Apple’s Premium Hinges on Cool: Can the iPad Rot that Core?

For decades now, Apple has achieved notoriety and buzz and lots of synergy through marketing campaigns from first, being cool and second being easier to use than cheaper PC products or more entrenched MP3 player or cell phone brands.  Apple helped make it cool to buy a personal computer in the 80’s, and then they made it cool to not only buy an MP3 player, but actually PAY for an MP3 file.  Apple even through some miracle of evil genius made it cool to have an At&t account (spits on the ground).

They motivated the masses to jump on the Apple band wagon because Apple was cool and PC’s were not cool.  Apple iPods were cool and those more experienced MP3 players from other companies were not.  The iPhone was cool and a Crackberry was anything but.

Then the iPad came. 

An unlikely device with too little functionality and a name that had already been lampooned by MadTV 3 years before the product ever came out for sounding too much like a feminine hygiene product.  The iPad was decidedly uncool and some of that taint seems to rub off on Apple too for not being hip to the fact that its male customers might be just as uncomfortable sporting an iPad as they might be buying hygiene products for their mothers, sisters, girlfriends or wives. 

A couple weeks after iPad launch…

“A survey of more than 1,000 randomly selected customers at the online marketplace Retrevo found that 52 percent of respondents have heard of Apple’s iPad, but are not interested in buying one. Another 18 percent said they had not heard of the product, but also were not interested.” ~ source AppleInsider.com citing Retrevo.com

Similarly, female customers have been left wondering which dip shit male in marketing was insensitive enough to let this name get on the white board in the brainstorming sessions let alone actually approve it for the launch of a major consumer electronics product.

People believe that this product may not hurt Apple, but I disagree.  This product may not knock the wind out of Apple’s stock, but it should cause investors to assume a neutral position before jumping on the short band wagon.

The issue is that Apple has done something decidedly uncool inviting ridicule and lampooning which harms the premium of their formerly cool brand.  They have done this in a year following Steve Jobs miracle purchase of a new body part to save his life and allow him to keep leading the company that only he can apparently run. 

This product represents one of the first decisions of Apple by a Steve Jobs sans all the original body parts, and if this were a horror movie plot, the audience would be wondering by now whether or not Steve had either lost his mojo or been taken over by the owner of the original liver that he picked up for the price of a few thousand itunes downloads.

The new Steve Jobs is aging.  He has been an amazing guy for decades as he plundered through Palo Alto searching for an idea to sell, a box to build, a GUI to reverse engineer.  He reinvented marketing itself in the 80’s and even took a vacation to help retool Disney via Pixar.  For decades and decades he has been hard charging and by all accounts one of the coolest cucumbers in the garden, crisp and on top of things. 

Sure Apple has had its share of turds such as the Apple Newton(the original tablet) and Apple TV and Apple Inc run by someone besides Steve Jobs.

Oh and don’t forget that turkey of a collaboration called the IRockr from Apple and Motorola, a collaboration that Apple may have sabotaged from go in my opinion.

The difference between those turds and the iPad is that they happened under the watch of a healthier more vibrant, fast walking Steve Jobs.  Jobs may not be the same person when his body isn’t up to snuff.  He could be a holistic package that can’t function with half his body weight gone and a borrowed liver.  He has done to many things to help make the world more interesting and arguably better for anyone to wish his demise, but he doesn’t have much experience being held back physically and that may be something that is holding him back mentally as well. 

Apple’s competitive advantage in Steve Jobs edge may be a little too iPadded.

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