iPhone 4 Reception Recall Ruckus Roundup 479
Readers today have been sending tons of stories about the iPhone 4, so here are a few of the highlights: Following the Consumers Reports announcement that the iPhone has antenna problems, Andy Patrizio asks if Apple can withstand the pressure to recall, while CNet estimates that a recall would cost them $1.5B. But that's just the latest on the iPhone 4 — the long running carrier exclusivity lawsuit rumors have been upgraded to Class Action status.
Stock price is falling too (Score:5, Insightful)
CNet estimates that a A recall would cost them $1.5B
It's not only that cost. In 3 days Apple's stock has gone down a huge 5%, costing Apple and their shareholders millions of dollars and creating huge image problems.
It also look like Apple's PR team completely messed up, from the "learn a new way to hold a phone" to removing of any critical comments from their support forums. Considering PR and marketing is one of Apple's strongest areas and which pushes everything they do forward, they did some incredibly stupid decisions.
Now that they are basically ignoring the problem, any more time they take doing nothing will cost them even more.
Re:Stock price is falling too (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Recall? No way! (Score:5, Insightful)
By the time they class action is done, all the customer is likely to see will be a $50 credit on their next iPhone.
Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
ZOMG a "huge" -5%?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple: Send a free case, it will cost you less (Score:5, Insightful)
But, seriously Apple, you did a recall with the MacBook battery issue. You replaced batteries and even though it cost you some money your karma was helped by it. Do the same with the iPhone 4... offer owners a case which you test to make sure fixes the problem. It will probably cost you $20 per for these including shipping and processing assuming you can get the cases for $4 or so. But you will instantly shut up the majority of people who are complaining VERY loudly about the problem AND you will have "done the right thing".
NO company is capable of 100% preventing mistakes, but it's how you act as a company that determines how you're perceived. You can be cool and hip all you want but if customers are afraid to purchase your products because you've stuck to your guns and forced lawsuits to happen you lose in the long run.
Re:Stock price is falling too (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not only that cost. In 3 days Apple's stock has gone down a huge 5% ...
We must have a different definition of huge when applying that adjective to percentages. Let's see it's 10:15 EST on Wednesday morning. Stock is currently at 252.11 [google.com]. Three stock market days ago would have been Friday morning at 10:15 EST and the price was 257.04. Okay so that comes out to be 4.93/257.04 = 1.9%. If you meant to say it's down a "huge five dollars" then maybe. Yes, they opened and plummeted down to $247 on Tuesday so if you compare that to their seven day high of $261 you get five percent. I don't think that's anything to be concerned over. A five percent fluctuation really isn't that big of a deal. If you look at Microsoft from Friday morning at 10 AM to now they've jumped five percent ... it's just the stock market game. I can find arbitrary percentage numbers bigger than this in many technology stocks all day long.
Re:Stock price is falling too (Score:5, Insightful)
How does the share price going down cost Apple anything?
Sure it costs the shareholders something, but why Apple itself?
Are they borrowing so much money that a 5% drop in their share price has upped the interest rate they pay? Are they doing a share issue to generate cash?
Wouldn't it reduce the cost of any stock/stock option components of remuneration packages, and hence save Apple money?
Re:ZOMG a "huge" -5%?! (Score:1, Insightful)
Do you realize how many people buy Apple products because they "simply work"?
But that has long been a stupid reason because at least in my experience Apple hardware is much less reliable than pretty much everything else I own.
The real reason people buy it is the perception that it "simply works" because it looks good, damn the facts.
It always boggles my mind when people buy Apple after Apple and practically every time I talk to them it's in the shop because of some problem. Any other company would lose business for crap like that.
Re:ZOMG a "huge" -5%?! (Score:2, Insightful)
Well it would be the SMART thing to do.
If they don't - I expect the stock price to keep dropping slowly but surely.
Re:Stock price is falling too (Score:2, Insightful)
Except Consumer Reports tested it in a shielded lab environment and it failed. As far as infrastructure goes, it doesn't get any better than that.
