Hey, kids! Rob Enderle would like to “rap” with you about what it is to be “cool”! Are you “down with” that?
[makes awkward hand gesture of what your dad thinks is a gang sign]
OK, yes, taking on a Rob Enderle piece is like shooting slow, stupid fish in a barrel with about a quarter of inch of frozen water in it, but some weeks you just need something comfortable, you know?
“How Apple Lost Its Cool (And How It Can Win It Back)” (no link but tip o’ the antlers to Yaakov).
While I was watching the coverage of Margret [sic] Thatcher’s passing …
Guy can’t even get through a lede without getting something wrong.
… something the former Prime Minister once said stuck with me. “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”
So, take this, put it in a blender with Rob’s brain, and you get a bunch of claptrap about Apple. Enjoy.
Right now, Apple has to tell people it and its products are cool.
According to Mr. Cool himself, Rob Enderle.
There is a way for Apple to fight back, but the company no longer has that skill, and apparently doesn’t know where to get it, either. Let me explain.
Must you?
You see this same effect with celebrities who are really cool for a while, then they have a movie flop, fall out of favor, do some really stupid things, and suddenly they aren’t cool anymore.
Interesting …
You could argue Charlie Sheen appears to be coming back as well (his new show is actually, in my opinion, better than his old show is without him; sorry Ashton Kutcher).
Just gonna leave that right there.
Apple’s mistake was running the old “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” campaign against Microsoft.
HE WROTE THAT. HE TOTALLY WROTE THAT. Look, the Macalope knows he’s not giving you the link but, he swears on a stack of alfalfa that Rob freaking Enderle sat down at a keyboard and banged his hands and possibly his elbows, knees, and head on it for a while and those words not only came out but were published by someone, for some God-awful reason.
This is like coming up with a nuclear bomb, but not really having a clue what to do when someone else produces their own.
Analogies are hard!
Now, Apple did some damage to Microsoft with its campaign, but by the time Vista shipped, Microsoft really wasn’t that cool anymore anyway, so Apple’s damage was pretty trivial.
What the … ? Who writes this stuff?!
Oh, right, Rob Enderle.
If you want to seem cool in school, you hang out with the cool kids.
It’s that easy! Just go stand next to them. But try not to get beat up. No, Jimmy, don’t touch the quarterba-JIMMY, NO!
OH, GOD, JIMMY!
That’s probably the most important difference between Jobs and Cook: Jobs would know what to do, and I don’t think Cook even sees the problem.
If there’s one person to whom we’d turn to tell us the mind of Steve Jobs …
Well, it sure wouldn’t be Rob Enderle.