However, the iPad 2 transcends cool. Über-cool. Seriously stylin.’
This thing ROCKS.

When it comes to Apple products, I’m a fan. I own a MacBook Pro and an iPhone 3GS. Wouldn’t buy anything else. I depend on them like I do oxygen or water. Seriously. When it comes to Apple support…not so much. Yesterday, I was rushing out of my house to get to my car, iPhone in my left hand, earbuds (the pricey, $70 jobbers from Apple) in my ears. I started to trip, and instinctively put out my hand to steady myself. My hand connected with the earbuds. They went flying, as did my iPhone. As I picked it up, I immediately checked it for damage. Keep in mind, I’ve got the iPhone case from HELL on it – the damn thing has a silicone sleeve AND an exoskeleton made of football helmet plastic. I also have an Invisible Shield screen protector over the screen. I thought, “no worries…I’ve got an extended warranty via AppleCare, and the phone is less than a year old.” I called Apple. And then the fun began…

Turns out I didn’t really read all the fine print on the AppleCare warranty. It covers only electronic part failure. If a “wear part” goes out, or if the phone is dropped, damaged, lost or otherwise injured, you are S.O.L. Lovely. So I haven’t had the thing a year, and I’m already hosed. “So…what will you charge me for repairing it?,” I asked. I was told that Apple will sell me a reconditioned (used) 3GS for the low, low price of…wait for it…$199. Color me underwhelmed. So I said, “what are my other options?” She recommended that I Google “iPhone repair” and select a firm that will repair the screen for me. I objected, “but won’t that void my warranty?” She said, “oh, no…don’t worry about it…your warranty was voided the minute you dropped the phone.”

Pause with me for a nanosecond whilst we consider the Theatre of the Absurd my life has become.

“So you mean to tell me that I paid $69 for an additional one year warranty on my iPhone, but even though the phone is less than a year old, because I cracked the screen, not only will you NOT fix it under warranty, but you’ve also canceled the basic warranty AND the extra coverage I paid for?

Yup. That’s exactly what she was telling me.

Now, don’t get me wrong. She was unfailingly polite about everything. But her hands were tied. Which, ironically enough, was exactly what I was imagining doing to Steve Jobs, right about then.

Then…it got weirder. (Where’s Hunter S. Thompson when you need him?)

She said, “Oh…I don’t even see your AppleCare warranty on your account. Are you sure you purchased one?” I told her, yes, I had, and I even have the original box with the serial number on it in front of me.

“Okay, well you’d better give me that number, so I can record it.”

“Why?”

“Well, so we’ll have a record of your AppleCare coverage.”

“Um…that would be the AppleCare warranty coverage that you told me is now null and void because my screen is cracked? THAT AppleCare coverage?”

“Well…yes. I suppose so.”

I thought for a minute. “Well, what if I DON’T register the plan? I mean, it won’t do me any good now, right? And then in June, when you guys release whatever iPhone hotness takes the place of the 3GS in the hearts and minds of MacFanboys everywhere, I could just shell out the big bucks for the new phone, and the apply the AppleCare plan to the NEW phone where it might – just might – do me some good. Right?”

She found my logic to be unassailable.

So I looked up “iPhone Repair” on Google. Turns out there are some anecdotal stories about how some poor schmucks have taken their iPhones to Apple stores and found Geniuses that took pity upon them, repairing them gratis. Hope springs eternal. So tomorrow, I’m heading for Big D and my nearest Apple Emporium to try my luck. If I bomb out there, I’ll try one of the several Dallas-based repair depots, and see if I can get my iPhone back to looking healthy.

So, Steve…if you’re listening, do me a favor. Stop selling AppleCare. That kind of thing is beneath you. It’s poorly marketed, misrepresented, and not worth the money – all things that run diametrically opposed to the “Apple Way.” And if a racket is what you’re after, go for where the REAL money is. Insurance. I hear it’s a license to steal.

If I have a gripe, I suspect it will be with battery life, but that’s only because I’ve been on it so much. Not sure, short of using an OLED screen, what they could do to fix this, but from what I hear, the 3G S is a lot better than the 3G in that respect.

