Saturday, July 17, 2010

Anatomy of a curfluffle

I have a friend who had taken an interest in the new iPhone.
She isn't particularly an Apple fan (she uses a PC) or even "into" gadgets really but because her company was changing data plans and she was going to have to turn in her old data phone. One of her choices is the new iPhone4.

Two days after she got this news, the storm about the iPhone's dropped call problem hit the press.

Being an engineer, she researched the issue and a few days later told me that she had never seen so much made over, for what most people, would actually be a non-issue. Apparently, if you are using the iPhone with any kind of protective cover on it the "antenna issue" goes away. As my friend said, "Who in the world has a phone this expensive and doesn't put a protective case on it?"

Now let's be frank, having the caseless phone hang-up because you have held it "wrong", is a flaw. My cell phone is like that. Put a careless finger on the wrong button and it hangs up. My cordless phone at home has a similar flaw. The button to disconnect is located such that if you get lazy and hold it to close to your head ... your jawbone hits it and the call is over (I've had several users besides myself do this with the phone). I've had to train myself not to use these devices in that manor and that "solves" the problem but it still doesn't make it less a flaw.

It's also true, that Apple should have immediately updated their instructions for the phone to say ... don't touch the phone "there" during a call. Also, providing any old, cheep-o case would have also have been a nice touch.

None of this though, would seem to warrant the world wide media attention that this has received. My friend was remarking on this and having given it some thought I was able to explain it to her as follows.

- The people who write the tech and gadget review articles are, of course, "Super Users". If you are going to get a guy to review a computer product, you just naturally hire the most knowledgeable computer geek you can lay your hands on. Usually, these are the people who not only write their own software but can field strip a PC in an airport waiting terminal and rebuild it with mail order parts to make it 17 times faster then it was when it came from the factory!

... and this is exactly why these people have never, ever, EVER "gotten" the Mac.
Macs were designed to give complete tech-tards the ability to use a computer to do their work, communicate over the internet and yes, even create passable music/video/photos.
Apple cleverly realized that there is a huge segment of the consumer public who (like with the automobile) don't want to have to know how it works ... they just want to use it!

So here you have these reviewers who simply can't wrap their giant brains around why there is any demand for the Mac in the first place and when you add in the way Apple has done a phenomenal marketing job of making their products THE THING for pop culture to want to own as a status symbol, it simply enrages the "experts".

They become like sharks, constantly circling, looking for any opportunity to strike. They want desperately to prove to the general public that they are wrong to like the i(whatever) and this dropped call flaw was like blood in the water to them. They rapidly spun out articles and blog posts proclaiming what a complete failure the iPhone and Apple and Steve jobs were and this finally once and for all proved it.

Of course, with that kind of buzz going on it wasn't anytime at all until the "mainstream media" began covering the issue, usually just reprinting or quoting from the articles that had already been posted by "the experts".

From there it is just the snowball effect and THAT is how a fairly unremarkable flaw turns into world wide media frenzy.

For my friend's part, she told me this morning that three of her coworker's have now had their iPhones for the last week. Keeping in mind that these people are not IT or computer geeks, they report that even with AT&T's service issues ... they don't know how they ever did their job before they had their iPhones.

2 comments:

EssBee said...

I have a friend who keeps trying to give me her iPhone because she is upgrading. I don't have anything against iPhones per se, but I find myself resisting smartphones altogether. I'm a Mac. I don't have the know-how to do much outside of download what I want to read/watch/listen to and synch up the iPod. I suppose if I was like your friend and had to go with a Blackberry, iPhone, Evo, etc etc, I'd choose the iPhone because of my glee over my MacBook and iPod. I don't care what anyone thinks about that! And your friend is wise when she asks "who shells out for something like that and doesn't put it in a case?"

Jack Mangan said...

It's the New Coke fiasco for a tech-obsessed generation. iCoke was released with ridiculous fanfare - - only to hit the market with glaring flaws.