Re:$1.5B is a BOGUS number... (Score:5, Insightful)
Having a bumper would be a wart. Apple clearly has style in the forefront of their minds when they design a mobile device; it is part of their brand image. Anything interrupting the sleekness of the product would tarnish perception of the company. It would be a constant physical reminder of a flaw.
I think it is most likely in Apple's best interest to get new phones out to people with a redesigned antenna solution.
Re:Apple: Send a free case, it will cost you less (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad batteries are completely different from bad cellphone reception. The former can cause a fire, damage to the laptop, damage to the home if the fire spreads, and possibly death. Not doing a recall on batteries would probably land them in serious trouble with the government, especially if there were fatalities. The same can't be said for mere bad cellphone reception.
Additionally, at the time the MacBook batteries were recalled, there were plenty of other batteries from other vendors having problems, hence Apple didn't stand out. In contrast, the iPhone 4 problems are obviously Apple's alone.
Re:Two words for you... (Score:4, Insightful)
Freedom isn't free, and by buying and jailbreaking an iPhone you financially support Apple's douchebaggery and encourage the development of more crippled, locked down systems, perhaps with more effective jails.
Why do that when you can have an Android phone which you're encouraged to hack on, with real multi-tasking and an open source OS?
Re:It does "simply work" (Score:3, Insightful)
Real-world tests by Wired, Engadget, etc. all show that you can have 4 bars and great signal. Hold the phone and have zero signal.
What real-world use are you talking about? I'm not even activating my iPhone 4 until I get my bumper in the mail I just ordered.
I also hate this notion that Apple products always just work. iTunes has wiped music, ringtones and such from my phone multiple times. It crashes all the time. It messes up tags on my MP3s and stripped away album artwork so it won't display correctly in Windows Media Player.
I have app crashes on my phone. The email app still leaves a lot to be desired. I'm missing basic crucial functionality. Contacts can be in groups, except there is no way to put contacts in groups on the phone.
Apple products are not nearly as perfect as people make them out to be.
Re:Stock price is falling too (Score:3, Insightful)
Question:
If a device has antennae wrapped around the outside of it, and its signal strength gets screwed up when you bridge the two...why would it matter which network the phone was on?
Re:Stock is not a big problem. (Score:3, Insightful)
No doubt many customers are now thinking their next "iPhone" will be an Android or Nokia model instead.
This has been stated in different ways many times before. Remember "...less space than a nomad. Lame"?
I have doubt that many current customers will go to another phone. While it may not make sense to everyone, the behavior observed shows that people buy and continue to buy Apple products despite the objections of folks on the internet. I've seen speculation, but I have yet to see an article that states "Data shows that sales of the new phone have slowed because of the design flaw in the new iPhone!"
Like it or not, Apple is proving itself right in the market, despite the reported opinions to the contrary. Just because there are people who have a different opinion doesn't matter.
Re:$1.5B is a BOGUS number... (Score:3, Insightful)
Except their response has been don't hold the phone that way or buy a bumper... They should at least provide the parts to make a working product instead of telling their customers who already bought an overly expensive phone to shell out another $30.
If they had stepped up immediately and said hey there is a small issue here is a free bumper case to fix it there would be almost no uproar over this. They've done nothing but add fuel to the fire by their reaction telling their customers to pound salt and then censoring their forums (not that it isn't uncommon for them).
Re:Stock is not a big problem. (Score:3, Insightful)
Currency issues aren't why the US invaded Iraq. Nor was it for oil, though that helped to motivate people for the invasion. The real reason is the most banal imaginable and it is the reason that most wars are started: they thought it would be easy. This is why they didn't think or plan the invasion. They knew Iraq had no friends, and they thought they could easily place a major American presence in the area that would stabilize the Middle East. And they thought that Iraq and al Qaeda were linked (yes, I know it is stupid, but they couldn't grasp the concept that al Qaeda has more in common with the Mob than a country). That's it. There were no master plans. There were just yes-men, knee-jerk reactions, and an unwillingness to question bad decisions (or even acknowledge them).
Think of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc., as a corporate board and it will be easier to grasp.
