Xblog

Here’s where it gets interesting: the don’t walk sign was flashing, so we were both stuck on the corner for a bit. Eventually, the car signal went from green, to yellow, and then to red. For a brief moment, the iPhoner’s brain misfired, and he somehow concluded that the red light meant it was now time for him to cross the street.

I say a brief moment, but he had enough time to get three or four steps out in to the street before he realized his error, and in that hesitant, diffident, and embarrassed manner that only geeks really ever master, he turned around and got back on the sidewalk. I could see the shame in his eyes: he had just exposed how uncool he was.

Now, I am a geek myself, and while I usually don’t walk out in to the middle of the street, I probably have geeky lapses like this several times a day. So I’m not about to poke fun at this guy for that. This stuff happens. What amuses me is what happened next.

In a desperate attempt to regain his composure and air of confidence, he brought up his iPhone to eye level, and started randomly fidgeting with it. As far as I could tell (based on his hand gestures), he was just scrolling through something, probably his contacts. He rubbed his techno-worrystone for a couple of seconds, and then lowered it back by his side.

His self-assured air had returned. He was cool again, because he’d just played with his iPhone. In that moment, I was forced to realize why Apple keeps winning the image battle with the techno-elite.

Apple sells something better than more speed, more capacity and more capabilities. Apple sells cool in a box.

That in itself was not a revelation to me. The painful realization that flowed from this moment, was that we geeks crave/need cool more desperately than any other segment of society, and for the most part we need it to be as straightforward to obtain as opening a box, because the road to cool involves dexterity or social skills, we’re screwed.