You can accurately sum up its latest offering in a handful of words: slimmer, lighter, faster, longer, and, yes, predictable.
As a result, the reaction hasn't exactly been overwhelmingly positive. This isn't the Apple that has inspired such unfettered devotion down the years.
Almost every single one of the upgrades came as no surprise. Yes, we got the bigger screen, but what does it amount to? An extra row of icons. Be still my beating heart.
Apple can point to a lot of genuine refinements to an already much-loved device, but is that enough to keep up the momentum? Maybe. Is it exciting? Not particularly.
Crash diet
It can (and does) talk about the peerless engineering that allows it to be the thinnest smartphone yet, but it's an area of design that didn't need improving.
I'm sure most consumers would rather the battery life was seriously addressed, rather than merely given a little boost. Hands up who's fed up with having to recharge at the end of every single day.
We're also promised "console quality graphics" (whatever that means in 2012), thanks to the new A6 chip. This is great news, for sure, but on current form, we'll maybe see a handful of big budget games that actually take advantage of that.
Epic, and a few elite developers will showcase something delicious, but by and large, we'll continue to see a slew of cute 2D games that could probably run just fine on an iPhone 3G. It's a 4" screen. About 0.01 percent of games need the advanced shaders of modern consoles to look great.
Apple can also point to the improved 8Mp camera, and better colour saturation, a more sensitive touch screen, 720p FaceTime, and faster wi-fi. Oh, and it finally takes panoramic pictures!
Wide-eyed
From a consumer's perspective, the move to a 16:9 display is a smart one - if only so that it negates the need to watch movie and TV content cropped, or with irritating borders.
For game developers, though, it's another headache to figure out. It merely fragments the increasingly fractured iOS development platform further still, and ensures that every game's UI now has to take into account yet another resolution.
It's not the end of the world, but it's another issue to deal with - unless you're happy with your game being displayed with borders on a 5.
In terms of what the iPhone 5 doesn't have, plenty of people have argued for and against things like inductive charging, and near field communication (NFC) to make touchless payments, but there are good cases on both sides of the fence, and I'm inclined to agree with Apple's reasoning on this one.
In terms of NFC, I already have a discreet Barclaycard Visa strip stuck on the back of my iPhone 4S that does exactly the same job, while the whole wireless charging thing sounds great if you're a fan of Tomorrow's World ideas, but it largely creates more problems than it solves - and wastes electricity into the bargain.
Lightning strikes
What doesn't sit well, however, is the move to the new Lightning port standard to enable Apple to build even thinner devices.
Firstly, shaving a few millimetres off an already very svelte device is just a pointless vanity exercise to wave in the faces of your competitors, and secondly, forcing users to shell out for (no doubt overpriced) converters for expensive docks and assorted peripherals is the quickest way to annoy your loyal consumers.
The switch to a Nano sim is also bound to rankle anyone who switches cards when roaming abroad.
And then there's the ongoing storage issue. If you're any kind of 'power user' and like to have a lot of apps, music, photos, books and videos, you're constantly fighting a tedious battle to free up space for all this content.
The current maximum '64GB' actually gives (according to iTunes) a capacity of just 57.44 GB - a vast and frankly ludicrous shortfall of useable space, and one that few people are probably even aware of.
No room
Apple's stubborn refusal to stretch to 128GB of storage is presumably down to cost, but for a device that rakes in such eye-watering profits, it's the kind of penny pinching decision from the bean counters that ultimately gets on consumer's nerves.
Memo to Apple: a lot of us have a lot of content. We'd really like to access it when we feel like it, and if you're not going to let us add in our own storage, you make your device a pain to use.
And no, accessing stuff in the Cloud won't be useful until we can reliably access fast networks.
On that note, at least, Apple has ensured compatibility with Everything Everywhere's (EE) 4G LTE network here in the UK. For everyone else, though, the wait goes on for the 4G rollout to happen. Patience is a virtue.
Perhaps the bigger question is one of software, and the impact of iOS6's touted features. Things like improved the Passbook and 3D flyover maps are a plus, as is the fullscreen Safari browser, but you won't need an iPhone 5 to benefit. Those with a 4 or 4S will also join in the fun.
Time to upgrade
For those still clinging on to their iPhone 3Gs and 3GSs, the upgrade will have a distinctly greater appeal - and it's important not to lose sight of how far the iPhone has come in four years.
Not everyone obsessively picks up a new model every year, and for many, the time will be right to pick up a version with a vast number of improvements over their ageing models - not least because iOS6 will cut the 3GS adrift entirely.
But for those of us who observe the wider landscape of smartphones, the iPhone 5 represents a solid update, but no more than that. Whether this somewhat conservative approach will put a dent in Apple's market share remains to be seen, but there's an unusual degree of complacency starting to creep in.
The last thing you expect from Apple is to morph into one of those companies content to dish out more of the same.
