Posted by Calixte Pictet | 1 comment
Success Kills
It’s rare that I actually agree with Steve Jobs and admit it, so enjoy it while you can. What I mean by that is not that I will write a second piece about how evil he is soon (although I might), or that the second part of my article will not be more skeptic about the famous “reality distortion field,” (although I will) but rather that what Jobs is saying about Apple is applicable to much more than we might first think.
Recently, our dear Steve and his friends hosted a press conference about the iPhone 4 antenna problem, rather exaggeratedly dubbed “antennagate.” For those who haven’t been followed the story closely, the newly released iPhone 4 has come with several new features, including video-calling, video-editing on-the-fly, multitasking, and a defective antenna that drops calls when held in a certain way.
While the problem is certainly real, it is hard to asess its extensiveness from the outside. Is the return rate really higher than previous iPhones? Has the issue been amplified by the media?
According to Steve Jobs, Apple’s customers are happier than ever, believe the iPhone 4 is the best iPhone ever and the antenna issue is felt only by an extremely small minority of customers. However, since “Apple loves all it’s users,” they’re going to provide everybody who wants with a fix.
Steve jobs believes that the iPhone problem is actually a bigger one, caused by Apple’s overwhelming success.
“Well, of course the Consumer Reports stuff was bad, and of course we would have liked to get on this sooner. We just got this data. We just learned what was going on. We’re an engineering company. We think like engineers. We love it, we think it’s the right way to solve real problems. I don’t think that’s going to change, and the way we love our customers isn’t going to change. Maybe it’s human nature — when you’re doing well, people want to tear you down. I see it happening with Google, people trying to tear them down. And I don’t understand it… What would you prefer? That we were a Korean company, that we were here in America leading the world with these products… Maybe it’s just that people want to get eyeballs on their sites. We’ve been around for 34 years… haven’t we earned the credibility and the trust of the press? I think we have that from our users. I didn’t see it exhibited by some of the press as this was blown so far out of proportion. I’m not saying we didn’t make a mistake — We didn’t know that it would have these issues, we didn’t know we were putting a bull’s eye on the phone… But this has been so overblown. But to see how we could do better is going to take some time.”
–Steve Jobs, as reported by Engadget
There are several things to retain from this quote. One is that Steve Jobs is again playing the “American protectionism” card, as the company has done (and is doing) against HTC.
“What would you prefer? That we were a Korean company, that we were here in America leading the world with these products…”
That’s pretty lowly of him. I’d very much prefer that he concentrated on the quality of Apple versus its competition than their nationality. Also, if the reports we are getting are correct, Steve Jobs might be lying to the press again.
“We didn’t know that it would have these issues, we didn’t know we were putting a bull’s eye on the phone…”
It’s hard to assess, because the reports about Jobs’s knowledge of the problem prior to the release date are fuzzy at best. We might never know, but that is irrelevant. What is more important is Steve Job’s words about the rain of critics they have received since the phone’s release:
“Maybe it’s human nature — when you’re doing well, people want to tear you down. I see it happening with Google, people trying to tear them down. And I don’t understand it…”
Not only does Mr Jobs not seem to have a personal feud against Google—which is very surprising—but he seems to think that the company’s critics are unjust. This he likens to Apple’s own case. Apple has been making near-perfect products for a while now, and they translate to a thundering commercial success (almost) every time. Now what everybody wants to do is pinpoint the little problems, that are magnified tenfold by the fact that they belong to Apple products.
What he says is true—how many times have we seen criticizm of an Apple product because it is not designed for one particular type of user, or because one corner is not as smooth as it should be?—but I would advise you to take it with a grain of salt. Apple and Google are two higly successful companies, and both rightly so. Just looking at their respective portfolios will give you an idea why. However, once in a while, these companies do stumble.
Google Buzz was a commercial failure—although I still maintain that it is an excellent product. I believe even Microsoft was—and still is—criticized too much on their products. Was XP really that bad when it came out? I don’t think it was much worst than the contemporary version of Mac OS X. The iPhone 4 is top-of-the-notch for a lot of things. However, it seems that antenna issue—albeit not a scandal as some might like us to think—is a serious issue for a lot of iPhone users. Apple’s relativism is not going to change that. Yes, all phones have some sort of antenna issue, but _none_ come near to what the new iPhone’s users experience now. Comparing its products with the competition will not change that. It might even make it worst:
“HTC Corp. said its phone model named by Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs as having antenna signal problems received 35-times less complaints than for the iPhone 4.” reports Business Week
Apple is still being attacked. It has indeed created a bull’s eye both for the press and for the competition with its new antenna design. Some will find the point moot, others as important as their own lives. There are other things that make up a phone of course, and in the end the antenna issue will only be one of many deciding factors for the consumer. Some, like me, might root for Android, but that’s another story. In the meanwhile, we (the press, bloggers, and the general public) should pay attention that we don’t over-criticize a company because of it’s success. Apple should pay attention not to rely too much on Mr Jobs’s reality distortion field.
Disclaimer: I don’t use nor own any Apple product, nor do I use any Microsoft software. I do use some Google services extensively.
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