This post was originally published on my personal blog, but I felt that its relevance holds just as true in the development world and decided to publish it here as well.
If you are on Tumblr, view the original post here. Otherwise, read on!
My friends know that when it comes to Apple stuff – ask John, he’ll know. I don’t say that to be cocky or to presume I know everything about the company, but I do read a fair bit of information on it pretty regularly, so to say I have more knowledge than the common person is true.
So Apple releases this awesome new iPhone. Great, cool, wonderful. Some dude realizes “Oh, If I take my huge ass hand and cover the entire fucking antenna of the phone, I lose bars”. So he makes a video. It goes viral, at least in the Apple rumor circle anyway.
Thus the phrase that actually makes me cringe was born: iPhone Reception Issue.
From this point, everyone and their mother starts getting involved. People start making videos, commenting on blogs and posting in forums. “Look – when I smother the entire phone in my sweaty hands, the phone loses reception”.
Steve Jobs responds to a customer complaint email basically saying “Don’t hold the phone that way”. This didn’t go over too well but it was quickly supplemented by an actual Apple press release stating that to a degree, covering the phone will cause a reduction in signal, etc.”
What many failed to do (and realize) is that every experiment involved covering the phone as it sat on a table, etc. When I tried it, and successfully reproduced the problem, I made a phone call and it worked fine.
Then the usual complaints… the iPhone sucks, it’s AT&T’s fault, I want my money back, Apple give me a free case, etc. Then my favorite part: the class action law suit. Part of Apple’s reputation of making excellent, damn near perfect products is that people know they make excellent, damn near perfect products. When the slightest problem starts, they get sued. I don’t remember who said it, but on Twitter I saw a post that said “When I have a problem with my car, I take it to get fixed, I don’t sue Honda”.
Today, Apple released a statement that said that (like I expected), the “reception issue” is actually a display bug in the way that the bars are calculated. Surprisingly, they said that the amount of bars you see probably are too high and that a software update is coming with a new way of calculating this. Great. So it’s not a hardware problem, it’ll be fixed.
What does the news get out of this: “Apple admits to iPhone reception issue”.
No… there’s a difference. And it angers me that people don’t see it.