Re:smart move (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stock is not a big problem. (Score:1, Insightful)
Good point. My former teacher asked me (and others) for advice on a laptop for her college-bound kid. She said she liked Apples but also didn't want to spend too much money, so I looked around and supplied her with this:
MacBook - $1000
Toshibi - $370 (equivalent memory and speed to macbook)
Compaq - $450 (twice the memory)
I recommended she go with the two cheaper models, but her kid insisted she HAD to have an apple, so they ended-up buying a a $1200 MacBook. Now I'm not saying Macs are bad - just expensive. I see no point paying 2-3 times as much for equal function but as you said, "People buy and continue to buy Apple products despite the objections..." I would also never pay $10,000 more to get a Honda with an "acura" badge on it, but I know a lot of people do.
Re:Stock is not a big problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you're not better informed. The SDR, even if the UN starts using it, will be phased in over a long period to maintain stability. In addition, it WOULD include a USD component, just as it does now (currently, the SDR uses USD, EUR, GBP, and CNY -- 44%, 34%, 11%, 11% respectively).
The question is how the basket for the SDR will be changed to include more less developed nations.
At any rate, the USD will continue to be a major component of the world's reserve currency (which, even in the worst-case scenario for Americans, would still have the USD as the largest component, since it will be based on GDP [specifically, adjustments to the value based on inflation vs. change in GDP]. So the only thing that would collapse the value of the dollar is a collapse of the US economy... which, in your logic, is predicated on a collapse of the currency. That's circular logic.
Re:$1.5B is a BOGUS number... (Score:3, Insightful)
If they had stepped up immediately and said hey there is a small issue here is a free bumper case to fix it there would be almost no uproar over this. They've done nothing but add fuel to the fire by their reaction telling their customers to pound salt and then censoring their forums (not that it isn't uncommon for them).
You think so.... I doubt that... Apple is now the largest Technology company in the world... They have lost their poor struggling Spple lets help them fight against the Big Old, Mean Old Microsoft. It is now let critically look at everything that apple does any flaw no matter how minor we will jump on like a rabid animal...
This reception issue in many ways seems like it was taken out of proportion if it was any other company but Apple it wouldn't have been an issue. If Apple gave them a bumper it could just open a gate for more free products from Apple for every minor design mistake.
Cases for laptops to prevent scratching or accidental dropping.
Cleaning tools for the screen because they smug too easily...
What apple is doing is delaying to see what the real problem is and if they can fix it in the best way they can they will. A Recall or Shipping Free bumpers will not leave a good taist in their mouth to apple. Just waiting for the right fix an in a few months after all the hoopla no one will really remember the problems.
Re:The thing is... (Score:3, Insightful)
You are having problems with dropped calls, and more so then your previous iPhone? Do you have an iPhone 4? Who are these people who are having problems with dropped calls beyond what they experience with any other AT&T phone? The example I gave was how the 3GS struggled with the connection at that location, and to a pretty ridiculous degree, yet my iPhone 4 doesn't struggle with it at all, in fact it does great. Now this is just the biggest example. Elsewhere I'm also seeing improvements, though usually more subtly. Certainly not worse, and at least a little better in most cases. In fact in my home it still struggles, and that sucks, but it is not due to the iPhone 4. None of our AT&T phones work well there. I ought to pick up a "microcell", but haven't yet. Mostly we use our home phone at home, so I haven't bothered, and of course for data at home I'm using WiFi.
Why do I feel like I'm talking to a wall in all this? Or maybe it's a giant mass of sound absorbing goop. I don't know what it is, but few seem to paying attention.
Re:It does "simply work" (Score:3, Insightful)
I've wondered that myself.
After all, if you're getting dropped calls with your new shiny iPhone 4 that you didn't with your old phone, why haven't you returned it? Are you waiting for a fix that Apple may or may not provide? News of this hit the internet about a day after it went on sale, and there was at least a 14 day return policy (that even cancelled any contract you signed and reset your upgrade eligibility). And your old phone worked for you, and it still can.
As for those complaining about the issue after a couple of weeks, or to be more generous, after end of last week, I have no sympathy since the issue is widely reported and even Consumer Reports has put out a statement that's broadcasted everywhere. If you still buy it despite this, well, you knew what you were getting into.
