So we already know what to expect: a couple of hours from now, Tim Cook will walk out on stage at San Francisco's Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, dressed in de rigeur 'Valley Formal' jeans and a blue or black untucked shirt. He will update us on the billions of of iPhones Apple has sold to date, of the billions of devices running iOS, and then hand over to one of his lieutenants - probably the exquisitely-bouffant software chief Craig Federighi, or marketing boss Phil Schiller, or iTunes maestro Eddie Cue to run through the "awesome" features of the next iPhone and the next iteration of iOS.
There will be a little light banter at the expense of the competition, some nerdy in-jokes, perhaps a celebrity endorsement (but please God, no - not another free U2 album...) and possibly an awkward moment of dad dancing. That, though, the star of the event will be a new iPhone will shock no one. After all, the Apple fanboys and rumour sites have spoken of nothing else for weeks, months even, such is the totemic fascination the world has with this, of all the devices in Apple's canon, past and present.
I'll be happy to be proven wrong, of course, and if Cook & Co present a show featuring dancing Muppet chickens and unveil plans for an Apple spaceship or a move into leisurewear for the elderly, I will welcome the refreshing change of direction. But given the pattern of just about every single "Apple special event" in the post-Steve Jobs era, we shouldn't really expect anything different tonight. And that, in essence, is Apple's problem: the lack of anything different. If we ignore the company's authority issues over tax and device encryption, Apple's main appeal - and its main challenge - is its products, those phones, tablet, computers and other trinkets that people like me apparently pay a premium for quite happily.
Whether they admit or not (and they wouldn't be expected to), Apple has successfully mastered the art of drug dealing. Once we're hooked in its ecosystem, it's hard to quit. That has much to do with the opiate pleasure that using their devices brings. Even with some of the irriations that every technology has built into it, Apple's have always been tolerable. Until now, the only serious issue I have genuinely had cause to gripe about is iTunes, which has become bloated and complicated and a far cry from the simple, drag-and-drop means of managing a music library on an iMac and an iPod.
Even when Apple replaced the 30-pin iPhone/iPad/iPod connector with it's slimmer 'Lightning' interface, we moaned a bit, but dutifuly got on with replacing our cables. In hindsight, it wasn't all that big a deal. So the question remains is that if, as has been predicted for almost a year, the new iPhone to be announced today will not have a headphone jack socket, will owners of the estimated 800 million Apple iOS devices with them be as accepting?
The difference between the 30-pin connector and the Lightning cable was mostly one of ergonomics. Removing the headphone jack and insisting that new iPhone owners listen to audio through rumoured Lightning ear buds or via Bluetooth headphones is a different deal. For the former, it will mean buying an adaptor as the minimum of inconvenience or, at worse, new headphones with Lightning connections. Ker-ching for the manufacturers of headphones. For the Bluetooth approach, however, it presents a whole new challenge for neo-Luddites like myself.
Ever since wireless headphones first appeared 20 years ago, I've had a deep problem with them for listening to music. The early RF headphones were OK for watching television late at night without disturbing the neighbours (using much the same technology as baby monitors), but you would occasionally get disturbed by a taxi reporting in a passenger pickup. Bluetooth headphone have more recently become a popular choice for sporty types or individuals who want to look like a Cyberman from Doctor Who, with a big pair of cans strapped to their ears featuring a bright blue blinking LED. I, though, still have my doubts as to whether Bluetooth can deliver decent audio performance. Compressed, digital audio is already something of a poor cousin of analogue music, but at least with a pair of physical cable-connected headphones to an iPhone or music player, you have a relatively decent supply of tunes, much the same as watching films on a home AV system connected by the best-possible quality cabling. But does Bluetooth really offer the same experience?
And then there's battery life: one of the biggest bugbears of Bluetooth accessories like mice, trackpads and speakers is that they need recharging, and always just before you actually want to use them. Traditional white iPhone ear buds clearly don't have this problem. There is also, too, the image factor: Bluetooth headsets have never been a particularly good look for mobile phone use - if you spend any time at American airports you'll see travelling salesmen pacing the concourse loudly trying to conclude a deal, their hands windmilling for an audience that can't see them, and ridicule from the audience that can.
Apple will no doubt claim that removing the headphone jack will allow them to create an iPhone with a thinner profile, and with the relative cost of Bluetooth chips lower than that of headphone components, there'll probably be a bottom line benefit as well. Ideal for a company which saw its second quarter revenue drop year-on-year from $49.61 billion to a measly $42.4 billion.
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