Are products less impressive when there are no surprises?
Last week Apple made official the phones we knew they’d been planning to introduce. This came a week after Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3 announcement, which a friend summed up as ‘exactly what we already knew’. No surprises from Moto X, HTC One, or Samsung Galaxy S4 either. All fantastic devices, but are we losing out because of spoiled surprises?
Everyone made a huge deal about how the only surprise from the Apple announcement was the realization that the 5C was NOT the ‘low cost’ phone so many in the media had talked about, but instead the mid-range iPhone 5 replacement. For years now, Apple has done a great job of maintaining secrecy throughout the development and pre-announcement stages, to the point where we never quite knew what to expect from a launch keynote. Of course, Apple also caught significant criticism for the lengths they went to in order to maintain those secrets … lengths Tim Cook no longer seems to support.
Here is my question: are we really better off knowing everything in advance? Do we really gain better purchasing decisions through all of these leaks? Or are we just bystanders as websites increasingly turn to corporate espionage in order to drum up hits?