Speaking of preventable disasters, today’s conference about iPhone has just ended, and it went pretty much the way you’d expect. Apple did nothing wrong, they love their users, all phones have this problem, blah blah
Cutting through Steve Jobs’s extended eloquent prose, Apple’s final solution to the iPhone antenna mess is to offer customers a new case. Certainly not a perfect solution, but at least it is a solution. There is a catch though, customers will only be offered a free case till September 30th because after that “Maybe Eminem will come out with a band-aid that goes over the corner and everyone will want that.” That might be Steve Job’s response, but we expect that Apple is working on a RealTM fix for this problem which might be coming around that time, Apple is just to coy to admit it, this is the part of where they pretend there is no problem.
To their credit, they will offer refunds for people who already bought cases. Once again a catch, third-party cases will not be included, because “The case vendors haven’t had a history of helping to keep our work under wraps.” Way to love your users Steve! Punish them for what the case vendors do to you.
Now on to the rest.
Apple continues to claim that all phones have this issue, and they showed other mobile phones which suffer from the same issues, a Blackberry phone, HTC phone and Samsung phone running different operating systems, all dropping bars when gripped tightly.
Of course Steve Jobs was ready as ever with data, the first part of being “Smartphones have weakspots”. He also claimed that unlike what people expected after all this hullabaloo, only 0.55% of users reported this problem to AppleCare. This was coupled with a return rate of 1.7% which is a third of the iPhone 3GS (which was 6% apparently).
Finally an admission! The call drop rate of the iPhone 4 is higher, we were so expectant, but apparently it is less than 1 call per 100 calls more than the iPhone 3GS. This means that the iPhone 4 is only slightly suckier than the iPhone 3GS, wohoo! Things are not looking good for the 3GS though, which has apparently had a higher return rate, and almost as many call drops.
Steve Jobs then passionately proclaimed that they care about each and every user, so for the few people having this problem they will be giving away free cases. As for the proximity sensor problems, maybe in the next software update, and the white iPhone 4.
This session ended with a rather amusing Question / Deflection session, which further promulgated the fact that Apple is just covering their ass as cheaply as they can.
What gets us is, why call such a public press conference if you thing the issue is that minor? We’re pretty sure more that 0.55% of Apple customers would prefer a more open store, and the facility to install apps from anywhere. What of them? Don’t you love them anymore?
One of the comments made by Steve Jobs was particularly ironic: “Maybe we should have a wall of PR people keeping us away from this stuff, but we don’t, we take it really personally.” regarding why they are having a conference. This coming from a company known for its secrecy, where employees aren’t allowed to blog about work, and have to work in utter secrecy. This only goes to show how much Apple’s promotion of open technologies is just a facade.
You can check out Engadget’s live blog for a transcript of the event – the comments are a must-read.