it, what makes them so special is that unlike other manufactures in the tech industry, Apple manufacture their own hardware and they develop their own software, that what makes them reach a level of optimization unrivaled by any other company. Their biggest competitors are Samsung, Huawei and Xiaomi from the smartphone industry, and all of these companies don’t develop their own software (although Samsung tried and they didn’t succeed and Huawei announced their new software months ago) but after all that they didn’t compete against it all that much, they may be taking a bigger share of the market, but at the earnings part, Apple dominates the market. From the PC and laptop department of the industry, they compete against Windows and Chrome OS from Microsoft and Google respectively from a software side, and they compete against Lenovo, HP and Dell from a hardware side, ohh and I forgot to mention that they compete against Android from Google from a software side of the smartphone industry. So you see Apple is always facing a lot of competition from all sectors that they participated in, but I think they are doing a great job.

And now they are dominating on the tablet side, as their iPad series is crushing the rivals from other companies, to the point that their only competitors right now are Samsung and Huawei, their iPad series is considered a small good laptop replacement, although they can’t do a lot of the things that a laptop can do, but they are the closest to the term Laptop Replacement.

Okay I know that I talked a lot about how Apple did well and how they did compete against other companies and dominated the market, but how can Apple do things that make people angry, how can they disappoint people at certain times? Apple didn’t always did the right things, and I know you are wondering how come they are one of the most successful companies in the world? Well I think that the answer is that they made a name for themselves, and their name or brand always rimes with prestige and luxury, let me give you an example, when the iPhone 7 was announced, a lot of people got angry at first, and do you remember why? Because that was the first iPhone that ditched the headphone jack, something that we depend on it entirely for calls and listening to music and watching videos, it was insane from Apple to do that, but of course people got over it over time, and other manufactures followed as well with the same plan. Apple did that for a reason of course and it’s a financial one, it was the same year that they announced the AirPods which was their Bluetooth in-ear headphones that they planned for it to replace the regular headphones, so they completely ditched something free to make people buy something that can make them a profit, and weirdly it did, it did make them a huge profit, after that they ditched the headphones entirely from the box, and after that they ditched the charger as well from the box, and all of these decision made people angry, but nonetheless, people got over it with time, and that because people don’t look at these stuff, I mean the stuff that make them angry (which they should), they actually look at the prestige that comes when they have an iPhone, or use a Macbook, or listen through AirPods, these are all tech products that are made by Apple, but they have other meanings, and that is luxury, so you see unlike other companies, Apple makes technology luxurious products, and that’s my friend is what make people tolerate them and it makes them generate so much profit.

But nonetheless, Apple also could disappoint us sometimes, in fact they done it a lot over the years, but what makes Apple different than other tech companies, is that they are so much innovative, don’t get me wrong, other companies like Samsung, Microsoft, Google…etc. are really big companies and they are so much innovative as well, but a lot of people including me thinks that Apple is in a whole different level, let me explain, as I said the companies that I’ve mentioned are also innovative but for a company like Samsung they test new features but they don’t take their time slowly for testing the new feature, so what they do is that they throw a lot of features at a costumer when he/she buy their new product hoping that these features sticks and get the attention of the new user of their device, at first when you look at that, it seems good, but when you think about it, a lot of these new features doesn’t necessarily work properly, and of course the reason is they didn’t do the testing as it should be, one great example of that is the Samsung Galaxy S4, it’s one of the most famous products from Samsung, and what made it famous is that it’s one of their products that has the most set of features ever to the point that it affected the user experience greatly. Now apple is on the other side of that as they take a lot of time to test some new ability, to the point that it makes a lot of the tech enthusiast feel bored with their products, for example it took Apple a lot of time to change the display size on the iPhone to a size that is considered competitive with other smartphones, they also took away the Touch ID feature from the iPhone while a lot of manufactures figured different ways to implement it on their phones, like on the side or on the back or the better option which is an under display fingerprint scanner. So enough of all that, how can Apple really disappoint us with the upcoming iPhone 13 series?

Same design

One of the things that are pretty know about Apple, is that they tend not to change the design of their products very often, it’s not that their designs are bad or anything, but people tend to grow bored with the designs that go unchanged for a long time, and I’m one of the first people that tend to go bored really fast. You see I think that Apple is going through a policy that says, that all their devices or products should have almost the same design elements, it’s not bad or anything, on the contrary it’s actually good, but it gets bad when the design goes for a long time unchanged.

Now the current iPhone series which is the iPhone 12 has a design that has been taken from old and newer elements, as you can see clearly that the design was taken from the iPhone 5 and the iPhone 11. But where other companies figured out ways to reduce the notch or get rid of it completely, or change the place of the fingerprint scanner, not removing it entirely and figuring out ways to make their devices smaller and lighter without actually sacrificing the battery life or getting rid of the headphone jack, Apple is still using the same old notch, they got rid of the headphone jack for the purpose of reducing the weight and getting benefits from the freed space inside, so you see if Apple decided to use these same design elements on the new iPhones, I think it will disappoint a lot of people.

No new features

Okay when was the last time that you’ve seen a new iPhone with a new feature that caught your attention, can’t remember right?

As I said before Apple is known for taken their time in innovating new features that to be added to their products, at sometimes this is a good thing, but at other times, I don’t thing that is very good, now can you tell me the difference between the iPhone 11 and the Phone 12 other than the small change in the design? I know that Apple always wants to perfect the features that they deliver in their new lineup of devices, but they are taking a long time, and for me I think that, that doesn’t justify to buy a new iPhone every year, In fact if you got a new one every 5 years you would be good, why? Because you’re not going to be able to tell the difference between the new one and the old one, and it will not justify the new purchase that you made.

They all have the same cameras, the same display hardware, the same battery, and while all companies switched for USB Type C even in their midrange smartphones, Apple is still using lightning cable in their high end devices.

No fixes for the flaws

I think that this is the most thing that will disappoint people, I know the iPhone is one of the best smartphones in the world, and it’s one of the most expensive, but believe me that doesn’t mean that the phone is not without any flaws, let me give you an example, the iPhone is one of the smartphones that has the worst battery life at times, the reason for that, is that they don’t use bigger batteries for the reason that they don’t want to increase the size and weight of the device, and for other reason and that is they are still using the same ole lightning cable which is now considered ancient. That makes it the phone with one of the worst battery life, also when they got rid of the fingerprint scanner, they didn’t offer a lot of security options on their products which is also a bad thing, especially on the era of COVID-19 where all people wear masks, fingerprint scanners proved to be worthy security option, so if another year came without any fixes to these flaws or other flaws that I didn’t mention, I think it’s going to be very disappointing.

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Samir Abdalla

An Engineer, Writer and a Podcaster, with super huge passion for technology aiming to become a huge technology influencer in my home country Sudan