By comparison, at this stage of the game with the Windows Mobile phone, I was busy making excuses for the OS, doing my best to explain away the problems, like some newlywed who’s desperately trying to believe that their spouse is “just a little stressed” and not really abusive.

Ouch.

That leads me to what I think is a huge mistake that Apple and AT&T are making regarding the marketing of the iPhone.

As a user interface architect, I appreciate the value of a good user interface, and understand that the interface is the most important factor, long-term, in how easy your phone is to use, as well as the long-term aggravation factor involved in using it.

The key phrase here is long-term.

You simply cannot make an informed buying decision based on reading about phones, or in a side by side comparison in a few minutes in a store. Just not gonna get it. So here’s what I think they should do.

The iPhone challenge.

If this sounds a lot like the Pepsi Challenge from the late 90s, you’re right. I propose a side-by-side challenge between the leading smartphone OS and devices. Here’s the way it would work…

AT&T stores would host an event. It might be held using a tractor-trailer that would travel aroudn the country, or simply do it in their stores – or perhaps hold it off site, at a hotel meeting room. The stage would be set up with an iPhone, a Palm Pre, a Google Andriod phone, and a Windows Mobile phone. (Did I miss any?) Audience memebers would be asked to volunteer to pilot each of the phones in a competitive situation. They would each be given tasks to complete – with the fastest time judged the winner. One group of users would be novices to their chosen phone, another group would have experience on their platforms. Each “contestant” would have the opportunity to say a few words about what they liked and what they didn’t like about the phone they used.

The event would then finish up with an opportunity for every audience member to get some hands-on time with the phone they like the best. Then they would be given the opportunity to use a reconditioned phone for 30 days, with the option to either return the phone after 30 days or getting a new one. Users would pay only for their airtime minutes – not the phone – for the first 30 days. After that, they’d get to swap the used phone for a new one, or just return it.

After 30 days, I was ready to throw my Windows Mobile phone through a window. I suspect that after 30 days, I’ll be ready to build a shrine for my iPhone.

You see, the thing about the iPhone is that it’s a big committment. Two-year contract. Higher charges for data plan, insurance, et cetera. That is, as they say, a barrier to entry. But it’s worth it, if you’ve ever been saddled with a similar contract for a Windows Mobile phone. The laughable claims that Sprint has made about their “iPhone-killer” phones would evaporate if prospective buyers could get some real time using the phone, and compare it to the iPhone. But it takes more than 5 or 10 minutes in a store. You need real-world use to really understand the iPhone adavantage. The challenge/30-day trial program would accomplish that .

Will AT&T listen? I suspect they won’t. It’s too “out there” of an idea for it to gain traction with the suits. Apple might like it, but when you’re selling as many iPhones as they are right now, I’m not sure they’d see the benefit. But I wish they would – for I wouldn’t wish a Windows Mobile phone on anybody.

I suffered for years as a water-carrier for Windows and All Things Microsoft. I had a late-model Windows Mobile phone, the Sprint/HTC Mogul. Never again. In the final months of my contract, I grew to loathe the phone, refering to it as the “Wagon Queen Family Truckster” of cell phones. You know how when you meet someone and you’re really attracted to them, but they have some obvious personality flaws, tics, or other weirdness, but you tell yourself “it’s okay…I don’t care about that…it won’t matter,” but in time, you can’t think of anything else BUT the annoying flaws? THAT sums up my relationship with the Windows Mobile OS, and, by extension, the Sprint/HTC Mogul. From the 1/2 day battery life, crappy keyboard, and lame 1x service (in Amarillo…don’t believe that 4G BS they’re pushing on TV) to the idiosyncratic operating system (with an emphasis on the “IDIO” part, as in “IDIOT”) that only an uber-geek could love, I’m glad to be rid of that crapalicious excuse for a phone. Two tin cans and some string would have worked better on occasion.

