Those fearless innovators at Apple are at it again, bringing you a product form factor innovation that has already been … ahem … innovated elsewhere, but will probably be repackaged and respun by their hype machine and a legion of uncritical and unaware fans into a home-produced tech triumph. At least, so Bloomberg would have us believe. And yes, I’m speaking as a diehard Apple anti-fanboy, but then I always had this yen to knock holes in the walls of walled gardens …

According to Bloomberg, Apple may soon be bringing iPhones with curved screens to market. Woohoo, curvy. All beveled. Round the edges. How innovative is that. No more of those nasty squared-off corners that came in with the iPhone 4. I’m all hot and flushed and fanning myself at all the excitement here.

As assiduous TeleRead readers will already be aware, this one has already been done. Twice. If not more. But obviously nothing stands in the way of a good corporate pissing contest. I wonder if they’re lining up some kind of retroactive form factor patent infringement lawsuit to go along with this great leap forward in human creativity.

Dropping the sarcasm – with difficulty – I’ll just put one point straight for a little. Apple, if you’re so keen to hold on to your innovation crown, why don’t you give us something genuinely different? Why not pioneer really new territory instead of just retreading other people’s all-too-obvious developments, just to show how far behind the Android curve you are? There are probably a slew of form factors and applications that could be run out and tested in the market these days. Aren’t your R&D budgets big enough these days? Isn’t your fan base loyal enough? Can’t you start to take risks and give us something really worth welcoming, instead of just playing defense all the time? It gets so old. Just like your designs.

Just as a taster, courtesy of iPhoneHacks, here’s a Ciccarese Design iPhone concept with a curved screen. Looks more interesting and challenging than anything coming out of the Cupertino Core currently.

2 COMMENTS

  1. Agreed, it’s not fair to pin the blame on Apple for this rumour, Nate. However, it is fair to yell at them for anti-competitive practices, maintaining walled gardens, launching market-restricting patent lawsuits, colluding with publishers to fix prices, etc. And my rant on curved screens applies equally to the iWatch, the iPad Mini, etc. And I’d yell at them for their contemptible attempts to spin their catch-up exercises as market-redefining innovation – step forward with an iPad Mini in your hand, Tim Cook – any time.

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