Why Steve Jobs is (Legitimately) Pissed at the Media | Hacker News Reader

Why Steve Jobs is (Legitimately) Pissed at the Media

theangrydrunk.com

6 pointsraganwald18 comments

He may be pissed at the media for "blowing things out of proportion", but it seems to me that he spends most of his time trying to get the press to blow things out of proportion to his benefit. Live by hype, die by hype.

Funny sense of desert you've got there. Being good at marketing doesn't mean you deserve a shitstorm of FUD and anger, the vast majority of which isn't even coming from iPhone 4 owners. And while you've decided to focus on how Steve Jobs benefits, you've neglected to mention how those of us who actually use Apple products benefit. There's a reason their stuff constantly gets the highest consumer satisfaction ratings and accolades from all over. No other computer company even comes close.

And if you actually knew anything about Jobs, you'd know he spends most of his time agonizing over design, not scheming over ways to build hype.

Sorry I touched a nerve. Are you his brother-in-law or something?

I use Apple products, and like them. However, statements like No other computer company even comes close are the kind of hyperbole I'm speaking of. It's not false, it's just "blown out of proportion." Similarly, the antenna problem is not false, either.

Apple's design is great--equaled only by their branding, dating back to the "1984" days, about the "revolutionary" aspects of their products. Again, not false, just blown out of proportion.

Coincidentally, a friend just wrote on Facebook about 'a company that doesn't pee on my leg and tell me it's the "most revolutionary rain storm ever!"'

I stand by what I said: live by hype, die by hype.

You may not deserve it. But you will tend to get it anyway when things go bad. Playing the media is a double edged sword.

I can relate to this bit "More than once in my career I’ve been in a situation where something has gone wrong, sometimes catastrophically wrong. During situations like that, when every available hand is on deck trying to fix the problem, the most enraging thing in the world is a chorus of people who have no data, no real understanding of the issue, or even an understanding of the principles involved with the issue demanding answers NOW!"

It's frustrating when people in the company point the finger of blame without the data to back it up. Development teams are often those who suffer from this the most as they are where the buck stops - e.g. after a major software release there are issues that might be caused by installation errors/poor implementation/poor support response/user error but development get immediately blamed on 'poor product'.

I like that Jobs went down the whole clearly presented 'hard data' route to try to get to the heart of the problem; this is a good lesson on how to defend from criticism from those without knowledge of the real issues.

Mind you, hard data without even the possibility of independent verification, delivered far too late and after a string of PR blunders. Apple didn't just screw up, they kept screwing up by not respecting their customers enough to admit the problem early and giving much-needed data. Instead, they went down the route of being condescending and insulting to their customers ("you're holding it wrong"). That fierce Apple fanboyism that enables the company can rather severely backfire if Apple forgets, as it has done throughout the iPhone's short history, that their customers are intelligent human beings capable of making their own choices and coming to their own conclusions.

Indeed, the timeliness is questionable - I wasn't impressed with the slide saying the number of days since the issue was raised, as all that time there had been silence (not even "we're looking into it and getting back to you soon"). But ignoring the response time I think the approach to the response was the right one - i.e. data driven, and that is a good lesson for those in a similar finger pointing shit storm albeit on a radically different scale.

In what way has Apple forgot that their customers are reasoning individuals? I don't see how you come to that conclusion in this case, but you seem to argue that this has happened before?

Well, by their behavior with respect to pornographic or erotic apps, their response to jailbreaking, their decision to completely lock the device against unauthorized apps, and their censoring of books and comics over non-sexualized nudity. From the very beginning, Apple has demonstrated a near complete dismissal of their customers' ability to make decisions for themselves, as can be seen from their decision to make a walled-garden sort of marketplace where customers can play around without getting hurt.

With respect, I think a lot of reasoning individuals who are Apple customers like or are at least indifferent to the walled garden approach. Just as those saying that they get better reception from the iPhone 4, or saying nothing at all like or are at least indifferent to the antenna design.

It seems that many critics of the walled garden approach as well as the antenna design have a hard time realizing (or conveniently forget) that those not complaining loudly aren't necessarily mindless drones who buys anything with an Apple logo on it.

So in my mind, I'd say that there are huge amounts of intelligent, reasoning individuals who are using the iPhone 4 at the moment who like the phone as it is. So while I agree that they should have done more when it comes to telling the world they were on the case, even though I doubt it would have helped much, I think your image of how badly Apple treat their users is vastly exaggerated.

