Free Bumper Case to IPhone Owners
Cited: ABC News
If you have an iPhone, Apple will give you a free bumper case that is supposed to prevent reception problems plaguing the smartphone. This offer is good until September 30 according to CEO Steve Jobs on July 17.
Customers who have already bought a bumper — a plastic cover that prevents human contact from disrupting the antenna signal — will qualify for a refund.
Job’s announcement came at a much-anticipated press conference at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, called to address a recent flurry of bad publicity over iPhone 4 reception issues. More than 3 million iPhones have been sold to date, he said.
“We’re not perfect, and phones aren’t perfect either,” Jobs said, pacing on stage with an iPhone on hand, wearing his trademark black turtleneck sweater. “But we want to make all of our users happy… and if you don’t know that about Apple, you don’t know Apple.”
Jobs told users they could return their iPhones and get their money back under the company’s regular policy.
“If you’re still not happy, we’ll give full refunds,” he said.
Jobs was doing damage control just three weeks after Apple launched the device to great fanfare. More than 1.7 million iPhone 4s were sold around the world within three days, making it the company’s most successful launch ever. At the time, Jobs touted it as the “biggest leap” yet from the original iPhone.
But tech reviewers and users soon began complaining about dropped calls and spotty reception when the user’s palm covers the bottom left corner of the phone. The flaw, dubbed the “death grip” by bloggers, appears to cut calls off when one’s hand interferes with the antenna, which is embedded in the phone’s metal shell.
Consumer Reports — which announced Monday that it could not recommend the iPhone 4, issued a brief statement after Jobs’ news conference:
“Consumer Reports believes Apple’s offer of free cases is a good first step. However, Apple has indicated that this is not a long-term solution, it has guaranteed the offer only through September 30th, and has not extended it unequivocally to customers who bought cases from third-party vendors,” it said. “
We look forward to a long-term fix from Apple. As things currently stand, the iPhone 4 is still not one of our recommended models.”
Jobs did not apologize for the defect. Instead, he showed video of other smartphones — from Blackberry , Droid and Samsung — that lose signal strength when held in the “death grip.”
“We love making our users happy,” said Jobs, boasting that the iPhone 4 continues to garner positive reviews from customers and tech experts. “People seem to like it. More important, users seem to want it.”
Jobs argued that “antennagate,” as Apple has humourously dubbed the issue, is overblown, since just 0.5 percent of iPhone 4 users have called AppleCare to complain, and fewer than 2 percent have returned their phones.
“All smartphones seem to do that,” Jobs said of the reception problem that occurs when one’s hand covers the antenna. “We haven’t figured out a way around the laws of physics.”
Steve Jobs: iPhone 4 Owners to Get Free Covers to Solve Antenna Problem
Nevertheless, Jobs admitted that “we screwed up the algorithm” on the signal strength indicator. “We’ve been working our butts off” to understand the issue, he said.
Later, during a brief question-and-answer session, Jobs denied reports that he knew about the flaw before the phone was released.
“That’s a crock,” he said, according to Engadget.com.” If anyone had said this thing has problems, we would have dispatched people to deal with that issue.”
Nevertheless, Jobs admitted that the iPhone 4 drops slightly more calls than the previous version.
The conference comes after weeks of negative publicity, which Apple until now only addressed with formal statements. When complaints surfaced initially, the company released a statement saying that “gripping any phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, depending on the placement of the antennas.”
The company later released another statement, repeating its claim that gripping any phone in certain ways could reduce reception. Apple also said there was a problem with the bars that display signal strength and said it would release a free software update soon to fix the problem.
“Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong,” the company said. “Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.”
At today’s conference, Jobs admitted that Apple had “screwed up the algorithm” on the signal strength indicator. “We’ve been working our butts off” to understand the issue, he said.
Apple’s statements did little to satisfy customers, and several lawsuits seeking class action status have been filed.
The backlash reached its peak on July 19, when Consumer Reports said it would not recommend the new phone, though it still ranked it among the world’s top smartphones. Then, on Wednesday, Bloomberg News reported that a senior antenna engineer at Apple had warned Jobs early on that the iPhone 4’s design could lead to dropped calls.
Steve Jobs: iPhone 4 Owners to Get Free Covers to Solve Antenna Problem
The Apple press conference seemed to go over well with investors. When the conference started, Apple stock was trading at $249, and it jumped to a high of $254.97 while Jobs was speaking. Ross “This clearly represents a good faith effort to address the concerns,” he said. “It’s not a perfect solution, but there may not be a perfect solution, in that there are inherent tradeoffs in handset design.”
Jobs seem to mean what he was saying in his efforts to make things right in the consumer’s eyes according to an analyst at NPD group, Rubin
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My Take: I can’t afford an iPhone, so I’m not worried about its reception. But, I can understand those that did buy it being upset. It is just like buying PlayStation 3 guitar games and when you start play it you find out it doesn’t work. Any time someone pays for something and it does not work, they are likely to be upset about it because they just spent their hard-earned money on it.
Even if you get free PS3 downloads or free access to an online casino, people can be upset if they don’t get what you expect. Of course, with online gambling people can get their money back if they are lucky.
But, I imagine the Steve Jobs doesn’t have much to worry about. I bet he even utilizes SEO services to keep his image alive. Of course, the best SEO services can get any business seen by consumers even the small businesses.
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