Think Positive: The Geek Who Stayed Home

The Geek Who Stayed Home

This week Motorola came out with yet another ad for Droid. I remember droids. I played with them when I was 5. I think there’s still a head or leg of one under a couch somewhere in the world. They come from Star Wars, and this one is definitely NOT the one you are looking for.

Anyway.

The premise? Droid oozes testosterone like a 1980s Mustang. Admittedly they were going for the cool 60s and 70s mustang but then they showed a brief photo of the thing and it looked like the mid eighties commuter cars that made muscle car lovers cry. It’s so like Newton lovers when all the GOOD engineers left Apple for Palm, and Apple announced “hey we have a slightly larger color model now, but um wait we’re spinning of er um killing the whole line?”

Why? Because Motorola is dead. Their engineers have left. All the useful assets have been sold. They don’t even have the cute “It’s so Star Trek’ flip phone concept to fall back on anymore. Plus droid is based on a geek platform that cannot transcend the fact that it is an un-pretty brick with a poor user interface, and no apps by saying ‘men don’t need interfaces’. That sort of marketing MIGHT win an army contract; it isn’t gonna win over Joe Consumer.

The facts? Droid has no apps, and fewer games. All the cool Google apps on Droid are on iPhone too. As a bonus Droid is so open that if anyone actually bought one the potential for hacks is absurd. Bring droid to the club! It’ll sit in your pocket curled up in a little ball praying no one sees it. Mean time the sort of pimply geek who designed it will be a block away posting ’shopped photos mocking your pickup failures to your now also hacked Facebook page, and they’ll be geocoded so everyone can come see.

Does iPhone have its drawbacks? Sure. Most of them come in the form of AT&T’s insistence on doing it impression of 1996 Apple Computer management techniques. That however is fixable as it’s only a matter of time before Apple brings other carries on board. A skinned version of Linux however that records your every move so that it can make sure that, after you’ve left the club, and discovered your hacked Facebook account, and are trying to buy a Cheeseburger to see if your credit cards have been hacked too (btw yes) that you choose Mc Donalds over Wendy’s, is simply a non-competitor.

Now then what IS the Positive in this whole mess? Apple has not stooped to discuss ‘Droid’. Like the beauty queen with her working, app filled, iPhone connected to the largest music store on the planet, Apple doesn’t have time or need to talk to the geek who stayed home to play X-Box on prom night whilst upgrading to the latest version of Mandriva and correcting friends on how you pronounce it.

You see Apple pioneered little guy throws pie at big guy, begs for a fight, and gets attention. Apple called out IBM on how crappy their computing experience was before IBM had even pondered offering a personal computer! It worked, and the rest is history. Today’s Get a Mac ads, comparing boring PCs to Macs at things PCs have never tried to be good at, has done the same to the tune of Apple taking double-digit percentages of the PC market and leaving Windows trying hard to be what it isn’t.

Sounds like a good strategy for Motorola then right? Not so much. Motorola has little talent left. Apple has always been able to backup their mouth with innovation, consumer experience , and service. Droid, being offered on America’s largest network known for crippling every feature built into the phone, is a one two combo for poor service and worse experience. That combined with an ‘interface for people prepared to have to poke around’, and a way too open backend leaves the Droid ship somewhere beneath the sands of Tatooine. Some people will buy a Droid. Star Wars fans, Google Employees, guys who are not named Peter and are afraid to buy something called a Pixie, and Very confused Grandparents buying them as gifts. No one who really wants a PDA Phone that works, however, would bother.

Bottom line?

Guys would take a chance dating Blair Waldorf vs. Serena van der Woodsen. Girls would do terrible things to be either of them. Guys wanna be Chuck Bass. Chuck Bass gets the girl, any girl he wants with style and cash; not robots. So when Motorola is alienating girls who want to be pretty and pretending it’s at a monster truck rally in 1981 it’s killing whatever chance it had to market to either group. Everyone either wants to BE beauty queen or date her; no one wants to be the geek who stayed home.