I don't think Jobs' anger is legitimate at all. Yes, all phone have problems, and sometimes the media misreports on them (look at the DroidX/eFuse story, for instance). What's different, however, with Apple's iOS platform, is that there's only two choices available to consumers: use an iPhone 4 or use an iPhone 3GS. By narrowing the market so dramatically, Apple makes otherwise forgivable flaws into acute failures. If you like to hold your phone differently than how Apple thinks you should, then too bad-- that's their only current-gen phone. I think that, more than anything, is what legitimizes turning an otherwise minor issue into a complete shitstorm.

The antenna problem is one forced on consumers of iOS devices, including those consumers with a significant amount of money invested in paid iOS apps that can't leave the platform without leaving those behind. The antenna problems illustrate why buying an iPhone is always a losing deal: the consumer has no choices other than those Apple explicitly allows. Now if only people reacted so strongly to the horrendous lockdown of the iPhone and of the App Store.

If you like to hold your phone differently than how Apple thinks you should, then too bad-- that's their only current-gen phone. Or you can get their free case, which leaves it still thinner and arguably better looking than most other phones on the market.

The antenna problems illustrate why buying an iPhone is always a losing deal

That seems really hyperbolic... always a losing deal? Unless perhaps you assume that the portion of critical-problem-havers is 100%. In actuality, it's a tiny fraction. (And, of that tiny fraction in this particular case, the vast majority can be solved with the free case.) Could Apple someday be struck by the inability to make a good product, leaving users with no upgrade path? I guess so, but that doesn't keep me from buying what appears to be for me easily the best device on the market. If that ever changes, yeah, I'll have to find replacements for maybe $50 worth of apps. Not the end of the world -- it's not like I'm signing on me and the next few generations to Apple-only.

To start with, the free case is a very recent concession that was made in response to intense media pressure (whether deserved or not). Moreover, I didn't say that the antenna problem is a critical problem for all users, but I said it illustrates why for all users, it's a sucker deal. You are betting against Apple ever deciding that its one sanctioned upgrade path should go in a direction you don't like. You are gambling not that Apple will suddenly be unable to make good products, but that their design decisions will be different from your needs and desires. Moreover, there is likely a lot more investment in the platform than just $50 of apps.

As for "easily the best device on the market," that's only true if you are completely fine with a device that does only and exactly what Apple allows it to do, rather than a device that is, as computers throughout their entire history as successful consumer devices have been, designed to allow you to do what you want-- including create and innovate. Compare the approach of Google's App Inventor to the approach of Apple's monolithic and cryptographically signed dev chain, for one specific example of what I mean.

I understand what you're saying, but the vast majority of people who have iPhones (and the people who Apple is explicitly targeting with their product design and marketing), are completely fine with a device that "does only and exactly what Apple allows it to do".

So to say that "for all users it's a sucker's deal" is to ignore these millions and millions of people while making a statement about yourself and your tastes and desires. For you, apparently the iPhone's tradeoffs are unacceptable, and that's fine. I'm sympathetic with what you're saying: in theory, it sounds obvious that an open ecosystem where every device manufacturer can create whatever they want is going to lead to better hardware than Apple could ever compete with. In reality, that just could not be farther from the truth for a huge group of people: there's not another phone I like better than the iPhone 4, so I'm "stuck" with Apple — not because they have me locked in but because nobody else seems to make a phone whose particular tradeoffs are more in line with what I desire.

I'm sorry, but do you honestly compare the Droid X eFuse story, which has been written about in select geek blogs to some extent to the iPhone 4 reception story, which has occupied pretty much every mainstream news reporting media outlet for quite a while now?

I was comparing the wrongness of the story, and how it was relatively easily defused by further research and by honesty on the part of Motorola. Mind you, there response left much to be desired, but it was a vast improvement over the "there's not problem" response from Apple.

I think that he’s expressing his dismay over how the press, in the complete absence of any actual hard evidence, blew this issue completely out of proportion

In a crisis situation you have to play defense. The burden was on Apple to provide the hard evidence. When they determined it was going to take some time to gather this information they should have communicated a time table. That being said it's totally surreal that we live in a world where the iPhone has become so important that it gets a level of mainstream media coverage usually reserved for death & destruction so it's probably understandable that Apple wasn't prepared.

Lets not forget some points:

1. iphone4 looses more connections than iphone 3 as stated by Steve Jobs himself. 2. despite irrational iphone fan people no other smartphone has a magic spot to hold to decrease phone call connection success. If you doubt me try it on iphone3gs..no magic spot whatsoever.

3. apple thinks its a problem and has hired extra hardware antenna engineers to review the problem.

The only legitimate things Steve Jobs should be pissed at is Apple's performance on this issue. Back during the 1990s we had this Apple that ducked responsibility for product design execution mess ups and Apple paid the price both in lost sales and stock price performance.

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