Both simple and surprising
When I first read Apple's July 2nd response to the iPhone 4's antenna problems, something bothered me about it. As I've been writing about the iPhone 4 lately, I went back to read it again and I think I know why: Apple's reaction is flippant and condescending. The tone of the whole PR release is all wrong for something as significant as this. Let's break down some of the most egregious problems in the release. I've included a link to the complete release at the bottom of this post if you'd like to read the entire thing.
"It has been judged by reviewers around the world to be the best smartphone ever, and users have told us that they love it. So we were surprised when we read reports of reception problems, and we immediately began investigating them. Here is what we have learned."
"Surprised" is clearly the wrong word to use here. As the builders of this product and with the complete design and all the phone's engineers at their disposal, a better word to use would have been "concerned" or "alarmed." It's not like the iPhone 4 had been out in the wild being used by millions of people or even thousands of people prior to its release. Apple releases products like a multimillion person beta test. It's release on the 24th was the first time that a significant enough sample of users began using the product. Notwithstanding the fact that I believe the iPhone team was fully aware of the issues prior to launch, the tone of this pair of sentences immediately calls into question the credibility of those people reporting the problems: "Everyone else loves the phone. Why don't you?"
If you take Apple at its word that these complaints are coming from outliers and that the majority of people are thrilled with the reception, Apple does not seem to be leaving any room for the possibility of a defect. What if there is a defect in some phones that occurred during manufacturing? Isn't that a possibility? Apparently not.
After explaining that holding *any* phone will attenuate the signal, the release continues:
"At the same time, we continue to read articles and receive hundreds of emails from users saying that iPhone 4 reception is better than the iPhone 3GS. They are delighted. This matches our own experience and testing."
Again with the implication that the antenna issue reports are coming in from freaks and idiots who clearly can't see how great the phone is.
Then this:
"We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising."
It seems like this line, the one line that sticks out in the release (as it's the only one sentence paragraph in the whole thing), sums up the tone of the entire message from Apple: Not only is the iPhone 4 delighting everyone, but even the iPhone's flaws delight!
"Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars."
When I read these words, I heard, "Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that we'd been reporting signal strength in a way that would make both our phone and our carriers (AT&T etc) look better." In the cell phone world, this is akin to Ferrari issuing a statement saying, "We were stunned to discover that our speedometers display our cars' speeds at 180MPH when in reality the car was only moving 90MPH."
"To fix this, we are adopting AT&T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength."
Recently recommended? When was this recommended? Last week?
"We have gone back to our labs and retested everything, and the results are the same— the iPhone 4’s wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped. For the vast majority of users who have not been troubled by this issue, this software update will only make your bars more accurate. For those who have had concerns, we apologize for any anxiety we may have caused."
So here's the crux of this PR release, "we apologize for any anxiety we may have caused." In other words, my dropped calls and completely non-existent data signal are simply the result of anxiousness. And demonstrable problems with the iPhone 4's antenna implementation are just "concerns."
So here's the deal, Apple: the iPhone 4 is a great device that is fantastic in many ways but in the end it's a fancy walkie-talkie and flaws in its design that result in dropped calls and no signal mean that there is a serious issue with the most basic function of the device. If you were in the car business, it's as if you've sold people a car and when people begin reporting to you that if they hold the steering wheel a certain way the car stalls, and you respond by questioning whether this actually happens in real life (like how Toyota questioned whether their cars had really accelerated on their own) and wax on about how much people love sitting in it and how beautiful the dashboard is. And have you seen how brilliantly the paint sparkles?
