When all the world is a beta-test, is a 7% failure rate
acceptable?
Yesterday, thousands of people waited for hours, to spend a few
hundred bucks, to be the first in their neighborhood to get Apple's new
iPhone 4. Once they got one, many ran
outside to place that first call to an envious friend or co-worker. Unfortunately, for many of them, the call
went through slowly, if at all.
This may be a result of a failure of a highly-touted design
innovation in the phone. Call it a
"ballyhoo backfire." The new iPhone uses
the metal strip surrounding the phone as an external antenna, as opposed to
having the antenna within the device, as all phones previously did. This increased exposure is supposed to
dramatically improve reception. But many
people are reporting that, when they hold the phone in a certain way, their
hand is effectively blocking all reception.
PC Magazine coined the phrase, "death grip," in describing the
problem. Apple was forced to respond
with a statement that read, "Gripping any phone will result in some
attenuation of its antenna performance with certain places being worse than
others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for
every wireless phone...avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that
covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of
many available cases."
OK, who grips the phone in such a way that they tend
to cover the lower left corner? The same folks who tend to elbow you when they sit next to
you at the dinner table. They throw
funny curve balls. Phil Mickelson is one; so is President Obama. Yup, it's those dang lefties. Who make up about 7% of the population.
Oops, so much for product testing. And welcome to crisis mode. Out at Apple, the engineering department just went into hyper-drive. They need to get that patch, or update, into the market as soon as possible.
But we suggest that maybe they should slow down. Maybe this isn't a crisis. Maybe it's a lucrative new marketing opportunity. Think about it.
Coming soon to your neighborhood Best Buy: the all-new, fully-functional, lightning-fast Apple iphone. Now available in 4L!!
You can read previous installments of
the quick Sliver in our online archive.
Just go here: http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs015/1103023679528/archive/1103033975377.html
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