Seriously, I'm now undecided. I've still got an original iPhone (imported and unlocked), and a 3G that comes off contract next year. I'm tempted by the iPhone 4 (unlocked!), but I'll probably wait and see what Apple does before committing. If I end up waiting for the iPhone 5 (next year, and yes, you know it's coming), so be it. (And with those antenna issue class actions, you know Apple can't do anything until those are resolved - lawsuits are a great way to shut someone up since a wrong move can open a can of worms. So even anything Apple might do to fix it has to be carefully considered to avoid giving the lawsuit more ammo.)
Fake (or real?) Jobs did say, after all, "It's just a phone. Not worth it." Return it, move on with life. If Apple fixes it, great, buy it then, else, wait for the new model. Or live with it, if you must have it, knowing full well it has the issue now.
And yes, I own lots of Apple stuff - iPods, iPhones, Macs and even an iPad. Apple's released duds in the past (like the Apple 3, the Lisa, the G4 Cube, the puck mouse, etc. etc. etc.).
Re:ZOMG a "huge" -5%?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It does "simply work" (Score:3, Insightful)
And American phone subsidies notwithstanding, it's a $600 device. If you care about your phone, buy a freaking case or bumper already! And/or a bluetooth headset. You don't have to be that kid sitting in Starbucks showing off just how spendy a phone your parents bought you.
So what you're saying is, it's a $600 device that's defective unless you buy a $30 case or other accessory? If I cared about my phone, I'd probably buy one that "just worked". I have a 3gS and as much as I like some of the capabilities, it has done a decent job turning me off to the whole Apple thing...
Re:Two words for you... (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed.
Either
1) you have a hacker mindset and you want your phone to be hackable
2) you don't
if you're part of 1, then the 5 minutes it takes to jailbreak is surely not a deterrent
if you're part of 2, you don't care anyway, and the jailed/signed binary environs protects you.
I suspect that 99% of the people who bitch about the iPhone's lack of hackability couldn't write one iota of code themselves.
Re:Stock price is falling too (Score:3, Insightful)
The other thing, is if you've been watching AAPL for any amount of time, they go up and down multiple dollars per day, but the overall trend is up, up, up.
This week might be a down week of 5%. Next week might be an up week of 8%. I think the smart investor is staying right where he's at, looking at the 6+ month trend line.
Re:Apple joins Sony in the do-not-buy list (Score:1, Insightful)
Of course, this is totally meaningless without knowing the size of the pools. If your Apple pool is 100 times bigger than your Dell/HP pool, then a 10x service difference might be expected.
If you really are sending Apples out 10x more than other brands, you're doing so out of your ignorance. I've seen this many times in strong Windows shop that grudgingly support Apple, and send out minor issues for a warranty fix just to "prove" their point. Sad little creatures, they are.
Not a recallable issue (Score:3, Insightful)
But, seriously Apple, you did a recall with the MacBook battery issue. You replaced batteries and even though it cost you some money your karma was helped by it.
Karma nothing. Recalls of dangerous products are mandated by US law. Even "voluntary" recalls aren't; the company either does them voluntarily when the company or CPSC finds a defect, or it risks being sued and paying a penalty in addition to doing a recall.
For that matter, selling a defective product that is not a safety hazard does not trigger a "recall." Unless these iPhones are strangling small children, catching fire, or are poisonous if touched, there's no recall potential here.
Re:Stock is not a big problem. (Score:3, Insightful)
Only if you cherry pick the stats. Sure, if you choose A high-end dell, which comes with much higher temperature, Vibration, Battery Life than any Apple. Then have Dell add the highest markup items they have (which come included with the Apple, but the dell will have better specs than the same items sold by apple, in the above terms.) Then yes you can pay more than Apple for a better laptop, with the same CPU, and Memory speed/size.
Re:It does "simply work" (Score:2, Insightful)
Nothing wrong with waiting a model version, I usually try to skip at least one generation between any device I buy (I had the original 2G iPhone but skipped the 3G).
