Steve Jobs wasn’t the only thing blatantly missing from today’s Apple announcement – the eagerly anticipated iPhone 5 was also represented by a different model at the event. That said, however, both Tim Cook and the newly announced iPhone 4S looked at home on the Apple stage.

A confident, relaxed looking Tim started off his keynote today with a joke:

This is my first product launch since being named CEO. I’m sure you didn’t know that.

Once his sense of humor and mastery of the stage was established, Tim got down to business and ran through some eye watering stats about the uptake of Mac OSX Lion. “Let’s talk iPhone” he said, and then showed more equally impressive statistics concerning the iPhone 4. “More coming up on the iPhone” he teased, just as he was getting to the good bit, and talked instead about the iPad2, the iPod touch, the success of the app store ($3Bn paid out to developers!) and iOS 5 (available to developers 12^th October).

 (source: Engadget)

Steve Jobs has taught Tim Cook well. It was only when he the crowd at fever pitch did he return to his big announcement – a new iPhone. And even though it’s not an iPhone 5, the iPhone 4S demonstrated earlier today looks like a solid advance in the product line. It comes with the dual core A5 chip that powers the iPad2 so it will feature 7X faster graphics. Two antennae are included to ensure you get stable connection (no one wants a repeat of the Antenna Gate scandal that marred the release of the iPhone 4). HSDPA connection results in download speeds twice as fast the previous version and the inclusion of both GSM and CDMA will keep you connected around the world. The camera has been updated and video recording has been pushed to 1080p standard. Airplay and iCloud integration have been included.

Next up is a neat little feature that I’m keen to try out for myself. The new iPhone comes with Siri, which Apple say is an “intelligent assistant that helps you get things done just by asking”. It’s certainly not going to be up the level of the computer on Star Trek, but Siri can supposedly understand questions it is asked, find answers to them in the cloud and respond in plain English. If I was the competition I’d be thinking “Shields up, ready phasers, load torpedo bays”.

There’s nothing futuristic about the launch schedule for the new iPhone model – it’s available to pre-order on the 7^th and will be hitting stores on the 14^th!

In conclusion, the new model might not have been the iPhone 5 I was hoping for, and Tim Cook might not be the pied piper of product launches that Steve Jobs was, but in both cases these new models are respectable additions to their product class.

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