A Meditation on iPhone, Time, & FOMO

Life has gotten in the way of one of my most anticipated annual events. For the first time since the day of its official launch (barring the pandemic years), I won’t be attending the new phone model launch in person, which also means I am going to miss getting my hands on the device and forming a first opinion. I’ll have to depend on others’ opinions to inform me (and everyone else) about the device(s) being unveiled.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has done his best to steal Apple’s thunder, but given his endless micro-scoops and breathless news about new (or possibly new) products, they have started to lose meaning. Just as endless reels on Instagram or bumper-sticker wisdom on Twitter make you tune out a lot of “influencers,” the constant, endless battering of one’s attention can ruin the impact of news, although you can’t blame him for doing his job.

Still, I am excited about the day. I love my iPhone and upgrade to a new model every year—usually because it has a better battery and a better camera. Apparently, the new iPhone 17 Pro Max will have a new camera bar design that replaces the camera bump and will have a bigger battery. Sign me up!

Why do I get excited about events like the iPhone launch even now, when smartphones as we know them have clearly reached their logical conclusion? The form needs to morph into something else. We don’t quite know what, but I don’t expect the status quo to remain in five years.

The irony is that none of the phone makers are trying anything new are radical. This reminds me of the fading days of Nokia-driven smartphone boom of mid-2000s. No one, including Apple, wants to upset the proverbial apple cart. Google could be brave and create an AI-first device (instead of foldable Pixels), minus all the bloatware they push. That would be one way to seize the mandate and become the device of the next technology wave.

I do indeed have a FOMO about the future—the one I won’t experience—good or bad. Maybe it’s about getting older. Maybe it’s about understanding mortality. But I can’t help thinking about what’s next more than I should. I should enjoy the present more. In a way, I share Bob Lefsetz’s perspective. In his “birthday” post, he writes, “I ask my contemporaries if they died tomorrow would they feel ripped off. Most say no, that there are things they want to do, but if they passed they’d be satisfied with their lives. Not me! There’s so much more I want to accomplish.”

Amen, brother. I wish I could be as raw and open as Bob, but I am who I am. I love reading him just for riding his wild thought waves. Happy 72nd birthday, Bob, and may you be blessed with lots of words and even more opinions. Speaking of birthdays, that young punk, Anil Dash, has turned 50. I can still remember the day I met him.

He has a great blog post today: Five for 50. The best one for me is “Don’t wait till they are dead.”

“This one is a thing people say all the time, but I can’t emphasize enough how much it’s true: Do not wait until someone is gone to praise them, or thank them, or acknowledge them, or to tell them what you’re grateful for or how they’ve impacted your life.”

This is such a small thing, and probably the most important thing. It’s a lesson for me too—FOMO for the future has to be balanced with the joy of the present.

Happy Apple Phone Day!

September 9, 2025. San Francisco

Technology
7 comments

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Om Malik is a San Francisco based writer, photographer and investor. Read More

7 thoughts on this post

  1. I’m with Bob on trying to keep looking around corners.
    What’s around this corner is better wearable interaction. Voice commands to your Watch that do something. Focusing on something through your glasses, asking what it is, finding out right away.
    I would love to see more intelligence built into things like the Shokx bone conducting earphone, having an AI assistant take care of tasks in the background based on that interaction.
    So much stuff is coming. I say I can’t wait but, at 70, I really can’t.

  2. When I was single – Upgraded every year… Now with a daughter in college it has changed 🙂 It’s fine and I’m ok with it. My daughter is amazing and almost a straight A student. As a retired teacher, I value education.

    For Now 🙂 I’ll be sticking with last year’s pro max iPhone.

    I am watching the keynote but a little disinterested. Not in the market – for me – a new phone, AirPods, watch or other from this presentation…

    I’ve been running the developer beta on iOS 26 and I think the gold master is going to be released today – very nice design.

    Have a great fall!
    -Mike
    (from the cornfields of Illinois)

  3. This is so timely as I am about to celebrate a big birthday and have been pondering if I should use it as a moment to share some thoughts. I haven’t done that on my other birthdays, but this one – 65 – feels different.

  4. Love your newsletters, but this one definitely left me with a comment. You wrote, “… when smartphones as we know them have clearly reached their logical conclusion?” Everything as we know it has reached its logical conclusion. It is when someone introduces something that we had not yet imagined that a logical conclusion remains in the distance.

    1. That is the point. We are living through the “optimization” phase and I am seeing less and less imagination. Humane tried to do something different. I am hoping Apple does something that only they can do with their vast resources. My suspicion is that the modest success of Vision Pro has made them less likely to do something daring.

      I am looking at the East (China) to try something weird and interesting because they are far ahead in adoption of “consumer ai” in their hardware.

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