Will voters care about a sloppy spelling? Of course not. But the incident shows the dangers of politics in Apple's environment, where the company has total control.
The Mitt Romney campaign, you might have heard, rolled out its very first mobile app Tuesday night, marking the occasion of its candidate's acquisition of the necessary number of delegates to be the Republican nominee for president. A few details are worth noting about the iPhone app, called "With Mitt." This isn't the robust organizing tool that the Obama campaign's mobile app hopes to be. This is a microsite-as-app, a sort of fluffy Instagram-lite mobile gadget. Take a photo and apply a "sleek stylized overlay message and artwork that tells the world, 'I'm with Mitt!'," as the campaign puts it. Also, this app has social ambitions; you can tweet, Facebook, and email your creation with just a few clicks.
Oh, and among the 14 Mitt-ish slogans included in the app's overlays -- "Obama Isn't Working," "Day One, Job One," "We're with Mitt" -- is the now famous "A Better Amercia."
Sweet, sweet Amercia. Land of the fre, home of the braev.
Of course, Amercia-gate has spawned the inevitable mocking Tumblr, some of whose compositions are actually pretty clever. A particularly creative image uses the misspelled slogan over a rally photo that displays the sign, "Respect Are [sic] Country, Speak English." Another gets meta: a screen shot of "A Better Amercia" emblazoned with the "American Greatness" logo. Also of course, the episode has spawned musings about whether this lack of attention is something that American voters will carry with them when they head to the ballot box in November. (A prediction: No. They won't. Gaffes stick when they reinforce an existing criticism of a candidate. Is anyone really worried that Mitt Romney, whose personal crest may as well be a spreadsheet, is insufficiently obsessed with details?)