But there are so many better things about this phone, that it was worth it to upgrade even from the 3Gs which was already a pretty good jump from the 3G (and happily there was no extra fee for doing so as I was expecting since I didn't buy it that long ago). Over the 3G, it's just such a far better device in every way.
If you add up little moments of frustration throughout a year, I'd say waiting is more expensive than not.
I can't imagine what they would add to the iPhone 5 that would make it worth upgrading immediately over the 4 - I plan to skip that model myself.
Re:Stock price is falling too (Score:3, Insightful)
Or... you could just be making vast generalizations with absolutely no data to support them other than a 5% "jitter" in their stock price that can most likely be attributed to general intra- and inter-day trading noise on the market.
There's always that option, too.
Re:ZOMG a "huge" -5%?! (Score:5, Insightful)
They haven't had *one* unreliable product, Apple has had plenty. Look at the last decade of laptops they've made, they have been plagued with problems. The most notable is the dual USB iBook video chip flaw. This was a design and engineering flaw that Apple at least dealt with (by extending warranties and replacing logic boards) but they NEVER did ANYTHING to actually FIX the problem. There was no recall. They replaced defective boards with new defective boards that had yet to demonstrate the defect, fully knowing that it was only a matter of time before that board also failed, conveniently after the extended warranty period ended. How they got away with a stunt like that is beyond comprehension.
On the record, I own one of the afflicted laptops, and fixing the problem correctly is a non trivial task, since not many people have access to or knowledge of how to use SMT rework equipment.
Re:Wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
I've seen videos from Wired and Engadget of picking up the phone and letting it rest comfortable in your hand where the signal goes from 4 bars to No Signal.
Even the most ardent Pro-Apple sites have confirmed in their testing that this is a serious problem.
Re:Apple joins Sony in the do-not-buy list (Score:3, Insightful)
How many Apple systems versus how many Dell/HP, and how many repairs for each? "easily 10x" isn't such a bad number if "hundreds of imacs and macbooks" are in one pool, and "10 dell/hp" systems are in the other.
And Apple doesn't manufacture most of the components going into the imacs and macbooks - they source their components from the same vendors that HP & Dell do. I've had a hard drive failure on my iMac - the Western Digital drive that failed was replaced by a slightly larger seagate drive when they did the warranty repair.
Re:Stock is not a big problem. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It does "simply work" (Score:5, Insightful)
I was about to wonder about your problems till I saw that last part...you're running iTunes on Windows?
I've run all of this on a mac (older one granted, a G5 Tower I got cheap)...and no problems at all. I'd dare say if you run Apple stuff on Apple products...9 times out of 10, it does just work. Mixing MS windows in the equation is likely asking for trouble.
Oh, so it only crashes, erases songs, etc for 90% of their customers. THAT'S PRETTY GOOD!!! [/sarcasm, if you couldn't tell]
The shitty quality of iTunes and Quicktime on Windows is simply inexcusable. *Especially* since they have other applications, like Safari, that run quite well on Windows. Hell, even is Windows was the one with the 5% marketshare, it would *still* be inexcusable.
iTunes, by virtue of its scummy buggy-ass drivers and services, is the *only* application I've seen on Windows 7 that can still lock-up completely unrelated applications. (In my case, World of Warcraft locked-up for a solid 4 minutes while iTunes was updating my phone's firmware. Figure THAT one out!)
Re:Stock is not a big problem. (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>>>Apple's stock will plummet in 0011 along with the rest of the US economy. Investors should buy then, not now.
>>
>>C64Love is not the right person to answer economics questions...
Perhaps not, but I still follow the news. The world will not be switching to the Euro or Yuan or any other currency. The UN is planning to switch to a basket of currencies called an SDR, and that will act as the universal denomination to which world products (like oil) will be pegged. So prices will read: "SDR150 per barrel" or something similar.
Interestingly this proposed basket will exclude the dollar. So it will have nothing backing its value except the US Government. Unfortunately the US Government is deep in debt (over 13 trillion) so its backing is almost as worthless as Greece's backing. The dollar will devalue fast, the stock market will crash, and the year 2011 will be worse than 1935 was.
And Apple stock will plummet. Unless of course they pick-up and move to India, as Microsoft has threatened a couple times to do.
