Apple welcomes Galaxy S9 with 'switch to iPhone' campaign
Commentary: New Cupertino ads claim it's easy to switch to iPhone and the device is more secure and offers better customer support than its competitors.
Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.
Apple wants you to know it's better. Because it says so.
They like to play aloof in Cupertino.
No, no, insisted Apple CEO Tim Cook last week, his company doesn't follow its rivals.
You'd think Apple doesn't even bother to look what the likes of Samsung are doing.
Yet here, with remarkable timing, is a new set of ads telling you that iPhone is better than "your phone."
And what could Apple mean by that, if not "your Android phone"? (If you still have a Windows Phone, my condolences.)
Yesterday, Samsung launched its Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus.
It was all a little muted. Apple, then, wants to take the opportunity to remind Androiders -- perhaps even those who are a touch disappointed with the S9 -- that the grass is so much greener in Appleland.
One ad, for example, suggests that unlike "your phone," the iPhone is made with zero waste.
Another shows that Apple's geniuses are always there to offer you support on the telephonic trapeze of life.
A third insists that iOS is more secure than Android.
Yet another crows that it's so very easy to switch to iPhone.
We've been here before.
Last May, Apple released several ads of a similar spirit. They didn't appear quite so adjacent to a Samsung launch.
Neither Apple nor Samsung immediately responded to a request for comment.
In my travels around various carrier stores, I've often been told by salespeople that it's not easy to persuade people to switch, though many salespeople turned about to be Samsung fans.
Recently, a Target salesman in Fort Myers, Florida, even told me: "I hardly ever get people in here who want a new phone. I have to really work to get them to buy something new."
And when he said "something new," he meant something new from the same OS they currently enjoy. Switching, he said, was a true rarity.
People are generally happy with their phones, I fear, just as the phones themselves aren't so different from each other anymore.
Why, last week Gartner declared that smartphone sales fell for the first time ever in the fourth quarter of 2017.
I suspect you have to endure a truly bad experience with a phone to contemplate the big switch.
But, just in case, Apple wants you to know that it's out there. As if you'd ever forget.
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