What impresses me so much about the iPhone is that it’s so bloody intuitive, simple, and…fun. The interface doesn’t make you work to do something – it gets out of your way. That’s the way a tool should be…it’s raison d’etre is to make your life easier by working for you. Not in spite of you.

It’s also great to see that Apple’s marketing team doesn’t over-hype the phone. They don’t need to, but it’s nice to see them sell the reality and not the promise.

So count me as one satisfied customer, at least at this stage of the game. The price of admission is still high, but if you want a phone that just works – but does a LOT more than just let you make calls, check out the iPhone. And stay away from anything that says “Windows Mobile” on it. Remember – I did warn you…

Seen the latest commercial from Microsoft? The spot claims to have found an “artist” who wants to find the right computer for video editing. I don’t wanna spoil the ending for you, but she chooses a PC over a Mac. Microsoft wants us to all believe that, in the words of Irving Berlin, “Anything you (Mac) can do, I (Windows) can do better.” Only one teensy, tiny little problem. It’s all a lie.

In 1987, I was hired by Micrografx to become a part of the sales and marketing team. My first day at work was, coincidentally, the first day of COMDEX, where we showing off the soon-to-be-released Micrografx Designer 1.0. Quickly moving from Sales to Marketing, I assumed the reins of the Creative Services Group, the in-house ad agency for the company. My first task was to fix display ads that only a propellerhead could love, and brand the company and the Designer product. Our big competition at the time was Illustrator, for it (as well as Aldus FreeHand) were the big dogs of vector design. The conventional wisdom in the design world was, if you were gonna do any serious design work on a computer, you needed to buy a Mac – PCs need not apply. At the time, that was somewhere between a lie and and a gross exaggeration. In 1987, feature for feature, Designer on the PC was a better, more full-featured product than Illustrator on the PC. This was because Illustrator for the PC in it’s first release cost more than the Mac version and had fewer features (it could print in color, but it couldn’t display in color). I realized that, for vector design at least, you didn’t need to buy a Mac to get work done. I created a campaign that coined a word – MacEnvy. My campaign pointed out the superior features of Designer and positioned it as “the cure for MacEnvy.” The campaign was a huge success – in the late 80′s Micrografx blew Illustrator out of the water, with over 80% market share. Fast forward to 2009…

Micrografx is history – purchased by Corel. FreeHand was orphaned with Macromedia was acquired by Adobe. I’m not even sure that they make Designer any more. Illustrator on the PC is now every bit the application it is on the Mac. Most publishers write their apps for both Mac and PC, and keep feature set parity a priority. So which platform is better?

If you’re looking for “cheap” or “disposable” computers, the PC is the smart buy. But if you want to get a computer that is capable of, say, encoding video, editing video, or anything else that requires power, speed, and ease-of-use, you’d be an idiot to buy anything but a Mac. I say this with a good deal of authority, because I’m still stuck using a PC.

At one time, I had both a Mac (Quadra 950) and a PC on my desk. Every time a app update came out, I had to buy two upgrades – one for the Mac, one for the PC. My wife convinced me to choose one platform or the other, and ditch the loser. I chose PC, because the hardware was cheaper, and most of my clients ran PCs. Today, a high-end Mac costs about the same as a high-end PC, and my clients couldn’t care less what I use. What I care about, however, is being able to get work done. XP is clunky. Vista is a steaming pile of dung. Windows 7? Don’t get me started. Mac’s OS is easy to use, reliable, and doesn’t get in your way. Here’s a comparison: It’s a good day when I don’t have to reboot my PC more than once or twice. I’ve a video editor friend here in town. He has to reboot…um…well “seldom” would be accurate – say, once a month, on the average. It takes either my desktop or laptop PCs about 5 to 7 minutes to reboot from a system reset button. There are days that I have to reboot a dozen times – usually when I’m working on large files (i.e.: video clips). That’s not just inconvenient. That’s wrong.

So the bottom line is, even if a Mac was more expensive by a grand, you’d still be better off with it over a PC that will cost you time, money, and visits to your doctor to prescribe BP meds for hypertension. Microsoft may want to claim that they are the better choice, but unless you’re a Hermann Goebbels fan, let Microsoft peddle th Big Lie to someone that confuses “marketing” with “reality.”

