Has Apple lost its motivation to innovate with Snow Leopard OSX and the iPhone 3GS?

With the announcement of the new iPhone 3GS just a few days ago, and confirmation that the new Snow Leopard OSX 10.6 will focus on stabilisation rather than new features, we’re wondering if Apple has lost its lustre somewhat for 2009

The strength of the mighty Cupertino-housed company has been, thus far, in offering innovative and “cool” features that are easy to use and genuinely useful, on the whole.

The original iPhone defined the touchscreen handset market and has made it into what it is today, with the handset now largely responsible for almost every mobile manufacturer offering its own interpretation of Apple’s iTunes app store.

Likewise with the Mac Book generation, a lightweight, sleek and functional laptop with greater perceived reliability than its PC equivalent captured the minds of the “creatives” and masses alike.

It’s not just hardware though, perhaps one of Apple’s biggest strengths is the innovative software that seems to constantly trickle out of Apple HQ; but with a thoroughly uninspiring update to the iPhone 3G and an OS update that focuses on reliability rather than new features, we’re wondering if Apple is going to have a hard-sell on its hands with these two.

It’ll be the first time that Apple has issued a full OS update that touts extra stability as its main feature, and whilst there are bound to be new tweaks here and there, is there a good reason that people running the current OS should pay the full upgrade price for what is essentially a reliability update?

Naturally, the new OS will come pre-installed from after release in September and is available for a mere $10 bucks if you bought a system that is eligible on or after the 8th June.

We must confess, the new iPhone is one of the most over-hyped announcements that we’ve heard in a while; 3-megapixel camera, errr, great. A faster processor, more memory and huzzah, at long last, cut-and-paste and video recording. Now, we’re not really knocking any of that, it’s all good, but for the most anticipated announcement of the year it was pretty hum-drum.

So, like Snow Leopard, if I’m a current iPhone owner, why should I go through the not-inconsiderable upgrade costs for upgrades that I can largely get my hands on by downloading the 3.0 OS for my current-gen iPhone?

And seriously, did we mention the 3-megapixel camera, what is this 2005? Yeah, yeah, not everyone wants a massively-megapixeled snapper on their handset, but we’re sure there are at least a few people out there who do want a decent camera and an iPhone, would that have been so much to ask with Samsung churning out 5-megapixels on low-to-mid range devices.

It seems to us that Apple has left the door open to the competition by focusing almost exclusively on stability and minor upgrades, and although that’s no bad thing for the customer, we doubt that too many people walk into an Apple store and say “show us the most stable machine you have”.

It’s not as if Apple has done anything wrong; and truly, we’re not really knocking them, we love its products but this time around there’s just nothing getting us hot and bothered, and we can’t be the only ones.

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