Apple Stops ‘Thinking Different’ and Starts ‘Thinking Bigger’ with iPhone 6
“Bigger than bigger” is Apple’s new iPhone 6 slogan. One can almost hear a bro-programmer saying “That’s like…BIGGER SQUARED! BIGGER to the fourth power…BRO!” But when calmer heads prevail we see a play on words, ie “bigger” in terms of literal size “my Hummer is bigger than your Prius” and then there’s conceptually “bigger” ie “my idea is bigger than yours”. So perhaps Apple is taking a jab at their bigger screen producing competitor (Samsung) by saying we have a bigger idea, namely there’s more to the iPhone 6 than just a bigger size…are you with us?
Not really. That ‘big’ innovation they’re alluding to must still be a secret. And even though the late Steve Jobs said in 2010 “No one is going to buy a big phone”…the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus really are just that, ‘bigger’ phones. The only new feature seems to be “Apple Pay” which is a reworked version of Google Wallet and according to the LA Times “two-thirds of consumers express little or no interest” in it. The only product that actually has some new scent on it is the Apple Watch, which is bigger than…nothing…like an iPod Shuffle you strap to your wrist.
Stephen Colbert pokes fun at Apple’s “innovation” by making his own Apple Watch, the ‘”WristPad”
So what is Apple’s real message here? That size does matter? The days of “think different” may be in the past, Apple seems to be embracing America’s classic love of all things “bigger”. After all, this is the land of the first skyscraper, the monster truck rally, and the all-you-can-eat buffet. We invented the consumption based economy. Post WWI, Wall Street Banker Paul Mazur of Lehman Brothers famously said, “we must shift America from a needs- to a desires-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed.” And America ate it up.
Today, my iPhone 5 works perfectly fine, but all of a sudden it’s looking really small…maybe too small. It’s certainly not as BIG as the 6, and after all, the number 5 is already less than 6…wait a second, there’s a “PLUS” model!? ‘PLUS’ means MORE of something right? Jesus I need a new phone!
Apple is playing to the baser consumer in all of us. Nobody needs a bigger iPhone or a digital pay system they wont use, but they know how to make us desire it. We live in a capitalist society, and if Apple wants to be good at selling phones that is their right! But they should have to pay penance like KFC did back in 2011. In 2011 KFC released the MEGA JUG, a half-gallon (bigger than bigger) 800-calorie Pepsi Cola. And to show how consumer conscious they were, KFC pledged to donate one dollar to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation for every MEGA JUG sold. I couldn’t make this up…they actually did this at a chain in Utah:
Interested in comparing the specs of iPhone 6 with the competition? check out this engadget.com article.
