First and foremost I am a tech guy however, I readily admit that I lean heavily towards Microsoft products and PC’s and if you read this site that should come as no surprise to you.

I have also said consistently that whatever your tech is that is your choice for whatever reasons you decided.  I have also never written a piece like this about Apple but after watching the live blogs of the iPhone5 announcement yesterday and some of the video from the event I wanted to share some thoughts/observations.

First is the amount of leaked information prior to the official announcement. I do not ever remember a time when nearly 100% of what would be shared at the presser would be out in the wild days prior.  Even the morning of the announcement Mashable posted their last collection of rumors which were right on the mark.

I am not sure if the leaks are a result of the new leadership at Apple or rogue employee’s sharing stuff for the sake of sharing it.  There is no doubt any leak info when it comes to an Apple product launch is gold in the tech news arena.  There just seemed to be a lot of it this cycle

In fact it seems as if Microsoft and Apple briefly exchanged spots in the secrecy realm this year between the iPhone5 and Microsoft Surface announcement.  I remember people labeling the secrecy around the Microsoft Surface announcement as Apple like. 

I also kept an eye on Twitter and the various trending topics during the Apple event. Now this is not scientific by a long shot and just base don personal observations but the news did not seem to dominate the trending topics, at least in the US, like past product announcements did.  I only noticed #iPhone trending once and saw some of the other aspects hit the list but most of them were only on briefly. I also noticed a decidedly sarcastic tone in some of the trends such as when they announced the Loop and the EarBuds.  Again, that is not what I have seen in the past during a major product announcement for Apple.

As far as features go it seemed as if the iPhone5 update is more of a catch-up offering as opposed to truly innovative ideas which Apple is famously known for.  Items added to the iPhone5 that are already out there on other phones including LTE, 4G and panoramic photos.  They have made what appear to be some slight improvements in battery life and have made the phone thinner while it retains the same width and grows in height enough to add another row of icons on the main screen. Their 8MP iSight camera gets an upgrade and iOS6 certainly is bringing some new features to the table including integrated social media with Facebook and Twitter.

The one area that Apple continues to nail is product availability.  They do not make an announcement and not have hardware ready for pre-order and delivery in a very short period of time.  There were a few elements announced yesterday that will be coming as late as October but the main hardware will be in folks hands in about a week after the announcement was made.

So maybe it is not so much that Apple has totally lost its magic touch but that it is simply carving out a new area in which it will shine in the future.