When you have a flat tire, do you:
A. Keep driving, complaining about how bumpy the road is?
B. Pump air into the tire and hope it won’t leak out this time?
C. Bolt on a new axle?
D. Repair or replace the tire?
In far too many companies the answer is, for some reason, “Anything but D.”
The most inadvertently funny ad on television these days brags about a brilliant new feature of the latest iPhone. Apple has just invented cut and paste, hitherto available only in PC-DOS, OS/2, Windows, every version of the Mac OS, Linux and every other Unix flavor, every Palm PDA and smartphone since 1996, Android, and the original Apple Newton.
Impressive.
To be fair, which is nowhere near as much fun as indulging in ridicule, Apple had few choices. It needed to announce the feature. “Sorry we’re so late,” would have damaged its reputation for innovation. What’s left? Brag, and hope nobody notices the silliness.
