It’s fun to beat up on Apple!
There is apparently something about a great American success story, especially if it is the success of an entity perceived as smug, that empowers entire herds of people to pile onto the winner, kicking and gouging.
That is apparently true of Apple’s recent successes, wherein a considerable sector of the public has voted with their dollars. It would appear that there are a lot of people, though, that have been waiting for Apple (and especially Steve Jobs) to make a blunder. One blunder, or one perceived blunder, would give them the excuse to draw and quarter the company, or perhaps the Apple concept, which they detest. The iPhone 4 antenna issue, whether it is an actual problem or not, has given people the excuse they needed, and it is now open season on Apple.
I am coming from an odd place in all of this. I had a lot of personal computers before there was Windows. I saw the early Microsoft as a company that could obliterate the tower of Babel that was the PC industry in the seventies and early eighties, thus making it possible for all of us to talk to each other. So I landed in the Windows camp in 1988 and stayed there until 2008, writing absolute tons of software and prose on the Windows operating system.
The company did a good job of uniting the industry on a common platform and made it easier for people to work together while sharing files. However, many years later, their products became bloated, their marketing practices became predatory, and their leadership became pompous. So I swore off Microsoft. Looking around for an alternative, it was pretty much Linux and OS X. The former was in relative disarray and the latter was not, so I signed on to the lesser of two evils: Apple.
To me, a lot of Apple users had always looked elitist and snooty. I am reminded of a Jeep ad that claimed, “It’s a Jeep thing. You wouldn’t understand.” I saw Steve jobs as the chief snoot. However, the purchase of a MacBook Pro when I jumped off the Windows ship made me appreciate the quality of Apple’s offerings, if not always the attitude that goes along with it. Apple not only has the reputation for quality; their products epitomize quality, although not without quirks and flaws.
In the end, I decided that the smugness of the Apple fanbois was the price one had to pay to get the good toys and simply decided to ignore them. In the two years that I have been writing about Apple, I have given the company and their products their share of grief when it was due. Apple is definitely not perfect. It is just better than all of the other alternatives.
In those two years I have watched the people and publications in the PC camp, and the large group of people that detest the smugness of the Apple image and CEO, get increasingly bitter and much more overtly snide. It’s a little like Kansas City Royals fans constantly bitching about the Yankees. Every new phone is heralded as an iPhone killer. Remember the Pre? Remember the Storm? Now we have the Android phones, in their legions, none of which will individually overtake the iPhone, though the entire army of them may do it. Quantity is different from quality.
The current fuss about Apple’s reception issue has an element of that to it. If the company missed something that basic in testing, fie on them! If the design is flawed, Apple did, indeed, make a mistake. In truth, I don’t even know if there is a real problem. There are a lot of different takes on it and all I have to go on is my own iPhone 4, which behaves perfectly. Nonetheless, everyone has climbed on the bandwagon and is throwing stones at Apple. Have you guys entirely forgotten Vista?
Please feel free to throw stones if you really feel that you need to. It is apparently a very human thing to do. If there are big problems, in the end, with the iPhone 4, Apple will deal with it. If there are not, Apple will be smug and annoy another group of people. Either way, not everyone will be happy. Still, I’m staying where I am. I would rather have well designed, well implemented quality, even with a few quirks, than the cookie cutter items that represent the competition.
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July 15th, 2010
IMO it isn’t that the iPhone may or may not have a design defect. The reason people are “throwing stones” is that Apple by and large won’t step up and acknowledge the problem and talk openly and honestly about what they’re doing to fix it.
They’ve been dragged kicking and screaming from total denial to reluctant acknowledgment but AFAIK still haven’t accepted responsibility nor proposed a solution. The software update to the _display_ of signal strength does not resolve the actual problem. And using a case to cover the gap is a bandaid, not a fix.
Let’s hope that tomorrow’s message goes in favor of the consumers for a change.
July 15th, 2010
Linux is unbelievably AWESOME.
Try Ubuntu + Mac4Lin or Linux Mint 9 KDE.
July 15th, 2010
JohnJ -
I have to wonder where you are finding corporations who *will* admit to wrongdoing or error, ever, which which to compare Apple.
Name three.
July 16th, 2010
Many do. Maybe not proactively, but once awareness spreads they will.
Automakers issue TSBs that outline problems that have been uncovered and their proposed solutions. This is different than safety recalls which are usually government mandates.
Laptop batteries have been voluntarily recalled.
There have been car seat & crib recalls that weren’t preceded by infant deaths or severe injuries.
There are other examples around if you care to look.
Some folks think it would do Apple reputational harm to recall the iPhone. I think the opposite is true and that more harm comes from not fixing a faulty product than admitting a mistake and stepping up to take care of your customers.