To be a really great commercial, though, takes some work. Most great spots are part of a series, simply because it’s easier to be memorable if you can inject some continuity into your campaign…that way you can make the same point, with similar stuff, without boring your audiences. A current example of this would be the GEICO commercials with the animated lizard. Classics-to-be. In fact, GEICO has an embarrassment of riches on the “series” bandwagon…the cavemen series, the lizard series, the new money with eyes series, and the customer paired with a celebrity series. By comparison, Progressive’s series with stand-up comedienne Stephanie Courtney makes it seem as they just aren’t trying as hard as GEICO.

Another take on making great spots is where you create something that is not-quite-a-series, yet bears some family resemblances. “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing” and “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz” did it for Alka-Seltzer.

But it seems that the ones we immortalize in our minds somehow end up being the stand-alone, one-offs, for some reason. Two spots that come to mind for most people (and ranked #2 and #1 respectively in just about every poll of memorable ads) are the Alka Selter “Speecy-spicy Meet-a-ball” spot from Alka-Seltzer and the “Brave New World” spot that introduced the Apple Macintosh. The wild thing about the Brave New World spot was it only aired once – during the Super Bowl – and recently saw a revival, as it was parodied by the Obama campaign, substituting Hillary Clinton for the large screen broadcast from “Big Brother.” (My personal favorite is the 2001/HAL spot that Apple created to skewer PCs for their milenium date problems.)

Recently, I’d say my favorite of the long-running series spots has to be the “Hello, I’m a PC…and I’m a Mac” spots from Apple. For Apple users, these spots are funny and reinforce their buying decision. As I type this on a PC, the spots are funny – and painful, at the same time.

So what does this have to do with your marketing? Well, consider this…when you create spots that resonate – spots that people remember long after they’ve stopped airing – spots that people talk about around the water cooler at work – those spots just increased the reach, effectiveness, and duration of your advertising, all without costing you one dime in additional advertising dollars.

Food for thought.

Did you ever wonder why Microsoft and marketing both start with “m” but just don’t go together? I’m just not quite certain if Microsoft has an aversion to marketing in the same way that, oh, say, Oprah has to Governor Palin. But if this latest excursion into television advertising is any indication, I’d say that “Microsoft” goes together with “marketing” like “Congress” goes with “bi-partisan cooperation.”

Let’s recap: On the one hand, you have Microsoft, probably The Most Successful Computer Company Ever.™ On the other hand, you have Apple, the Little Company That Could.

Microsoft is the Übergorilla in the room – the company that practically owns every facet of your computer. Think about it. Microsoft Windows. Microsoft Mouse. Microsoft Keyboard. Microsoft Office. You name it, and the Boys of Redmond are doing their level best to corner the market in any given segment. Their sheer size and market penetration of so many mission-critical markets make them the big dog on the block.

Apple is the smaller, smarter, more agile competitor. Their products work better. They are easier to use. They are more fun. And they offer a legitimate alternative to Microsoft in every market in which Microsoft plays.

You’d think with all that money (I’m surprised they haven’t cut a deal with Uncle Sam to co-own a Treasury Printing Office…think of the time we’d save on shipping if we could get Microsoft to print the money, instead of printing it elsewhere and shipping it all to Redmond), Microsoft could afford to hire some people that actually understand marketing. In fairness to Microsoft’s marketers, they probably have – but the Microsoft culture refuses to listen.

Apple is different. (No, duh.) They seem to approach everything from a marketing point of view, i.e., “here’s a problem…how can we solve it to make people happy?” Then they think, “how can we make our solution the best possible of all solutions, making it useful, friendly, easy-to-use, and…well…fun.” Microsoft approaches things from a view of “here’s a market that’s making money. Let’s dominate it. Doesn’t much matter if we do it better – we just want the money.”