Re:Could be, was told that by a friend ordering (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it is not. Normal holding of the phone does not really affect the signal. You have to squeeze much harder than normal and kind of wrap the phone, to really have an effect. Although partially it's probably a function of how sweaty your hands are.
That's simply not true. Signal degradation occurs with a single finger covering the correct location. Here's a video that clearly shows a single finger causing degradation with no twisting or warping of the phone.
http://consumerist.com/2010/07/consumer-reports-wont-recommend-iphone-4-until-apple-fixes-death-grip-design-flaw.html [consumerist.com]
Thanks for you time but all the info you're giving out is directly contradicted by numerous sources.
Re: *carrier exclusivity* lawsuit (Score:3, Insightful)
From TFS:
But that's just the latest on the iPhone4: the long running carrier exclusivity lawsuit rumors have been upgraded to Class Action status.
The class action lawsuit is about carrier exclusivity, not the app store or other software restrictions. This should be obvious considering the Kindle and every game console have the exact same software restrictions, with the Kindle even having 1984 remotely removed from users' devices, without (afaik) a lawsuit being filed against Amazon.
The carrier exclusivity lawsuit for Apple being tied to AT&T seems absurd. Is there any way whatsoever this lawsuit will succeed?
What would blocking carrier exclusivity mean for every other phone manufacturer? The (dumb) Nokia phone that I have now is Verizon-only. MOST phones have been carrier-exclusive, especially considering we only have 2 primary carriers per technology (GSM and TMDA) in the US anyway.
The lawsuit makes about as much sense as a CPU-Exclusivity class action lawsuit against Microsoft for not making Windows on PowerPC. It's lawyers making an absurd lawsuit against a target with big pockets, hoping to get swatted away with a settlement.
Re:It does "simply work" (Score:1, Insightful)
Wow. Apple sure is fast to get features equivalent to what everyone else gets right away!
Re:Proof for you (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stock is not a big problem. (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>The MacBook has a lot more function than the low-end Toshiba and Compaq you mentioned.
I doubt that. Windows 7 and OS 10.6 have very few real differences, other than in people's imaginations. While Windows used to be shit, they are now on par with the Mac OS. *Plus* Windows is well supported. For example I can download the 2xAV plugin for Media Player that will play songs/movies at double speed without making everybody sound like chipmunks. Apple Macintosh has no such function - nobody ever bothered to develop it.
That was just one random thing that popped into my head. There are many other functions Windows can do that Mac can't. Of course if you think I'm wrong, feel free to list some things MacOS can do that Win7 cannot. I enjoy learning new things. :-)
.
>>>Apple stuff is not, in general, overpriced, at least not very much.
$370 Toshiba laptop versus $1000 MacBook. Sounds way overpriced to me. The Toshiba had the same memory, same speed, same functionality (laptop).
Re:Stock is not a big problem. (Score:2, Insightful)
A lot of the moderators are too young to recall anything prior to 2000. They might not have noticed the "invasion in early 90s" because they didn't even recall that a war had happened, and just assumed "Iraq invasion" referred to Bsuh, Cheney, and so on.
Seeing as we didn't "invade" Iraq in the early 90's and the current war is much bigger it is understandable were people would be confused. Not to mention the fact that the Euro wasn't even around in 1990 so i don't know why we would go to war because Iraq was going to start selling oil in a currency that was still 2+ years from being used anywhere.
In Gulf Storm we did enter Iraq but did not invade it in a traditional sense. We even had truly legitimate reasons for going into Kuwait and removing the Iraqi forces.
Re:And one more why you are wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Citation needed.
I don't have 10 years of antenna design experience like the GP but I have some knowledge in electrical engineering and that is more then enough to tell me that when you change the electrical length of an antenna it changes the frequency the antenna is designed to pick up. Signal strength doesn't mean squat when the antenna is interpreting the correct signal as noise.
I work in a building on the edge of my telco's tower range, Iphone 3G's do not get 3G signals at all in my office. My Milestone constantly switches between 3G and 2G. The Iphone 4 will have no chance in this scenario and it's not unusual for a person to be in an area with a bad signal.