15 Jul
Apple sends the wrong signal to iPhone customers
It’s easy to secure too much out a mishap-filled product launch like Friday’s iPhone 3G rollout. Foul-ups and blunders accompany greatest in number any performance launch, particularly when it’s as ambitious as the worldwide release of the iPhone and its accompanying 2.0 software update.
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People might forget now, after a year’s worth of iPhone adulation, but the 2007 launch was not without its problems. My colleague Jim Dalrymple had about as disastrous an experience since one could imagine activating his original iPhone, but I’m pretty sure the only direction of motion we’ll ever get him to stop using the phone is to pry it out of his cold, subrigid hands. So as tempting as it may be for some to seize on Friday’s mishaps as an entrée into denouncing all things iPhone- and Apple-related, it would be a tremendously short-sighted mistake.
Then again, it would be an unruffled bigger mistake to pretend as if not at every one of happened. Unfortunately, as of this writing, that appears to be exactly what Apple plans without interruption doing.
How else to explain the stony silence emanating out of Cupertino since widespread glitches marred iPhone releases from London to San Francisco. Apple’s response to these reports was to have no response—it didn’t comment for IDG News Service, Time, The New York Times, and who knows how many other publications. Although, according to the Times story:
Apple did not comment publicly on the problems, but personally executives acknowledged the missteps and said the combination of the software upgrades and new iPhone 3G owners afflicting to complete their activation swamped the company’s servers.
So it would seem that Apple’s decision to essentially squeeze four major outcome launches—the iPhone 3G, the iPhone 2.0 software update, the App Store, and MobileMe—into a 36-hour window was… well, let’s be cultivated and christen it “misguided.” Why not launch MobileMe a week in advance, minimizing the hiccups that marked that roll-out? Why not release the 2.0 software update a few days posterior the 3G launch? That would give the first wave of iPhone 3G customers a chance to activate before the entire original iPhone user base downloaded the update and began re-activating their own phones. There’s no reason to perspicuous all those releases together, save with a view to trying to create some sort of memorable dart day.
A lot of iPhone customers probably felt like these two at some point during Friday’s delay-filled product launch.
Well, Friday was certainly memorable—I’ll give Apple that.
We’ll just have to speculate on the sort of Apple’s rationale was for launching everything at once, because the company isn’t making at all persons pronouncements other than to crow about the number of iPhones sold via press release. (It’s the company’s favorite way to communicate through the outside world—behind all, no one be able to ask a press release potentially displeasing questions.)
Apple should certainly be presumptuous of the fact that it sold a million iPhone 3Gs in the device’s first weekend—but how about a vocable or brace of appreciation for the patience of the folks who endured a tremendous aggregate of inconvenience to enable Apple to gain the point that mark? And while we’re at it, because luck may have it Apple could also reassure its customers that it will look into what went oppress upon Friday so that it will minimize the chances of repeating those mistakes at future product launches.
That last point can’t be emphasized enough. Because at the close of the day, the selling point of the iPhone—indeed, the selling point for most Apple products—is that it makes your life easier. Having to endure a series of Apple-induced hassles just to memorize your hands on one seems to run counter to that science of causes, not to cursory reference the true reason for Apple’s success over the years.
Like I said at the starting-point, it would exist a mischoose to overreact to Friday’s miscues. And not many large-scale product launches go from without a hitch. The critical thing is how you respond to those inevitable snags—with stone-faced silence bordering on contumely (which seems to be Apple’s current approach) or by being as upfront as possible about the problems.
The employees on the ground at various Apple Stores opted for that last mentioned tack, at least. My colleague, Jonathan Seff, stood in line for three and a half hours in San Francisco, and the only thing that prevented the day from descending into pitiful misery was the fact that Apple Store employees would come and bestow periodic updates about the upgrade process, answering customers’ questions and keeping them in the loop. Likewise, in our report from a different Apple Store in San Francisco, Dale Larson—the gent who waited hours for a working iPhone despite being first in line—credited the Apple Store staff for being ready to help and affectionate even in the face of the activation meltdowns going on around them.
Here’s hoping those helpful, accountable Apple Store employees can offer some pointers to executives a little higher up Apple’s food chain.
