The folks at Apple have never been shy about taking a few good-natured pot-shots at their competitors -- the "Hello, I'm a Mac; And I'm a PC" ads are, of course, the most brilliant example -- but a press release they issued this morning, touting improvements in the battery life and build quality of the soon-to-be-released iPhone, reduces those shots to an almost Zen-like business communication simplicity.
After five typically crisp paragraphs of information and one customary paragraph of boilerplate, the press release, in a move I don't ever remember seeing from any previous Apple press releases, supplies two simple charts to puts its announcements in context. The first details the difference between the iPhone's originally announced battery-life stats and the iPhone's current, what-you'll-get-when-you-buy- it-11-days-from-now battery-life stats. It's clean and clear and effective. It illustrates the points nicely. And its wholly unremarkable.
But the second chart, the one that compares some of the iPhone's specs to those of its main competitors, struck me as a creation of elegant and economical beauty:
The images of the phones -- which one looks like it comes from the future, and which ones look like they're from an awkward and clunky past? -- strike an opening aesthetic blow. The Screen Size, Wi-Fi, and Talk Time differences are simple but often dramatic, providing both a tech and a practical punch. And Display Surface comparison is both smart and -- you want Glass? or (cheap ol') Plastic? -- subtly suggestive. But those 12 spreading across the lower right corner of the chart, the ones detailing -- or, more accurately, not detailing -- the Internet Use, Video Playback, and Audio Playback batter lives of the iPhone's competitors, are what elevate this chart to a kind of insidious and elemental greatness.
That simple, innocuous phrase, They Don't Say, repeated over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, begins as fact, morphs before long into accusation, and finally, somewhere around the seventh or eighth iteration, settles into damnation. What at first seems like an innocent omission soon begins to feel, at least to savvy consumers demanding a straight-up tech-spec comparison, a little shady. After a couple of repetitions, it starts to feel like obstinacy. And then, by the time you've reached that twelfth and final and oh-so- frustrating Battery Life No Comment box, it looks and feels like a conspiracy.
These other phones are hiding something, you think. And that can't be good. Or smart.
Working by innuendo, by implication, by simple (and conveniently unspoken) insinuation, the chart is like a Karl Rove attack ad recast for the appendix of a corporate press release; it professes straight talk, creates a context in which its opponents own claims -- or, in this case, lack of claims -- can hurt them, then just sits back and lets the viewer do the dirty work. In its own, quiet, "We didn't say anything, but then neither did they" way, Apple's rhetorical strategy is almost as crisp and sleek and subconsciously sexy as it's computers; that final, seemingly innocuous addition to the press release is a minor masterpiece of facts and suggestions -- you may not be sure about our candidate, but you really ought to worry about those other guys -- and the tempting, if often tenuous, connections an audience will draw between them.