Cook, iPhone 4S meet ambivalence

CUPERTINO, Calif. – The most closely kept secret about the iPhone 5? There isn’t one – yet.

Apple unveiled a faster, more powerful version of its sleek iPhone on Tuesday and named it the 4S. It includes a futuristic, voice-activated personal assistant service and an app that will send greeting cards for $2.99 each. Sprint customers will now be able to use one.

Pre-orders will begin Friday with availability on Oct. 14.

But the new iPhone was not named the iPhone 5 or reimagined to the degree that many tech bloggers and Apple fans had hoped it would be. Wall Street seemed disappointed, too: Apple stock lost more than 5 percent before bouncing back to close down less than 1 percent.

If Tuesday’s unveiling seemed like a letdown, it was because Apple didn’t do a good job of managing expectations. That’s a familiar problem for Apple, whose penchant for secrecy invites hyperbolic speculation between its product announcements. Given that it had been 16 months since the last iPhone hit the market, imaginations had even more time to run wild this time.

“This is the typical Apple scenario: People keep wanting it to do the impossible,” said Tim Bajarin, an analyst who has been following the company for decades.

Apple’s approach to the event didn’t do any favors for Tim Cook in his first major public appearance since he succeeded Steve Jobs as CEO six weeks ago. Jobs, the Apple visionary and co-founder, relinquished the reins to focus on his health problems.

As many people expected, Cook handled his presentation in a pedestrian fashion that lacked Jobs’ flair. The format and stage setting were similar to the presentations that Jobs had orchestrated so masterfully, giving Cook little opportunity to make his own mark, said Adam Hanft, a marketing consultant who runs his own firm in New York.

“It wasn’t fair to Tim in his inaugural because there he didn’t have any product to show off that was a real barnburner,” Hanft said.

Even though the iPhone 4S is an improvement over its predecessor, it isn’t being perceived as a breakthrough partly because it’s not being branded as an iPhone 5 as most people had been expecting, said Prashant Malaviya, a marketing professor at Georgetown University.

The new iPhone has an improved camera with a higher-resolution sensor. The processor is faster, which helps run smoother, more realistic action games. It’s also a “world phone,” which means that Verizon iPhones will be useable overseas, just as AT&T iPhones already are.

Apple is including a “personal assistant” application called Siri in the iPhone 4S. It responds to spoken questions and commands such as “Do I need an umbrella today?” It’s an advanced version of speech-recognition apps found on other phones.

The new iPhone also comes with new mobile software that includes such features as the ability to sync content wirelessly, without having to plug the device to a Mac or Windows machine.

Apple’s new mobile software, iOS 5, will also be available on Oct. 12 for existing devices – the iPhone 4 and 3GS, both iPad models and later versions of the iPod Touch.

Apple said Oct. 12 will also mark the launch of its new iCloud service, which will store content such as music, documents, apps and photos on Apple’s servers and let people access them wirelessly on numerous devices.

The new phone will come in black or white. It will cost $199 for a 16 gigabyte-version, $299 for 32 GB and $399 for 64 GB – all with a two-year service contract requirement.