The rumor mill's buzzing! What's Apple going to announce today? If you believe the grapevine, Sprint's betting the company on the iPhone 5. If this story is true, you can bet your bottom dollar that Sprint's getting an exclusive on the iPhone 5 and the phone will be beyond anyone's expectations. Here's what I think. Regardless of the logistical details, if Apple goes through with something major with the iPhone 5, you can expect it to be "world changing". The reason Apple's so successful in their products is really fantastic execution: perfection that you can't find in any other device on the market. Remember Facetime? A lot of major phones supported videocalls but it was Apple that "executed" the feature in a way that it re-defined videocalling for the majority of consumers.

A lot of rumors are going around on the so-called "Assistant" AI that Apple will use, courtesy of their Siri acquisition a while back. On this note, I had a quick conversation with a cabbie a few days back and when I told him about this rumor, he instantly snapped back saying that that's not going to work. He pointed out the myriads of scenarios in which he could foresee a feature like that fail. He was right about the difficulty of doing this right but he was wrong about how it may not work on the iPhone. Apple is notorious for holding back features until they're perfected. Note, perfection doesn't mean that all capabilities are included in the final application. Perfection could also mean that an application is presented with restrictions where user behaviors don't affect it adversely. If the "Assistant" feature is really provided through the iPhone, I fully expect it to become part of our daily usage within a matter of weeks.

On this note, I want to point out my disappointment with the other industry pioneer: Microsoft. I think the company needs serious change to be competitive in the marketplace again. A while back, I bought one of their products with the same fanfare I'm showing a "hypothetical" Apple product. That was the Kinect. I gave it up to my nephews after almost 2 months of letting it gather dust infront of the TV. Great idea, so-so in terms of execution. And now, Microsoft rolls out their Mango update only to be overshadowed by a feature that they helped pioneer through the 90s (speech recognition). I'll have more to say about that soon. For now, let's see how Tim Cook takes on Steve Jobs' responsibility to "wow" audiences.

Update [26-11-2011]: I thought I'd post a short update pointing you to this video: Siri vs. TellMe. This is in response to Microsoft's Craig Mundie explaining to a reporter that the core of the difference between Siri and TellMe is essentially in Marketing! I made this point earlier and I'll repeat it again: regardless of the feature, Apple brings products to life only when the company can satisfy particular use cases completely. As you can see, Microsoft does not work with the same principle. There's really no comparison between these two features and Microsoft should've used their early lead in speech recognition to provide a service that surpassed what we get from Siri now. Having said that, I'm still not completely impressed with Siri myself. I think it has a long way to go to become an integral part of our phone usage especially considering how handicapped it is outside of the US market.