Those kids with their new Mac gmail client clearly spent so much time developing the UI and code, it only made sense to rely on Apple to vet most of the names in their marketing screenshots.
In the days following the iPhone 4 announcement (and again once the phone was in people’s hands) I was pointed to what seemed like multiple articles and blog posts assessing Apple’s claim that the human eye could not distinguish pixels on its Retina display (including one that used macro photography for its analysis).
Imagine my surprise when I visited an Apple retail store and found that I could clearly see blocky pixelation artifacts on iPhone 4 where I’d never been able to on any previous model of iPhone.
No, not on the hardware itself.
On the wall graphics.
Take a moment to consider: you work for a design firm and one of your clients is a national restaurant chain, a subsidiary of a corporation large enough to get a foothold in malls across the entire country. You work in graphic design. You’re the last stop before the print shop. How many people saw this message cross their desk, and never thought to say a single word?
Having worked for many years typesetting this exact kind of inanity, I imagine that an AWFUL LOT OF WORDS were said about this.
By the client, whose remastered Beatles box set is his most prized possession, to the agency account executive, when proposing the headline “Strawberry Lemonade Forever”, possibly even singing the phrase as he does.
By the account executive as she shares the client’s suggestion through gritted teeth to the creative team, knowing she’ll be lectured about the proper way to write a creative brief.
By the copy writer and art director, as they lecture the account executive about the proper way to write a creative brief, all the while implying that both she and the client are idiots.
By the client again, after being presented with three perfectly adequate creative concepts, none of which he loves quite as much as his original idea.
By the account executive, who informs the art director and copywriter that the client still would like “Strawberry Lemonade Forever,” and could they please just do it and not make a stink about it.
By the art director and copy writer, who make a stink about it.
By the account executive, who has no financial incentive to keep the creatives happy, as she flatly tells them to do it.
By the art director and copy writer to the production team as they hand over the files, in a meeting where everyone gets to feel intellectually superior to the client who pays their salaries.
By the copy editor who is only just seeing it now for the first time to the traffic manager who is routing the layout, about how “Forever” is kind of a problematic and weird thing to say and had anybody thought about it before now.
By the traffic manager to the account executive as she passes along the copy editor’s question through gritted teeth, knowing that she’ll be lectured about how the copy editor should stick to punctuation and grammar.
By the overworked attorney in the client’s legal department, who doesn’t like the word “Forever” and suggests it should get an asterisk and disclaimer line.
By the account executive, who tells the production artist to add an asterisk and disclaimer line without mentioning it to the creative team.
By the art director, who thought he was done with this a week ago, demanding as he is asked to sign off on the final layout to know where this asterisk and disclaimer came from, that this is a complete joke, and that if this was always going to be a limited-time offering that should have been highlighted as a secondary message in the initial creative brief.
By the copy writer as he throws up his hands saying he doesn’t care any more and by the way he’ll be working from home tomorrow.
By the art director who explains to the production artist how he stayed late last night to rework the layout, convinced that turning “For a limited time” into a large subhead communicates better and is less offensively stupid than an asterisk and a disclaimer.
By the production artists and print managers among themselves as they make fun of the layout all day.
By the client as he approves the final layout, excited that he got to keep “Strawberry Lemonade Forever”.
By everyone at the prepress vendor and printer who sees it, until the print manager asks them will they please stop because he is so very tired of talking about it.
Now. The letterspacing between w-b, e-r, e-m and a-d? UNFORGIVEABLE.
Apple only has two options: either give up the mass market in the U.S. and accept slow growth in U.S. sales while Android undermines the iPhone’s base, or launch a CDMA 1X+EVDO Verizon iPhone very soon.
600,000 pre-orders on the first day of iPhone 4 availability, primarily to existing customers, suggests that Apple can continue to reap plenty of revenue selling to its slowly growing U.S. customer base.
Technology is almost certainly not the limiting factor here — I imagine a CDMA iPhone 4 is ready to go, or close to it, today — so it’s a matter of other influences, such as product timing with the GSM iPhones, supply chain delays, or contractual issues with the carriers.
I’d like to think about some of those “other influences” for a moment, specifically the marketing and branding ones.
