Today’s slice of stupid: Apple’s brand is unravelling
Apple had a major iOS event yesterday, the first since Steve Jobs passed away. According to VentureBeat’s Jolie O’Dell, it showed a brand unravelling. And there was me going “oooh, new iPad”. What a fool I am, right, Jolie O’Dell?
While today’s Apple event unveiled a couple new improvements to an expected lineup of products, it also revealed a certain sloppiness that was absent from former, Steve Jobs-led launches.
A couple of new improvements, if you’re not being sloppy while writing about Apple being sloppy.
This wasn’t anything major, just a few minor but glaring inconsistencies: Tim Cook going for the “rumpled executive” look in an untucked shirt,
Tim! Don’t be yourself! Wear the same as Steve did, you you will unravel the brand! Aieee!
the ambiguous naming of the “new iPad,” (not iPad 3 or iPad HD),
That would never have happened under Steve Jobs. Well, apart from the iPod touch. And the Apple TV. And the iMac. And the MacBook. And a bunch of other Apple products. But ignoring all those, the brand is unravelling! Aieee!
the use of a truly horrible pun on a new product’s landing page,
Something that Apple would never have done under Steve Jobs and his watchful glare. Well, apart from calling the iPod touch the ‘funnest iPod ever’. And mangling grammar with ‘think different’. And myriad other awful puns that peppered Apple’s press releases and website since Steve Jobs returned to Apple in the 1990s. But ignoring all those, the brand is unravelling! Aieee!
and finally, the tie-dyed Apple logo at the presentation’s conclusion.
Blue Dalmatian iMac. Flower Power iMac. Remember those? They were approved by—drumroll—Steve Jobs! That said, what was wrong with the logo? It was relevant for the event and also a nice nod to the striped one designed by Rob Janoff.These are not the kinds of things I normally care about. They have nothing to do with hardware and nothing to do with technology.
Apple’s ethos is about so much more than hardware and technology: It’s supposed to be, as this outsider sees it, about aspiration, dreams, desires, the future, even Utopia. In a word, it’s only 30 percent about the tech and 70 percent about the branding.
That’s right! Let’s ignore the technology, because that’s irrelevant. Let’s instead concentrate on Tim Cook’s shirt. Let’s ignore the details of what Apple unveiled (a spiffy new iPad, say) and suggest APPLE IS DOOMED because of… a colourful Apple logo.
I think today’s Apple event shows that perfectionism fraying a bit around the edges. The bad pun, the goofy logo, the weird product name — all of it pointed to a leadership that either didn’t understand or didn’t care about consistency in iconography.
All of it pointed to a leadership that was pretty much going for ‘business as usual’. There are things I see in Apple now that are different. For example, I was surprised to see Apple go with LTE when it’s fragmented and not available in many countries. But consistency in iconography? Really?
[…] nomenclature was consistent enough to become one of the most hotly speculated-about features of any launch. Would it be called the iPhone 2? The iTablet? The iPhone 5 or the 4S? The 4SG? Think about how little anyone cares about the name of HTC’s next smartphone or Google’s next bit of software, and you’ll see how important that one small detail of nomenclature was to Apple’s iconic position in the world of tech and consumer brands.
Think about the shitstorm that ensued when Apple went for iPhone 4S instead of iPhone 5. For half of the world’s tech pundits, it was like the world had ended. Ultimately, names do matter, but when you’re creating an iconic product, do version numbers matter any more? To suggest that Apple gave no thought to renaming its tablet ‘iPad’ is absurd, especially if it’s going to continue with an annual refresh. Imagine the product line continues a decade into the future—is ‘iPad 12’ going to look like a great thing, or would people just be saying “enough already”, like they do today with software upgrades?
Today’s event and the tiny but glaring inconsistencies bring up the impossible-to-answer question: Would Steve have green-lit that?
I think he would. But, more importantly, one of the things Steve Jobs reportedly told his team was that they should do what they think is right, not second-guess him. If Apple suddenly nose-dives because of a colourful logo or untucked shirt, fair enough. I’ll phone up Jolie O’Dell and ask for advice on lottery numbers. But here’s the thing: I don’t think it’s going to.
So no looking forward to iPad 4 rumours? Damn! (sarcasm).
They should really call it
iPad Retina A5X Touch 4G LTE Universe 16GB
It distresses me that there are companies who actually pay staff to churn out crap like that, and then publish it!
The tech world just doesn’t get it. Most of the population don’t care for specs or indeed what model of phone/tablet they have half the time.
Me: “What phone do you have?”
Sister: “iPhone”
Me: “Oooh nice, what model is it?”
Sister: “The latest one”
I give up sometimes I really do, these so-called tech experts really can’t see the bigger picture and really can’t understand why Apple are selling these products in such huge numbers.
Apple will not sell very many of these “new iPads” – there is not enough new things on it. So what they will do is what Microsoft did to force us to buy unneeded new PC product. They will upgrade the programs and software to the point that “old” equipment (read, stuff you bought a few months ago) will slow down or not even run the new apps at all. This practice is why many left Microsoft and PCs. And as Apple adopts this practice, it will be why the PC market will soon be booming again.
“Apple will not sell very many of these “new iPads” – there is not enough new things on it.”
When not approaching comments as a blood sport, I believe it can be approached as performance art. For example, the above quoted sentence couldn’t possibly be written as a serious attempt to sum up the iPad. It must be done for comedic effect, whether as sarcasm or a deadpan rhetorical style.
“So what they will do is what Microsoft did to force us to buy unneeded new PC product. ”
I eagerly await the explanation of how Apple forces anyone to buy anything. Is this more of that “Apple Voo Doo Marketing” gibberish? And Microsoft “forced” people to buy it’s products by being the de facto OS on every PC you could buy, with the sole exception of the Mac, for nearly 25 years. Even today PC manufacturers have no choice but to install and support Windows. Apple doesn’t licence, Microsoft will punish you if you use alternatives, and most PC makers no longer have the resources or talent to even consider writing their own OS.
But absolutely none of this is the case on the Mac, or any Apple product. I know it’s hard for Stockholm Syndromed PC types to grasp, but people buy Apple products because people want to buy Apple products. It’s that simple.
“They will upgrade the programs and software to the point that “old” equipment (read, stuff you bought a few months ago) will slow down or not even run the new apps at all.”
This is simple a flat out nonsense. Apple overtly supports hardware on the desktop back to 5 years in some cases, a guestimate average of 4, and in some cases updates software programs for OSes it doesn’t explicitly support. Apple is in the position it is by nor wasting resources trying to support every product it ever sold no matter how long ago it was. This hasn’t worked out for Microsoft, and it hasn’t worked out for the PC vendors. Unless the aim was to coddle cheapskates, that is, a target demographic Apple has no interest in.
” And as Apple adopts this practice, it will be why the PC market will soon be booming again.”
The era of the PC as we know it is dead. Except for people whose jobs explicitly require the power and options of a desktop system, entire generations are growing up with the only computer they have ever interacted with daily being the smartphone in their pocket.
There is no end of people longing for the “good ole days”, obsessed with clinging to that which they are comfortable.
They are always the last to realize that they are so far behind, they think they are ahead of everyone.
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