The Emperor's New Phone Jack

So fine it's like it's not there

I am a much better marketing and advertising professional for having the experience of being a father.

One of my favorite aspects of that role has been reading to my kids at night, which started, of course, with fairy tales.

My kids like magic. Harry Potter and His Dark Materials, and before that, Zagazoo and The BFG. I always tried not to read the same books over and over again, but some times, you have to. There's only a few things that get to the status of all-time favorite.

If you were to ask either of my daughters what their father's favorite story is, they'd be able to tell you in a heartbeat.

"The Emperor's New Clothes."

Not just because it's funny, easily understood, and that it might also be the only one in the classic canon that relates to my professional role. More so, because it teaches an incredibly important lesson for kids (and maybe girls especially), and also to anyone in a corporate setting -- the importance of being able to go against the prevailing wishes of a crowd and hold to, well, what should be common sense.

Or, at least, what might matter to people outside of the room.

You know. Like your actual customers.

Which leads me to pivot to the new iPhone's move to eliminate the headphone jack from the handset, with users now either having to go to wireless earbuds, or to a corded unit that splits off the power dongle. (A dongle that is also, well, easily lost. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)

The money quote from this is that Apple considers themselves to be courageous for making the move, in an exceptionally tone-deaf PR moment. But independent of that, we need to just speak to the obvious point which is that ear buds should never cost something like the $159 that the "airBuds" are said to cost... because, well, just about everyone has lost a pair of ear buds or ten over the course of their lives, and that's the only thing that's going through the minds of the people I've talked to about this.

Sure, something has to give to get more power, longer battery life, faster speeds, and the other obvious gains from the new handset. But the plain and simple of the new model is that if the unit came in two flavors -- with and without analog jack -- the vast majority of younger (and most churning) consumers, who operate their units with buds all the time, wouldn't give it up.

They've learned to live with the current speed and battery life. They aren't buying what you are selling as anything more than a price hike, and one that's not exactly, well, courageous.

Especially for a company with growing PR nightmares of tax fraud, child labor, and slowing innovation. Who are sitting on more cash than just about anyone in the world.

A more outward-thinking group, especially one that understands that competitors in the space are ravenous, would get closer to VR, holograms, more customization in voice recognition, etc. Even the simple act of pitching more secure over the ear exercise bud options, or a locator app for lost hardware, would have helped.

Instead, Apple just strips away the headphone jack and tells the world that they are courageous for going naked.

Well, I suppose. The marketplace, as always, will decide. Maybe there's just so many people in the iPhone Empire that naked will be just fine.

But what they call courage?

Might not be quite so echoed by the more direct in the audience.

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