A surprisingly defiant Apple CEO resets reality for its most popular product, the iPhone 4.
Many people expected the Apple CEO to fall on his sword and apologize for everything—from, allegedly, ignoring the warnings of his engineers to being far too confident about the "magical" nature of his products.
Initially, as Jobs spoke and talked through the iPhone 4 antenna issues, I worried he was being too flip. He called it "AntennaGate" and seemed to be telling us things we all already knew. Then I realized that he was simply acknowledging the facts of mobile antennas and making something of an admission. Yes, Apple knew people could attenuate the external antenna if the phone was held a certain way, but it did not see this as a significant problem, nor did the company find this significantly different from what you'd find with other mobile phones.
The true highlight of Apple's press conference, however, was Steve Jobs' dismantling of current iPhone 4 perceptions, which revealed the reality of the situation. And this is an area where the Apple CEO and I are in total agreement. Let's step back a moment first.
As the iPhone 4 situation unfolded (I, too, was able to recreate the bar-killing "death grip"), I wondered if this was a bigger issue than I originally thought. I went back and reread Mobile Managing Editor Sascha Segan's Apple iPhone 4 review. Segan said "It's not the best phone-calling phone" and "the iPhone 3GS actually connected slightly more calls successfully than the iPhone 4 did—about one in ten additional calls went through. The iPhone 4 gave a truer picture of signal strength than the 3GS did, though; its "bar" meter is quicker to respond to changes in RF than the 3GS is."
Despite this, PCMag awarded the iPhone 4 an Editors' Choice award as the best smartphone on the AT&T network. In my experience, it makes and hold calls fine and is certainly no worse or better than my BlackBerry Bold, which is also on the 3G network. If all you want to do is make phone calls, then, yes, the iPhone 4 could frustrate you. However, if that's all you want to do, why are you buying an iPhone and paying all that extra money for a data plan? It's time we acknowledge that we buy phones like the Apple iPhone 4 for so much more than just calls (e-mail, text, photos, video, social networking, gaming).
Silencing the Critics
During Steve Jobs' press conference, he used data to pick apart the argument that there's something seriously wrong with the iPhone 4. He said that, yes, the iPhone 4 did drop slightly more calls than the 3Gs—about 1 in 100. That's less than what Segan found in his testing, but those numbers might have changed if we tested call quality over a longer period of time.
If you've spent any time in the last few weeks reading blogs, Twitter streams, and news reports, you might believe that Apple has a major consumer disaster on its hands. The iPhone 4 is easily one of the fastest selling consumer electronics products in recent history, yet Apple stores weren't clogged with consumers clamoring to return the phone. Steve Jobs' own data supported my anecdotal findings: Just one half of one percent had actually returned the phone thus far.
Steve Jobs did say some odd things during the press conference. He talked about the kind of home he lives in—brick—to illustrate how good the iPhone 4's reception can be. It might have made more sense for him to tell us if he has an AT&T cell tower near his home. Plus, Jobs only succeeded in sounding weird when he said Apple loves its customers. No one expects a company to come out and say they hate or disregard customers. And the whole foray into how Apple had earned the benefit of the doubt was shaky ground at best.
I liked when Steve Jobs responded to the charges in the Bloomberg story that said Apple ignored the warnings of one of its own antenna engineers. Sure, it becomes something of a he said/she said, but it's always good to see someone take a stand and go far enough to ask an opponent to back up their accusations. I doubt we'll hear about that one again.
Throughout the press conference, I marveled at Steve Jobs feistiness, He needled competitors and ticked off facts: iPhone 4 is the most lauded product the company has ever made, antenna issues are not the sole province of Apple iPhones, and maybe the company was a bit too confident. Though it did sound a little sad to me, Jobs was right when he said that people like to see the mighty fall. We're always building people up to tear them down. I guess that's part of human nature. On the other hand, Jobs' insistence on calling his products "magical," does set him and Apple up. Notice, by the way, he did not use the word "magical" once during this press conference. That was a smart move on his part.
I—and those answering my poll—properly predicted Apple's ultimate response to this situation: Free bumpers for everyone and the iOS4.01 download, which does a better job of illustrating AT&T's poor 3G coverage in too many areas.
Look, I'm no Apple apologist, but I have been saying all along that the Apple iPhone 4 is, easily, the best touch-screen smartphone I've ever seen. I worried that too many were simply piling on Apple without really understanding the positives and negatives of the product and technology issues at play. Steve Jobs may have said some warm and fuzzy things during the unprecedented press conference, but that's really not his true nature. He's a fighter. As I said on Twitter, Steve Jobs has stared death in the face and sees "AntennaGate" as simply another problem to solve. And I think he just did so.