So every so often, Microsoft inflicts television spots on us. Some of them have been memorable – usually for all the wrong reasons. When they announced Windows 98, they used the Rolling Stones “Start Me Up.” Evidently, nobody thought to listen to the lyric just after the snippet they used – the somewhat prescient, “You make a grown man cry.” Another Microsoft spot famously used Mozart’s Requiem to pitch their products. The Dies Irae section’s lyrics go a little something like this:

Day of wrath, day of anger
will dissolve the world in ashes,
as foretold by David and the Sibyl.
Great trembling there will be
when the Judge descends from heaven
to examine all things closely.

If only. So Microsoft has a well-documented history of shooting itself in the foot with their marketing. (Of course, you can argue that they do the same thing with their products, and you wouldn’t be far off the mark.)

Vista is an unmitigated disaster, an operating system that only a sadomasochist could love. We have it on two of the computers at my house and it is universally reviled with the same enthusiasm one has for excrement found adhering to the bottom of one’s shoe. To make matters worse, Apple’s agency devised a brilliant, long-running series of ads that poke fun at Microsoft in general, and Vista in particular. “I’m a Mac.” “And I’m a PC.” is nothing short of genius. In every ad, the theme is hammered home that Macs are easy to use, fun, and help you get work done. PCs are dull, boring, difficult to use, and are best relegated to folks like “Mordac, Preventer of Information Services.”

As if to rub it in, Apple made one brilliant move after another. iPod. iTunes. iPhone. “iSurrender” would have been a legit strategy for the Redmond crew, but nooooooooo – they decided to fight back the best way they know how. With a new ad. Starring Bill “Mr. Personality” Gates and Jerry “I’m bored and the money’s good” Seinfeld.

In Damage Control 101we learn that the best way to deal with a collosal P.R. problem is to face it head on. Vista’s problems are no big secret. In fact, everybody but Microsoft seems to know about it. A spot where the recently retired Gates says something like, “Hey everybody…Bill Gates here. Sorry about that Vista thing. We’ve heard you. We realize our new O/S is a big steaming pile, and we’re gonna do something about it. Please be patient, and we’ll fix it. And we’ll never violate your trust in us again.” Now THAT’S a spot I’d like to see. Believable? Maybe…maybe not. But it would stand a much better chance of resonating with the public than the piece of ego-driven dreck they’re airing now.

No mention of the Vista Problem. No admission of culpability or guilt. All they do is to talk about the future. (Just between you and me, I could care less about a computer that offers chewey, yummy goodness. I’d be satisfied if the damn thing worked once in a while.) No, they do a riff on Bill G.’s status as the World’s Richest Nerd, allow Jerry to do his schtick about how he can’t wait for the NEXT Microsoft innovation, and then…nothing. No payoff. No big announcement. No “sorry about that Vista crap – but now for something really worth waiting for!”

Microsoft seems to have forgotten that, in order to make the FUD factor (Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt) work, you must first promise something more or less specific coming Really Soon Now. You can be vague about the details, but it helps to have something specific in your promise – especially if you’re trying to counter-sell against your competition. If they claimed, “Hey…forget about that OS/X stuff…we’ve got something that’s gonna blow it – and Vista – away!” You might not believe it, but (if you hadn’t heard it a thousand times before) you might at least let them sew the seeds of doubt in your mind. As it is, the spot is just…pointless. So what if they’re gonna do something cool in the future? We need solutions NOW. There’s nothing in that spot that convinces me to buy a Windows box – or to change my decision to buy Macs from now on. (Remember, until just recently, I’ve been a Window guy.)

Is there hope for Microsoft? I kind of doubt it. You see, inertia is the only thing they have in their favor. Bigger companies than Microsoft have imploded, flamed out or simply rotted from within before. Won’t be the first time. Google (a.k.a.: “The NEW Microsoft”) is busy pulling the rug out from under Microsoft’s kingdom. Google is doing a fine job of disintermediating Microsoft to the point where they’ll simply be irrelevant. Can marketing help Microsoft avoid that fate? In the short term, maybe. In the long term, not unless they actually deliver on the yummy goodness stuff, and stop shoveling things like Vista on to our plates and telling us it’s great.