The Macalope brings you a bit of the ol’ good news, bad news today. Sadly, the good news comes first which is always means it’s really just bad news.
Good news: we may have moved on from the argument that “Face ID is a usability nightmare that doesn’t work all the time like Touch ID did except for all the times it didn’t.”
Bad news: the replacement argument is even dumber.
Writing for Mashable, Jack Morse says “New Apple ad fails to convince us Face ID is cool.” (Tip o’ the antlers to Nick.)
There are some things in life that are just unambiguously cool, like, I don’t know, motorcycles.
Cigarettes. Binge drinking. Sex addiction. Knife fights in back alleys in 1920s Hong Kong.
Actually, that last one is super cool.
Apple’s Face ID is not one of those things.
How do we know Face ID is not cool? Because Morse tells us it’s not cool.
And yet, as a new ad for the iPhone X unlock feature makes clear, the cutting-edge kids of Cupertino desperately want us to think otherwise.
Wait. Wait. Are you saying that advertising is trying to… manipulate our perceptions about products by attempting to create an image of what using those products is like?
[third eye opens, roll ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey]
It’s not working.
Oh, but it is working.
See how easy that is? The Macalope doesn’t even really care about defining Face ID as “cool.” He doesn’t even have an iPhone X. But you can just type things into this little flat device with the screen attached and then push a button to make the things go out on the internet and then it becomes an opinion that someone else has to refute. It’s amazing.
It may actually cause the end of civilization as we know it, but it’s amazing.
Now we are at an impasse. Morse says it’s not cool but the Macalope says it is. If you write about the relative coolness of Face ID now, you must note that opinions differ.
You may also note that they are both stupid and based on no objective truths. That is also accurate.
Actually, if you could lead with that, that would be great. TIA.
Morse goes on to describe the ad because he knows any time you describe something it automatically becomes not cool. Smart move. To the Macalope is seems like a fine ad. Not one of Apple’s best, but one that creates an evocative if over-the-top metaphor for using Face ID.
But it ain’t cool, apparently.
Either way, the attempt to equate the utter blandness of Face ID with something exciting is ultimately unsuccessful…
Must be true because someone wrote it on the internet. In this article.