Thoughts on Apple's “Hi, Speed” event: the iPhone 12 lineup, camera differences, missing chargers and earbuds, focus on 5G and Verizon CEO's cameo, more
Context & Ripple Effects
The event landed almost exactly as previewed five days earlier: four iPhones with an iPad Pro-like design and 5G across the lineup. What The Verge's preview framed as expectation, Gruber's review confirms as delivery — plus two subtractions nobody forecast so prominently: chargers and earbuds no longer ship in the box.
Verizon's CEO appearing on stage turns the launch into a joint marketing exercise, making carrier 5G the headline feature rather than the camera or design changes Gruber spends most of the review weighing.
First-order effects
- iPhone 12 buyers immediately absorb the cost of power adapters and wired earbuds as separate purchases, while Apple trims per-unit shipping weight and box contents across the entire new lineup.
- Verizon gets prime-time positioning for its 5G network at Apple's biggest annual moment, with the carrier now baked into the iPhone upgrade pitch.
Second-order effects
- Rival Android vendors face pressure to match both the 5G-at-this-price framing and the in-box accessory cut, since Apple has just demonstrated consumers will accept paying extra for chargers.
- Carrier marketing moves closer to the product launch itself — the Verizon cameo sets a template where network partners co-sell the phone rather than merely subsidize it.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, iPhone launches become less about yearly hardware leaps and more about packaging decisions — what's included, what's sold separately, which network carries the message — a shift the corpus itself echoes in later coverage of Apple's slowing pace of iPhone hardware innovation by 2024.
- Removing bundled accessories normalizes a recurring revenue stream from items once assumed free, pushing the industry's margin center from the device box toward accessories and services.
The trend: iPhone launches are evolving from spec-driven hardware reveals into ecosystem plays where carriers, accessories, and packaging choices carry as much strategic weight as the phone itself.