The iPhone 5 craftsmanship isn’t important to tech bloggers

This is the first of a three part series; here is part two, and here is part three.

Dan Lyons for BBC News:

Now, having had two years to plot and scheme, Apple’s renowned designer Jonathan Ive has replaced the tiny 3.5in (8.9cm) screen with a slightly-less-tiny 4in (10.2cm) screen? Wow. Knock me over with a feather. What do you do with the rest of your time, Jony?

Dan Lyons is a genius. We’re all unworthy of his vision. Millions of us that pre-ordered and will stand in line for the iPhone 5 should kick ourselves for letting Apple fool us. This new iPhone Apple has announced should hardly be considered ‘new’.

The iPhone 5 is a ‘disappointment’ again. So say tech blogs around the internet. The iPhone 5 outsold every iPhone before it again. Why do tech blogs keep treating the newest iPhone as a flop?

I posted a previous article talking about one of the potential reasons: tech bloggers have different preferences. You can go read the article, but the short version is that I don’t buy it; there has to be something else.

Leaks

Harry Marks has a theory worth repeating. The tech blog writers of today spend a significant amount of time — especially in the case of Apple products — following and watching the rumor sites. They’ve seen the rumored parts, and have a decent idea what is coming:

The iPhone is boring only to the rumor mongers who published every blurry picture of a motherboard they could get their hands on and the simps who think a feature checklist determines a gadget’s merit. However, isn’t it hypocritical that the gadget blogs that drowned their readers with post after post containing every little unconfirmed detail leading up to the iPhone 5 announcement are now the same gadget blogs lamenting how boring it all is because “we’ve seen it all”?

Here at ZAGGBlog we publish a lot of pre-release iPhone and iPad rumors. In fact, they are usually posted by me. I get a kick out of all of the product and parts that we get to see from China. Are we adding to the disappointment fire?

I’m not sure that this is a good or bad assumption. The theory seems to have merit. For the last few generations of the iPhone, there have been quite a few leaks. It seems the more the product leaks, the more disappointed the blogs are.

Marks is right about one thing, there were no surprises for anyone following rumor sites. But is that all? The rumor sites only had parts leak to my knowledge, nothing about the internals, or capabilities of the device were released in advance of the official event. Why weren’t they impressed by the things that weren’t leaked?

For the non-hardware parts of the iPhone there has to be another explanation.