iPhone Baby Shaker Just What Apple Ordered

(MoneyWatch)  I'm afraid my colleague Erik Sherman is all wet where the Baby Shaker app is concerned -- and so are the alarmists claiming that the now-withdrawn app would have encouraged people to shake actual babies. The iPhone application -- which featured a crude image of a baby that emitted squalling sounds until the user shook the phone, at which point the caricatured baby's eyes were X'd out -- is in extremely poor taste, but far from presaging Apple's fal from grace, demonstrates how it can seemingly charge customers whatever it wants without suffering a drop-off in loyalty.

The outcry against the Baby Shaker app was led by the Sarah Jane Brain Project, an organization that is trying to raise awareness and further medical research into this truly horrific phenomenon. Jennipher Dickens, SJBP's communications director whose 2-year-old son was was shaken by his 21-year-old father, said in a statement, "This horrible iPhone app will undoubtedly be downloaded thousands of times by others in that same young male demographic -- the population group that is already statistically the most likely to shake babies. As a result of the child abuse my son endured in the form of Shaken Baby Syndrome, my son now has irreversible brain damage."

Shaking babies is reprehensible in the extreme (and as a parent, my heart goes out to Jennipher), but the idea that this app could encourage young men to shake actual babies is ridiculous. Voodoo dolls, pinatas and scape goats -- not to mention violent video games -- are used as formal and informal ways of blowing off steam and directing anger towards inanimate objects in many societies, including our own.

That said, Apple was smart to pull it as soon as the ruckus began, because it has nothing to gain from defending an application that it didn't spend resources developing and which can only bring it unwanted controversy at this point. But this is hardly an example of Apple management's "uncanny knack for shooting itself in the foot with a howitzer," as Erik states. On the contrary, it seems like an example of very fast reaction, extinguishing a spark before it became a firestorm.

Contrast that with Facebook, which appeals to a similar demographic as Apple, and whose management has on several occasions tried to face down its customer base before ultimately backing down in the face of determined opposition. Apple is by far the quieter of the two companies, a fact that infuriates reporters and analysts who try to cover it, but it's also by far the smarter.

Erik makes the point that Apple lost a point and half of market share in the personal computer segment during the last quarter, which seems like a big deal in such a mature market. But what Erik neglects to mention (I suspect to make his point, because little escapes Erik's ken) is that Apple's product mix is changing for the better, with greater emphasis on higher-margin items like the iPod Touch. In fact, its gross margin of 36.4% was 390 basis points higher than the guidance it had given the market, prompting COO Tim Cook to crow that "sales of higher-margin products... were better than planned" during yesterday's conference call.

Shooting itself in the foot with a howitzer? There are a lot of companies that would like to license Apple's howitzer if that's what shooting yourself in the foot feels like.

Earlier, I said the Baby Shaker app is part and parcel of Apple's success, and here's why: Apple excels at creating emotional connections between itself and its customers with exactly these kind of applications (as horrible as it may seem to parents of children suffering from shaken baby syndrome). With a little bit of objectivity, you can see that Baby Shaker is in line with many other applications that customers can choose from to make their experience with Apple products seem more personal. If Apple weren't able to do that, it would have to be driven by price, and not only would iPods, iTouches, and i-everything-elses be much less expensive, but its margins would be under severe pressure as well.