Beatles! Wait-what?!
Big announcement from Apple today. Huge. Cloud media storage? iTunes library streaming?
Nope. The Beatles.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love the Beatles as much as the next guy-probably more. But let’s face it-the rumor mill ran wild here (as it always does), and we were expecting something a little more…big.
Realistically, though-no media event, no Steve Jobs in black turtleneck and jeans. How big of an announcement could it be? But that’s the point-once the hype starts, our hopes for a groundbreaking, earth-shattering announcement can’t be quenched no matter how big the actual announcement is.
iPad? Underwhelming. But now the rest of the mobile computing world (hello, Samsung!) is scrambling to catch up.
iPhone? The world called it a “fail” before the first call was dropped.
Even Zuckerberg’s announcement yesterday of a united messaging platform was met with mostly yawns.
Can we be wowed anymore?
Hyperbole runs rampant on the internet. In the rush for eyeballs, we have been bombarded with pleas to click on links, see advertisements, click on those advertisements, thus doing our parts as consumers to support the pay-per-click economic system. The links/posts are just the widgets sold to us in an attempt to obtain our mouse-clicks. With so many invitations to “click here”, it’s no wonder content creators/advertisers have engaged in a Cold War where each plea for our attention must be bigger, brighter, more earth-shattering than the last.
And I’m rarely satisfied with the widget after I commit the advertiser for $5.00 (or whatever it is) to Google Adwords.
As it is with these “big” announcements. We expect more and more from each successive announcement. And we’re (almost) without exception, disappointed that the ground didn’t break and the earth didn’t shatter.
We know it’s coming, but we hope-and expect-to be wowed, our lives changed by the inexorable and unstoppable march of progress.
Maybe it’s too late-we’re too jaded, too trained to be expect the “next big thing” to appreciate “the next thing”.
All in all, maybe Facebook’s new messaging aggregation will change how we communicate, similar to how the iPhone revolutionized the smartphone industry.
And maybe it’s about damn time The Beatles came to iTunes.
And maybe that’s enough.
