Google's latest ads depict Apple users as conformists

There's a very clever trick Apple's been pulling for quite a while.

It tells you that buying an iPhone makes you cool. At the same time, it doesn't exactly release a plethora of the things, so that you can stand out from the other cool people. Ultimate message: cool people all wear the same thing.

This is something that Google has decided to capitalize on. Three new ads for Android have slipped into the world just as Apple has its iPad day and Google introduces its Lollipop (why, why wasn't it "Leningrad"?) and Nexus 6 and 9.

These appealing animated spots offer a tease for the Nexus 6. They also leave the feeling that those who use Android aren't resentful nerds, but cheery people with whom one would happily go on a long, sweaty trip -- or at least stand next to at the bus stop.

It's the message, though, that's telling. First, there's: "All kinds of phones for all kinds of folks." Now doesn't this suggest that a certain company not far from Cupertino fails to offer all kinds of phones? Doesn't it imply that Apple doesn't appeal to all kinds of folks?

Then there's the tagline: "Be Together. Not The Same." Of course Apple isn't mentioned by name. However, right now, there are only two operating systems that dominate emotions, phones and pockets; iOS and Android.

In Android, there are indeed many phones of many sizes at many prices. Android is, in one sense, the people's phone.

Yet there's a certain type of person who isn't moved by this. They won't listen when Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt claims that Samsung had iPhone 6-type products a year ago. They had big phones, they will say, but they're not as sleek and beautiful as the iPhone 6.

For these people, Apple still offers more sense of style, ease of use and depth of thought than anything they've seen from Android.

Does that make them conformists? Do they care? Will they ever?