Is Apple Reluctant To Admit That iPhone Overload Is A Bad Thing?
The thing is, the watch does have a use case, it’s just one that’s hard for Apple to talk about. Last week Matthew Panzarino at TechCrunch wrote that the best thing about the watch, according to the Apple employees who’ve been demoing it, was that it let them basically stop using their phone. …
But how do you get up on stage and say that the best thing about this new gadget is that it lets people use this other gadget, the one you spent the last eight years turning into a fetish object, less frequently? Of course you still need an iPhone for the Apple Watch, so it’s not like the watch threatens to replace the phone — but rhetorically it’s a tricky argument to make. … Making the best pitch for the watch would mean acknowledging that devices can be burdens, not just tools for empowerment.
This might go a long way towards explaining Apple’s pitiful showing yesterday.
But if it does, it merely underscores the reality that the consumer-centric (as opposed to industry-centric) sales strategy at Apple is lagging with current leadership. Obviously, Apple has no problem selling any of its wares to eager consumers the world over, and that’s not what I mean. Rather, I mean that the company’s rapport with its audience — the excitement it’s been able to sell in the past — feels like a thing of the past. (With Apple’s massive success, maybe such PR really and truly has been relegated to the realm of afterthought. After all, they could’ve hit every main point of the Spring Forward keynote with a page-long press release and enjoyed the exact same stock performance. Everything about the presentation was utterly unnecessary.)
A good salesman isn’t afraid to knock his old wares down a shelf to sell his latest and greatest, especially when he knows you need those old wares anyways. Jobs sold you a laptop by telling you that the desktop you just bought from him was too bulky and confining for maximum productivity. He sold you an iPad by saying the versatile little iPod touch was too small to get anything “real” done. In that regard, Apple Watch is hardly different. All Cupertino had to do was explain why the tether between the wearable and its iPhone is so crucially important, and nobody would have batted an eye. We love our iPhones! Increased efficiency is an enhancement, not a detriment.
Honestly, with Apple’s track record of embracing planned obsolescence and understanding the purchase-power of “new” (along with the staying-power of “industry standard”), it’s very surprising that they didn’t do more to demonstrate the inherent value in cutting out the fat (HealthKit notwithstanding). Apple Watch will never have a usable keyboard or web browser, Siri will never be able to compose a formal email or informal tweet, and nobody expects the world’s most popular camera to end up on their wrist. Most people are self-aware enough to recognize the benefits of streamlining their mobile experiences.
Apple shouldn’t be so afraid to sell them what they want.