This had to singularly be one of the worst presentations Steve Jobs has given in a while.
I was watching the video on CNet. The video itself was short and edited to be more to the point. We learned in 2:53 what took Steve Jobs 30 minutes to say. But the first 10 minutes were the most surprising. Let me quote:
Well it turns out, it’s certainly not unique to the iPhone 4. That is one of the first things we learned. You can go on YouTube and see videos of Nokia phones, Motorolla phones and other phones doing the same thing. Nobody ever looked at them much before…
This is true.
I found a video for a Nokia E71 where the bars disappear in their left hand. HTC EVO tried the Deathgrip video, which showed if you hold it at the top, the signal goes down, so that is untrue. The Blackberry Deathgrip, however, caused antenna signal to go down.
Blame Game
So Steve was stating fact. Some other phones do loose signal if you cover the antenna. Maybe that’s something the FCC should look into, however, the blame game shouldn’t have been brought up as much as it did on Friday. The first 15 minutes was about stating “Other phones do it, too…”
Isn’t Apple Suppose to be Superior?
Everything I see and hear, Apple is suppose to be better than all other devices. Yes, they can make mistakes, however, don’t go saying that’s the standard when you tout that you are above the standard.
Steve said this was a “Very advanced, new antenna system”.
At least one with a very simple flaw.
Don’t Pick on Us, Bullies!
We don’t expect the iPhone to be perfect. We don’t expect any phone to be perfect. However, we expect a phone to work properly. When it doesn’t, we don’t want to hear “Well Johnny’s phone doesn’t work that well, either”.
I didn’t buy Johnny’s phone.
The Other Issues?
While the whole conversation was about “Antennagate”, nothing was mentioned about the yellowing issue. Nothing was mentioned about some owners seeing their screens crack easily. Mass quantities of phones put out through cheap manufacturing. Some issues happened simply because glue did not dry properly.
Of course, if it wasn’t for that cheap manufacturing, then we wouldn’t get our rumor leaks about Apple’s next big thing.
Should Apple have Recalled it?
The rest of the speech was Steve umming through a presentation he did not have that much time to learn. While that is understandable, the whole experience might have been better handled. Some say a $1.5 billion recall, for example, is in order.
While the Bumper is a simple fix (and apparently approved by Consumer Reports as Jobs noted), it has not helped Apple’s market share. In fact, shares have fallen over 10 percent since the iPhone 4 came out. $25 / Share. Now with 909 million shares out, that means Apple lost 22 billion dollars last month - 9 billion since Friday.
Of course, with a big price on a stock, dropping and raising always means major amounts of money are affected. Still, if Jobs would have said “Recall”, would that have appeased the stock holders, or would we have seen the price drop below $200 / share.
Overall
Apple has a product that contains a defect that is fixed by a case. That seems to go against Apple’s strategy for no cases, but O.K. – You can get a bumper for your phone. Maybe some software updates will fix the problem so you can take the bumper off. That remains to be seen.
The blame game might have hurt more than anything. There is an old addage that says if you get defensive to a problem, it may continue to be a problem. Since Apple surpasses the standard, do they have a right to be like any other phone?
