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Apple – Is the honeymoon finally over?
July 16th, 2010 Atos Blog Tags: Apple, Current Affairs, iphone 4, The Future!
Posted in Firm of the Future, Technology |
Since the Messiah <ahem> Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company hasn’t really put a foot wrong, moving from an over-the-hill acquisition target to getting a higher market valuation than Microsoft.
But Wait … There are a lot of people publically musing on the iPhone4 release debacle. Apple’s suggestion that the poor aerial performance is an operator error (for holding it left handed !), beggars belief. The latest press-release is now blaming part of the problem on the algorithm they have used to represent signal strength (though they do repeat the “It’s how you hold it” line again).
This gives the appearance of a company so self-obsessed and convinced of their own inherent coolness that they are sleepwalking into PR suicide – blaming customers. There are parallels with Microsoft’s long running denial that viruses and spam were the user’s problem and a side effect of their “Freedom”. It took years for Microsoft to cotton-on to the fact that they were losing hordes of customers to Apple, and they’ve pretty much been in catch-up for most the last decade – and they are getting there, though the brief aberration of Vista still needs to be buried in history.
It remains to be seen what Apple are going to do – they should be thankful that BP are keeping them off the front pages for now.
I understand from TechWatch that there is to be a press conference today on the ongoing aerial issue (and I think the article means a re-call would cost in the order of $1.5billion)
I think Apple have “Interesting Times” ahead.
I have watched a recording of the press conference and Jobs harps on about how smartphones are not yet perfect and the problem is not exclusive to the iPhone 4. He then proceeds to show the audience You Tube videos whereby competitor’s phones suffer similar reception problems when held in the notorious ‘death grip’.
My only problem with this is why does the iPhone 3GS not suffer a similar fate? As much as I’ve tried to recreate it! Apple needs to admit they’ve messed up here. It seems the ‘fantastic engineering’ that went into this new type of antenna was nothing more than a marketing gimmick to convince people to upgrade. There are only so many bells and whistles they can add on to the phone year-by-year.
Indeed, it reminded me of a political Spinmeister at work – liberally spreading the FUD.
I think the announcement for free cases on Friday was about the best they can do, but I hope they stop trying to spin this and make sure there’s an iPhone4.1 with improved reception soon.
I believe there was an increase in the uptake of iMacs & MacBooks that coincied with the flop of MS Vista. I’m talking primarily about the consumer market here rather than corporates.
Did Vista really lose share to MacApple or just to a longer tail of XP deployments until 7 came along?
As an owner of an iPhone 4 I am waiting with baited breath to see how they respond. I do get the signal problem, and not just when I am using it with my left hand…
Apple have worked wonders over the past few years to create the cult they now have, I think they would have to do an awful lot more wrong to lose their following.