Unless you just stepped out of a time machine, it’s pretty likely you aware that Apple offi­cially lifted the veil on the iPhone 5 yesterday.

I may be com­ing down too hard on Apple, but through­out the announce­ment I had a very dis­tinct feel­ing. Yawn! I was underwhelmed.

Per­haps part of the blame falls on my nerdi­ness. I read a lot of tech blogs, and iPhone 5 pho­tos and specs were leaked left-and-right. When Apple revealed the iPhone 5 on stage yes­ter­day in San Fran­cisco, there were no sur­prises. It became clear, from the leaks, that Apple was going to stick with the iPhone 4/4S design and merely stretch it out to make room for a four inch screen.

I think the other part of my frus­tra­tion with the iPhone 5, in my opin­ion, falls squarely on Apple. It’s clear to me that Apple opted for safe over dar­ing with the design. I have long admired Jony Ives, and the beau­ti­ful indus­trial design that he’s brought to Apple. (Mind you, a lot of Apple’s designs seem to draw “inspi­ra­tion” from Braun.) In fair­ness, I can’t say that I really blame Apple for how they treated the iPhone 5. As much as dar­ing, out-there design has its place, Apple is still a busi­ness with strong cus­tomer base. Para­phras­ing Ives, in a new video, he didn’t think that Apple should mess the design. Ives said that the iPhone 4 and 4S were so pop­u­lar that he thought the best thing to do was improve upon a good thing, not upturn the Apple cart. There’s merit in that, and I thought about how cer­tain designs become iconic, such as a Porsche 911. I just don’t think the iter­a­tions of the iPhone 4, over time, will prove iconic on that level. Check out this inter­est­ing piece on TechCrunch that addresses the issue of Apple not rein­vent­ing the wheel.

Of course, all of this could change when I get my hands on the iPhone 5. From the pho­tos and hands-on videos I’ve seen, the device — par­tic­u­larly the black model — looks beau­ti­ful and well-crafted. I guess that I was just hoping/expecting Apple to take the slab smart­phone to another level. I have been exhausted by all of the law­suits between Apple and, seem­ingly, every man­u­fac­turer that makes Android devices. I was will­ing to put all of that to the side, for the moment, and bask in the glory of Apple’s design prowess. It’s worth adding that aside from rev­o­lu­tion­ary (Apple’s favorite superla­tive) hard­ware inno­va­tion, Apple would have cre­ated much more buzz if they over­hauled it’s mobile oper­at­ing sys­tem iOS. It’s look­ing rather long in the tooth, par­tic­u­larly when com­pared to updates to Android and the Win­dows Phone oper­at­ing systems.

To be per­fectly can­did, I was hop­ing that the iPhone 5 would end months of hand-wringing about my next phone. I don’t often rely on sports analo­gies, but…I wanted Apple to knock it out of the park, but they merely hit a sac­ri­fice fly to advance a runner.

I am not wed to one plat­form, and will more than will­ing to move from Android to iOS if the iPhone design proved to be com­pelling. Apple didn’t help as much as I had hoped. The recently announced Nokia Lumia 920 builds on a very inter­est­ing design. (I see a trend devel­op­ing here.) In about a month, if rumors hold up, Google will announce that it has expanded its Nexus pro­gram (Google’s flag­ship Android device) to allow sev­eral man­u­fac­tur­ers to intro­duce new Nexus devices this fall (usu­ally in Novem­ber). Here is a chart com­par­ing the iPhone 5, Galaxy SIII, and the upcom­ing Lumia 920. My wife recently upgraded from a Motorola Droid X to the Sam­sung Galaxy SIII, and she seems to love it.

Social Obser­va­tion

One thing that is rather inter­est­ing to me is see­ing the devoted iPhone camp do their best to mask their dis­ap­point­ment. I think that a good amount Apple loy­al­ists released heavy sighs yes­ter­day. I checked out a num­ber of Apple blogs, and the mood seems to be rather reserved. Peo­ple are doing their best to put a pos­i­tive spin on yesterday’s reveal. Like me, I sus­pect that a major­ity of peo­ple were hop­ing that the leaked pho­tos were a slight of hand by Apple’s PR shop. What hap­pened to Apple “dou­bling down” on secu­rity? Fail!

Of course, Android fans were doing back flips. (rolling my eyes) I wrote a com­ment on an Android site, implor­ing peo­ple to keep it classy and be a fan of tech.

I am a fan of technology…period. I use an Android device, but I also own and use Apple prod­ucts. I kinda like the divi­sion of labor, if you will. With that, I refuse to allow myself to become so entrenched in one camp, or another, that I start to take things in this arena per­son­ally. I get appre­ci­at­ing your favorite brand or sys­tem. What I don’t get are peo­ple who take their pref­er­ence (alle­giance?) to a device or brand so far as to run any­thing else into the ditch.

Sure, I get the whole Apple vs. Android thing. You’d have be to blind not to. I ques­tion whether Apple was run by a mega­lo­ma­niac, and every­one — even sub­se­quent to his death — appears com­mit­ted to that same bull­shit “every­one is out to get us” para­noid path. Maybe this has cause Android camp to develop a pretty large chip on our col­lec­tive shoul­ders, but two wrongs don’t make a right. Call­ing out Apple for it’s prac­tices would be a lot more con­vinc­ing if Android OEMs didn’t bla­tantly copy (Yeah…I know the reverse argu­ments, so please don’t recite them.) and fans of the OS and ecosys­tem didn’t mir­ror the same myopia that sadly shack­les so many fans of Apple.

Objec­tiv­ity is the key word for me. I want all tech to be cool and inter­est­ing. This means that I can applaud and acknowl­edge when Apple makes some­thing com­pelling, be that the hard­ware or the soft­ware that runs the device. It means that love of great design is not exclu­sive to Android and the OEMs that pro­duce Android devices. If that were the case, I’d have a lot of pent-up self-loathing for the shig­gity prod­ucts Motorola keeps pump­ing out. (Sorry Moto fans.) Inter­est­ingly, if all of the leaks and rumors about the iPhone 5 are true, I think there will be a rather tan­gi­ble sigh release from peo­ple, even the most ardent fans of Apple, who were hop­ing for some­thing more…ummm…intriguing. Merely stretch­ing out a phone doesn’t equal inno­v­a­tive design. I’ve come to expect more from Jonny Ives.

Look…we all (Android, Apple, Win­dows fans) need to come up for air, and just fol­low­ing the mantra of “Do you.” Let peo­ple do their thing. Stop try­ing to beat someone/something down in order to ele­vate your­self or your “thing.” Per­haps, the most impor­tant thing, in my esti­ma­tion, is to stop per­son­al­iz­ing all of this stuff. It’s just not that deep. It really isn’t.

The whole Apple vs Android debate is too much like the Hat­fields vs. McCoys for my taste. It’s ridicu­lous. There’s just too much vit­riol over “stuff.”

Ok…enough belly-aching that the present under the tree was not exactly what I wanted. The iPhone 5 is a nice look­ing device. It’s just not a game-changer.