How Apple continues to attract younger users

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It’s been another busy week for me but I still show up like the menace I am.

Today’s Main Report

How the iPhone stays cool with younger people

Just a few Tuesdays ago Apple did one of its notorious keynotes. They are pretty much standard every few months, higher-ups from Apple will present to a camera or audience new Apple software and products that will be released soon. This latest keynote didn’t stray from that at all with the announcement of the iPhone 15 and Apple Watch Series 9 coming out of this keynote. Obviously, with these new tech releases, new features are added to warrant the upgrade from year to year. However, let’s face it most of the yearly upgrades haven’t been doing much to set themselves apart. The iPhone hasn’t had a genuinely earth-shattering new feature or hardware change in quite a few years. No knock to the hard workers at Apple but they know not to fix what isn’t broken. Apple has still been innovating creating new products like its VR headset or by making new services and apps that seem hard to pass on i.e. some of their new satellite services.

Even without truly innovative iPhones each year Apple knows it will always have a steady supply of users upgrading yearly. Apple knows that once people are locked into their ecosystem it’s hard to escape it. They are still a master at creating that ecosystem of ease of use between devices and connecting with other Apple users. Who you can FaceTime with or put into iMessage group chats with blue bubbles will always be hot discussion topics for as long as Apple continues to gate-keep that software to Apple hardware. The tech giant isn’t just coasting by on small upgrades and keeping us walled into the system, though, especially since many younger potential iPhone users aren’t yet locked in for life on the Apple ecosystem. This generation coming up now still could be on the fence about where to commit their phone allegiance.

The fruit company is coming to us where it knows younger people care. During the Tuesday keynote, Apple gave us an entire section dedicated to its green initiatives and how the company is exceeding a lot of its set timetables. However, the section was presented as a very clever and humorous skit sort of tip-toeing office-like humor but also not really. But, if that’s not pandering to Tiktok-crazed younger consumers then I guess the sky isn’t blue either. Bad metaphors aside it’s pretty apparent the skit was there to show younger people, who have vocally and physically shown they care about being green, that Apple doesn’t just see environmental consciousness as just another slide on a deck but something they are using their history of innovation of to work at. All in all the mother nature-based skit was still crammed into an hour-plus keynote that many of these potential new customers probably didn’t care about watching. Some people have even gone as far as to call it call it another corporate cringefest. That doesn’t mean nothing came out that day that these prospective users wouldn’t want to see though.

On the same day as the keynote beloved superstar Oliva Rodrigo released a music video for her song “Get Him Back”. The music video conveniently enough was filmed solely on the new iPhone 15, giving Apple another great marketing advert aimed right at where it’s biggest piece of potential new users can be found. Not to rehash a similar article I wrote about big artists shooting music videos on iPhones, in my humble opinion the new music video looks spectacular and seems to handle a lot of editing showing the quality that Apple is putting into its cameras in all aspects. Apple knows younger users care a lot about camera quality and making videos, so they know what they are doing by continuously sponsoring music videos. They also know which music videos to sponsor as well by selecting the songs and artists well.

Apple may not be as innovative as they once were but that doesn’t mean they aren’t at the top of their game. They know how to keep making the iPhone seem cool and how to block out the haters with whom they get to use the phones. They also are experts at keeping you ingrained in their system. They just know as Oliva said how to get em back.