Here’s a brief excerpt from MG Siegler‘s article featured at the TechCrunch website. To read the complete article and check out all the other resources, please click here.
Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called “The Pledge”. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course…it probably isn’t. The second act is called “The Turn”. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you’re looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn’t clap yet. Because making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back. That’s why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call ‘The Prestige”.
Apple took something ordinary, a phone, did some extraordinary things to it, and then made it re-appear in grandiose fashion. It’s a great trick. It’s so good, in fact, that I think it’s fair to call it true magic.
The problem, if you want to call it that, is that Apple has now been doing this trick since 2007. Granted, they have other solid tricks too (they are far from the one-trick-pony claims that several of their competitors face). But the iPhone is the best trick in their bag. And in the last few years, some people have gotten sick of seeing it.
But it’s important to remember that just because you’ve seen a show before, it doesn’t actually make it any less magical. It’s a perception issue.
Yes, that’s also Apple’s problem — if they wish to entertain. But the reality is that the entertainment value of these events is just icing on the cake. It also probably doesn’t help the current Apple regime that Steve Jobs was especially good at pulling off “The Prestige” part. But the true core of the company with regard to the iPhone has always been about “The Turn.” And I think that was more clear than ever today.
Look at the main video being displayed on Apple’s homepage. It’s several Apple executives talking about just what went into pulling off turning the ordinary smartphone into something extraordinary. Yes, again.
To some, this repetition is now boring. But I think Apple looks at it the opposite way: they’re perfecting their trick.