Apple 3G iPhone Issues: Finger Pointing

August 19th, 2008

The iPhone 3G still has issues. As I write this, the two biggest bugaboos are MobileMe and wimpy 3G reception.

Chuqui 3.0 (former Apple employee) posted two insightful (and juicy) rumors as to what’s going an at Apple regarding to these two issues:

Mobile Me: Rob Schoen, the guy in charge of MobileMe, lost his job last Friday. But the kicker: he came from Microsoft and brought several of his Redmond buddies to Apple.

Blame Deflection: Who Apple Fans May Blame Instead Of Apple: The MobileMe fiasco is Microsoft’s fault. Microsoft.

3G Reception: There’s bad driver code in the 3G chips which were developed outside of Apple (Infineon?). Apple isolated the bug, but the supplier has a “lack of urgency” even though their driver code is an “absolute travesty.” A fix is at least two months out.

Blame Deflection: Who Apple Fans May Blame Instead Of Apple: The 3G reception fiasco is the 3G chip vendor’s fault. The 3G chip vendor.

It seems, almost intentionally, Apple positions themselves where blame for problems may be deflected onto someone else (iTunes DRM is because of the music labels). Certainly, Apple could blame AT&T for any iPhone issues. But despite our dislike for AT&T, the blame for these two annoyances are working their way to Apple’s front door. The blame deflection isn’t going to work for most iPhone customers - especially those who are mainstream users and not Apple fanboys. Apple needs to take care of this stuff, and the ball very much in their court.

The Mobile Me situation hasn’t affected me directly for one simple reason: I gave up using it. I signed up just before the iPhone was launched, and couldn’t log in for about a week. When I finally got in, the “push” email was messed up so I haven’t touched it since. Luckilly, I’m still on the courtesy “free” clock so I haven’t paid anything for something I’m not using.

The 3G reception has been noticeably spotty on my iPhone. But I still hold out hope that the reception issue will be solved through a software fix deployed in an upcoming iPhone OS update. This is how my Apple TV which was dropping its WiFi connection got repaired.

But the thing that frustrated me about that situation, is Apple doesn’t like to admit to problems until they releases a fix. A lot of troubleshooting time and effort would be eliminated if Apple would just admit fault right off the bat. But Apple doesn’t generally do that. They’re still a company of secrecy and along with that comes a reluctance to communicate with customers, especially when it comes to problems.

I think that’s pretty weak. Especially when Netflix had an outage last week and was totally upfront about their screw up, and gave an ETA for the resolution and updates, all on their company blog.

Meanwhile, Chuqui notes Apple’s temporary Mobile Me blog has shuttered. Sigh.

RSS Feed Please subscribe to the Webomatica RSS Feed!

folder Categories: Apple, General, Technology :: Tags: :: Trackback URL
Back Previous Post: Movie Notes: No Country For Old Men
Back Next Post: Movie Notes: Tropic Thunder
Back Related Posts: MacBook Tip: Two Finger Scrolling with One Finger :: 3G iPhone Insanity: Activation Trouble, Plan B And C :: iPhone Unboxed :: iPhone: Update From The Palo Alto Apple Store #1 ::

Viewing 5 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    Yes, and yet Apple just crushed all of its competition in customer satisfaction, despite all the negative press and obvious nightmares some customers are experiencing. Makes you wonder just how bad it must be to be a Dell owner.

    My MobileMe email hasn't gone out for more than a few minutes throughout this whole transition, and I seldom use the web apps, anyway, so all the MobileMe hoopla hasn't aligned with my experience at all. Push email works very well on my 3G. I'm syncing between three different Macs and my iPhone at this point, and it's all going smoothly. Even Back to My Mac has worked flawlessly for me, and has really started to come in handy between work and the office.

    I had some problems with a renewal on my account that took way longer than it should have to resolve, but they stepped up and fixed it before it got out of hand, so I'm not too peeved.

    3G reception? I wouldn't say mine is terrible, but there are definitely some issues there. Even downtown, where I know 3G is everywhere, because some days I'll get it everywhere, I sometimes get bounced back and forth between 3G and EDGE quite a bit. Or I'll lose service altogether. Again, not a pervasive problem, but definitely happens sometimes. So I look forward to that firmware fix.
    • ^
    • v
    Don't get me wrong, overall I'm still a big Apple fanboy. This is just a note that I'd appreciate more transparency from Apple. With the Apple TV, I very nearly went out and bought an Apple Airport or Time Machine, thinking there was something wrong with my router. Luckily I kept the faith, waited, and Apple delivered.

    So in the case of the iPhone reception, I'm holding back trying all sorts of silly troubleshooting stuff in hopes of a fix. It would just save many people some time if we got some news that yes, it is an issue that can be fixed with a firmware update, a fix is coming soon. If we got the word directly from Apple then all the rumor mongering on blogs would be immediately discounted - including this one...
    • ^
    • v
    Jason, couldn't have said it better myself. I think Apple is a great company and has a well-deserved market leadership position that will continue to grow. But as I've said elsewhere, this is obviously a major problem, it obviously affects thousands of their customers, and while I think "transparency" is a bit too much to ask for, timely communication about major issues is not. In fact, from a brand like Apple, it should be expected.
    • ^
    • v
    I say vote with your money. I wanted an iPod Touch last year, but at the time they had a high proliferation of screen defects. I didn't buy one. Then the Macbook Air came out, and I still haven't bought one because the cooling is worse than an Xbox 360!

    I think the problem is, we want these new Apple products so badly. When I visit the Apple forums they are full of loyalists who have things on order despite knowing that there are flaws in the current production run of whatever they are buying. This gives Apple the leeway to rush products to the market and use its base of early adopters to beta test whatever they are releasing. You can't really blame Apple if their customers are willing to take the hits.

    I know I won't be buying an iPhone 3G, at least in Canada, where there's a mandatory 3-year contract. I mean seriously, do they expect me to be using the same phone in 2011? Will it even hold a charge?
    • ^
    • v
    The whole 3G reception issue really bothers me. Everyone would like to thing that it's the software at fault, but there's at least a couple rumors saying that it's the hardware, which would explain the rather slow and reluctant response by Apple. I remember when the iPod Touch came to market. Many of them had a terrible viewing angle problem. At first, Apple did what all other consumer product companies do: they denied the problem, even suggesting that it was supposed to be that way! Then, they suggested that they could remedy the issue with tweaking the contrast/brightness settings on the device. Finally, an engineer on some forum explained the issue fully and chalked it up to shoddy QC during the screen cover manufacturing. Apple eventually gave in and offered replacement units (most likely refurbs).

    Don't even get me stared about the iPhone 3G's case cracking phenomenon!
 

Trackbacks

(Trackback URL)

close Reblog this comment
Powered by Disqus · Learn more
blog comments powered by Disqus