How the iPhone Gets You Laid

There's been a blitz of new phones announced in the past few weeks, and I've heard a rumor that explains why: Apple has determined the month of September is when phone sales peak. Apparently this explains some of the peculiar roll-outs in advance of next month.

The latest one-two punch comes first from Motorola's Moto X, a decidedly middle of the road smartphone whose only interesting feature is voice recognition that requires a mantra-like repetition of the line "OK Google Now."

The first thing I wondered was why the catch phrase wasn't "OK, Moto Now" or just "Moto" or whatever. I thought this was a Motorola phone. Why this "OK Google Now" stuff? Unless it's going to be rolled out to all Android phones, which raises the question as to what makes this so special on the Moto X. Not much in the long run I'd guess.

Just as that phone was announced, LG came out with a topper, the LG G2. The huge event was streamed so we could accurately gauge the boredom of the New York media. They turned out in droves to actually see the new phone, knowing full well in the next few weeks more new phones will be rolled out. Is this tedious or what?

Motorola was a little trickier, at least on the West Coast. It had a former Apple evangelist turned traitor-for-Google set up a four-hour booze-fest for bloggers at the Google environs to persuade social media mavens they should blog and praise the new Moto X. In exchange they got a new Moto X phone. This apparent goofball fest was delightfully busted by Jonathan Littman in a Huff Po article. Apple doesn't need this falsely-generated hoopla. The way I see it, the more competitor phones that come out, the better off Apple becomes. The iPhone remains the only real prestige smartphone. Why go nuts with a million new models, à la Samsung, when your phone is still the only one people respect?

This brings me to a weird story my son told me that he has checked out and thinks is probably true. I can believe it. It's about Millennials, so those born before 1980 may want to avert their eyes.

A friend of his claims that in the modern bar scene you will not get laid if you you have anything other than an iPhone. It's an automatic deal killer if you pull out an HTC One or even a Galaxy S 4. An oversized Samsung Galaxy Note would be a deal breaker for certain.

He noticed this only recently and began to test the hypothesis with friends. They all agreed that only the iPhone closes any propositioning in today's world of boy-meets-girl.

As a baby-boomer myself, this makes no sense unless millennial females are incredibly shallow. Then again it may be a good filtering mechanism. The iPhone does not inspire manic smartphone envy from geeks who have to have the latest and greatest all the time. You just have an iPhone and get a new one once in a while and that's that. You are good to go. Let the idiots drool all over a phone that requires you to say "OK Google Now" to get anywhere. It's dumb.

Thus the smart money uses the iPhone, has more sex, and doesn't really care about all the fuss over the new phone du jour. Apple said it best decades ago when it quoted marketing expert Elmer Wheeler from 1937: sell the sizzle not the steak. This translates into the aesthetics of a device, not what cool processors are in the thing.

Its competitors all sell features and specs. Apple sells the sizzle. And, according to some people at least, this gets you lucky. Who knew?

Have fun competing with that Samsung, HTC, LG, and Moto.