how do you solve a problem like steve jobs?

this is just one sample of the "get a mac" ad campaign that has proven so successful for apple over the past 5 years or so. i love these commercials, and i have to admit that they are partially responsible for beginning my now growing relationship with apple and its products. i've owned a macbook for two years now; i buy music on iTunes, and then listen to it on my iPod, or stream it wirelessly to my stereo using my AirPort. i love apple products. so much, in fact, that just last week i finally took the plunge and purchased an iPhone, and i haven't been able to put it down since.

all of that said, after watching steve jobs's press conference yesterday addressing concerns over iPhone 4's antenna, i have to admit that i'm still glad to have bought an iPhone 3Gs. and that's not a dig on iPhone 4... it's a dig on jobs.

a little background: about a week ago, stories about reception problems with apple's newest iPhone model began peppering the news media and infiltrating consumer websites. Here's consumerreports.org's testimony that they can't recommend buying the product. and with good reason... why buy a phone with unreliable reception?

jobs's answer yesterday can be interpreted in two ways: we might say he reminded us that no one buys a smartphone for its fantastic reception. indeed, jobs devoted the majority of his presentation to discussing how comparable smartphones on the market today have similar difficulties retaining signal when held in a particular fashion. yes... i'm no techie, so i'm taking his word for it here.

but most pundits in the technology world are hearing this answer as they would a child on a playground: well blackberry and android and samsung are doing it, too! i'm sorry to say that these interpretations aren't too much of an exaggeration. i will concede to jobs that the press has seemed concerned not so much with calls dropped by smartphones, but with calls dropped by iPhones. of course there's a story in a wavering product coming from a seemingly infallible company. and it seems that there is a lot of truth to what jobs spent 25 minutes showing us... again and again. yes, apple is not perfect, and neither are smartphones. good. great.

but could you imagine hearing the voice that steve jobs used in his press conference yesterday coming from justin long while he's depicting mac in the "get a mac" ads? the ads position mac as a calm and confident alternative to pc's anal retentiveness, paranoia, and other general usability problems. to me, jobs sounded more like pc does in these commercials - defensive, pedantic and a bit pathetic, drenching us with data and charts, repeating the same points over and over again. other phones do it, too... oh, and here's how iPhone is still far superior to whatever these other brands can offer. WE'RE STILL THE BEST, OKAY!

now i'm exaggerating, but underneath jobs's apologies for the trouble and proposed solutions (which were late - 25 minutes in - and which everyone was anticipating correctly, anyway) the real issue rumbled. jobs was tired of getting his feathers ruffled. no one can blame him for that, but jobs's address yesterday doesn't seem consistent with the entertaining and smart depictions of its products for which apple is well-known. if this particular ad campaign shows us anything, it's that apple wants to DIFFERENTIATE itself from other, non-apple operating systems. jobs's strategy yesterday - regardless of its truth value - undermines this effort to make buying an apple product a truly unique experience.

jobs might do well to revisit some of his company's ads. it'd be easy to do; someone has stitched a bunch of them together into a single video on youtube:

i look forward to seeing what the folks behind the "get a mac" campaign might develop in the coming months to respond to what might have (even if it shouldn't have) become an unexpected, and therefore significant, PR problem.