Does the CDMA phone have a different name? How does the package differ? Are there CDMA versions of both the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4? How are the different models messaged in the Retail and Online stores? Do AT&T and Verizon share the stage in the television and print advertising? Most critically, how does Verizon communicate “now we’ve got iPhone” without communicating “…too!” The obvious choice would be for Verizon to do its own iPhone advertising campaign. AT&T will want to do its own competitive advertising as well, so as to continue its emphasis on their network’s simultaneous phone-and-data connection. Let’s all imagine how well those campaigns will go over with Steve Jobs.
Again, Apple does sell iPhone in countries with competing carriers. But currently ALL of them get the exact same phone.*
All of it (the marketing, the contractual carrier issues, manufacturing, supply chain and inventory, adaptations in Retail, connection to Verizon’s activation servers) adds up to a nontrivial amount of hassle for Apple, so that they can embrace an America-centric technology (Can anyone point me to data showing a global CDMA share above 17%? I haven’t found one.) that Tim Cook went on the record as saying “doesn’t really have a life to it after a point in time.”
I’m not saying Apple will never sell a CDMA phone in the U.S. But it may continue to decide that the path to selling more phones runs through India or China, rather than Verizon in the U.S., and allocate its attention and resources accordingly.
American mindshare matters, to be sure, especially among developers deciding how to divide their time between developing for iOS or Android.
But as Jobs enjoyed implying in his WWDC keynote, 100 million iOS devices means there are a lot of Verizon customers who already own an iPod touch or iPad.
I’m guessing a CDMA Verizon iPhone will be available within 6 months.
I will note that in the iPhone 4 marketing screenshots, the “AT&T” has been removed from its catbird position in the titlebar between the signal-strength bars and 3G icon.
Not that this means anything. Carrier names were removed internationally (from the marketing images, not the phones) for the iPhone 3GS launch, allowing Apple to use image assets across countries.
But I’m sure for those who need this phone to exist, this couldn’t have been a change for convenience or consistency’s sake. Right? RIGHT?
*Except maybe China.
“That’s the thing about Apple marketing. They don’t talk about how many gigabytes of memory or how many CPU cycles or how many apps (much). They aim for your heart, and show you how technology can make your life better during its most important moments.”
—Gina Trapani, via Daring Fireball
While I also think the new FaceTime video on apple.com is well-done and emotionally affecting, I’m going to call hogwash on the assertion that Apple marketing aims for the heart.
The tagline for the iPad may be turgid and laughable, but it is admittedly an improvement over some of the alternatives that Jobs had considered.
We MAKE THINGS from THE FUTURE.
You will understand it when you see it.
If you remember just FOUR THINGS about it…
Don’t make us say it.
You people just don’t fucking get it. Ever.
We made it. It’s awesome. WHAT IS THE PROBLEM.
So apparently I have to spell it out for you people.
Fuck it, you wouldn’t believe me anyway.
LOOK, IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT IT’S FOR.
It’s useless to even talk to you right now.
Yes we are driving to the future but we will turn this car around, mister.
No one. Ever. LISTENS to me.
Curiously, enough, President Obama borrowed one of Jobs’ alternate taglines for his State of the Union address just a few hours later:
[I]f anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors and stop insurance company abuses, let me know. Let me know.
Meanwhile, inside Apple’s marketing department, the business and political issues surrounding the inclusion or non-inclusion of Flash on the iPad and iPhone are not of heightened concern.
Note the NYT Flash Video widget clearly visible in the lower left-hand corner in the screenshots shown on launch day. On an iPad this rectangle should show the broken plug-in icon (as seen in today’s demo).
It’s not a big deal, as these things go. All marketing (and software) ships with bugs. The website will be corrected/updated before the product ships (possibly before you are reading this), and I know some people who know some people who will get it right before it shows up four feet tall and glowing on the wall of an Apple retail store.
And while there are might be people high up at Apple who care very much whether an image suggests the existence of Flash on an iPad (see for instance the cheat used on Jobs’ static Keynote slide), the Photoshop artists and web producers (and—updated—video producers) preparing for launch day might very well be cut off from communicating with someone who would know.
Or who might remember fixing THIS EXACT MISTAKE two and a half years ago.
