I can't help but think that this hand-wringing over the iPhone5 is really an unspoken, collective wonderment: what would Apple have released if Steve was still alive? Would it look like this? Would it have had one more thing?
This is collective, delayed bereavement, and it's not the last time we'll see it. The world really lost something when it lost Steve; he was a lightning rod for great products and great marketing. He made you believe.
We still want to believe, and we still want to feel that wonder. But we wonder if we'll ever feel that way again about an Apple product.
I'm always assured by those who I presume are more in the know than I am when it comes to Apple products that all Apple decisions for two years after Steve's death had been planned and approved by him. I assume this is kind of how the script for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie was co-written and approved by Douglas Adams years before his death; yes, that can be verified, but the final product was still ultimately controlled by someone other than the original creator.
I think your point is valid. I have no doubt that Steve had his mind on the iPhone 5 well before he died, and may have even signed papers approving the exact final product. The question that remains is, in the year between his death and the release of the product, how many times would he have changed his mind or added something else? The answer to that determines if the current leadership at Apple knows how to properly shepherd the creative minds working for them or if they're merely following a directive set by someone who had bigger plans they might not be in alignment with.
I guess all we can say at this moment is that the new Apple is never going to be the same as the old Apple. The immediate question is, is that necessarily a bad thing?
Your last point is really spot on .. and I gauge the answer, personally, with one question: do I have a desire to buy a new Apple product?
Well, I already upgraded to iPhone5. I'm really not terribly interested in upgrading my aging Macbook Pro, 17" model, however. It bereaves me to no end that they have EOL'ed the 17" form factor, and have no solution for those of us who really need Pro features, like ExpresscardPCI slots, and so on.
This is collective, delayed bereavement, and it's not the last time we'll see it. The world really lost something when it lost Steve; he was a lightning rod for great products and great marketing. He made you believe.
We still want to believe, and we still want to feel that wonder. But we wonder if we'll ever feel that way again about an Apple product.