Creative destruction: Apple & Univision

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc etc  /  LMMiami.com

“Courage is always better”
Jorge Luis Borges

Some companies have courage.
Aka cojones.
Others don’t.
Apple belongs to the former group.
As does Univision.
Why?
Let’s see.
According to hearsay in the tech world, the next generation of iPhones is NOT bound to dazzle us drooling masses with a new feature.
Quite the contrary, the rumor mill has it that the new iPhone’s most newsworthy feature will be the absence of one: the audio jack.
Yes, the little hole where you connect your headphones will, allegedly, be nowhere to be found.
An omnipresent fixture that has graced the casing of pretty much every video &/or audio electronic gadget ever manufactured since the days of the WalkMan™.
The little orifice on your first or business class armrest (not sure whether coach seats have them too, I rarely venture into the back of an aircraft where the populace dwell in such close quarters).
See, in the brilliant, arrogant, secretive, cultish, twisted minds of Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, its CDO (that’s Chief Design Officer for you mortal) Sir Jony Ive and their minions, the audio jack is a decades-old antiquity and as such it simply must go.
It is ready for retirement and that’s precisely what they will do.
Because?
Because they can.
Planned obsolescence taken to 11.
Apple tea-leaf readers presume the only way to connect headphones or “earbuds” to the new devices will be either thru Bluetooth or the charging port.
Yes, new iPhones might come with a new charging port too.
Apple, the company we love to hate and hate to love will do the unthinkable again.*
Their usual MO.
Like they did when they launched the iPhone in the first place, the first smartphone with a touchscreen devoid of a physical keyboard.
The first nail in the Blackberry’s coffin.
Or when they confronted none other than the FBI over the encryption of a terrorist’s device.
Talk about free fxxxing publicity.
This time around though, the move will not be so radical.
They enjoy the luxury of a colossal, captive market share.
Still, if rumors prove to be true, they will render billions, if not trillions of headphones obsolete and force millions of Apple fanboys and fangirls to shell out hard earned cash to buy new contraptions in order to adapt &/or upgrade their beloved, overpriced gadgets.
Needless to say, a big controversy will arise.
Armies of pundits will cry foul.
Others will applaud like Sea World seals demanding their treat.
The socialsphere will go red hot over the subject.
A myriad memes will flood your Facebook and Linkedin feeds.
Matt Lauer will wet his undies on national TV discussing the whole thing like it was the cure of male pattern baldness.
Everybody and their cousin will talk, tweet and ping about it, once again doing Apple its marketing bidding and saving them motherlovers billions of media dollars.
Talk about “earned media”.
Talk about “creative destruction”.
Which brings us to Univision.
Who wasn’t surprised when Univision terminated its decades-old, money-printing relationship with Mr. Mario Kreutzberger, aka Don Francisco?
Quite an Apple-like move, don’t you think?
Time will tell whether or not it was the right course of action, yet it certainly took some cojones.
Now they bought Gawker Media.
Bravo, bravo, bravísimo.
Who would’ve thunk?
To be continued next week.

*If you read my column frequently, thank you, you might be aware that I have a bad case of love-hate relationship with them Cupertino folks. On the one hand, I think they are an overhyped bunch of opportunists who steal ideas left and right and sell stupidly overpriced products to the moronic masses. On the other hand, I’m terribly envious of their superb, sturdy industrial design, their brilliant, cold blooded business arrogance and their gargantuan profitability: AAPL’s EBITDA ending March 2016 was north of 80 billion. Which means one thing: every time you buy an Apple product you’re overpaying obscenely. Thru the nose and various other cavities in your physique. Leaving tons of money on the table. Hence, I refuse to use Apple products: my mobile phones are an HTC One (Android) and a Yezz Andy 5Q (Android too) and I am writing this piece on a Hewlett Packard laptop with a Windows 10 operating system.

 

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