IPhone 5 Release Date 2012: Apple Fans Predicting A Dud

The Apple iPhone 5 has been a long time coming, as most tech watchers expected it to come out last year, only to be disappointed when the iPhone 4s was Apple's next big thing.

Featuring a nicer camera than the previous model sported, Siri voice recognition and a superior processor, the iPhone 4s was an improvement over the iPhone 4, but it was not the game-changing iPhone 5 that everyone had been salivating over for months.

And it seems that many Apple-heads are back in that same mindset -- remembering what happened last time, and not getting their hopes up that the iPhone 5 release date will be a revolutionary day for smartphones.

This seems to be a trend of sorts, as the release of the New iPad in March was a major disappointment for many who expected a paradigm-shifting iPad 3 and instead got a tablet that barely matches the stats of its competitors.

This trend of over-hyped yet disappointingly-bland products being released each year by Apple appears to have contributed to a level of discontent that is bubbling just under the surface in the minds of many Apple fans. Though there are still hundreds of thousands of die-hard Apple-heads, a growing number of them are questioning the future of Apple, and just what the iPhone 5 release date will bring.

Macrumors.com forum users have started to take to the site to make their complaints and worries known. Forum user vitzr aired his view that Apple know[s] exactly how much their customers will let them get away with, and explained just how that happened with the iPhone 4s:

Now a full two generations behind, they are still pushing the tiny 3.5 display. Not only is that the smallest of any [smarphone], but they've got their followers convinced it's the perfect size, vitzr wrote on the forum. If other manufacturers also had cult like followers that would defend their companies' position like Apple does, the playing field would be level. Apple is in a very unique position. It's as though they can do no wrong.

And Macrumors.com user Arcadia310 takes it a step further, saying that one of the key reasons for the growing unhappiness many users feel about Apple products is exacerbated by the fact that its competitors -- especially Google's Android products -- are outpacing the company in many areas, and Apple is not doing enough to keep up:

I truly feel that [Apple] is resting on [its] laurels, just like RIM and other companies have before they went downhill. So far, Apple has done great with this two-year upgrade scheme with the iPhone. But companies like Samsung and Motorola are upgrading their technology dramatically each year, Arcadia310 wrote on the forum. If Apple doesn't bring the heat with iOS 6 and the iPhone 5, I truly believe the company will be headed downhill. Google is innovating at an alarming rate and Ice Cream Sandwich opens up an entirely new gateway of possibilities. NFC is going to take off in these next two years and Apple has no answer for it.

But not every Apple fan feels the same way, as evidenced by Macrumors.com user andyx3x, who summed it up in a few short words:

Maybe you're just an Android guy. Nothing wrong with that. Just go back.