Apple’s 3G iPhone Launch Problems: Unacceptable
Saturday, July 12 2008
Robert Scoble says the 3G iPhone is “worth the hell”…
“After playing with it today I’ve got to agree. This is the company that can give you a crappy camera. No video. Charge you more than other devices. Make you wait hours in line. Take hours to get your credit card approved, your iPhones activated. And, at the end of it all, make you feel good.”
I don’t have a iPhone currently so I can’t say if today’s issues and all that was worth what people went through to get it. However what I don’t like about Scoble’s post is he implies (and forgive me if this isn’t the case – it just came off that way) that its ok for Apple to have the kind of issues they had today. It is absolutely unacceptable on such a high profile launch of a product for Apple to have had the massive problems they did. Customers should not think its ok to wait in line up to 4 or 5 hours for a product only to have something as important as activation fail. Customers today essentially went in and bought very expensive bricks. That is NOT ok.
Putting this into perspective – had this been some Microsoft product that experienced such massive issues on a launch day – the blogosphere (and customers) would have ripped them to shreds. Hell, even Google couldn’t get away with doing some half-assed launch of a highly anticipated product. Imagine if Google launches its first Android device and that device somehow has massive issues on launch day?
For people to say its ok for Apple to have these kinds of problems seen with today’s 3G iPhone launch sends the wrong message to companies like Apple and others. It’s not ok to put customers through “hell” to get a product. I don’t care how pretty and awesome the product is. We can’t be push-overs to these kinds of things. As customers we should expect more from Apple.
Congratulations Apple for f**king up the 3G iPhone launch.
Tags: launch, product-launch, apple, iphone, 3g-iphone, at-t, customers, sales
12 comment(s) so far
You're asking the impossible... the blogosphere be rational?
What where you thinking?
A gree though... bloggers are happy to whinge about an almost unkown Mcrosoft compatibility website having some technical diffuculties... but will take apple screwing up this big as 'worth it' and okay.
Ah yes, I laughed and laughed again hearing of these reports. I stopped reading Scoble so long ago. And hearing him, people wonder why Mac people are sometimes called "sheep".
It gets worse. From Scoble's blog:
"After playing with it today I’ve got to agree. This is the company that can give you a crappy camera. No video. Charge you more than other devices. Make you wait hours in line. Take hours to get your credit card approved, your iPhones activated. And, at the end of it all, make you feel good."
In short Steve is saying "here's your iTurd", enjoy. I like the iPhone and I think the platform shows some promise but I really with people would be truly honest with themselves and force Apple to improve the above features by simply not buying into the line of BS Steve is pushing.
hey boy
you have see
Samsung Omnia i 900??
omnia.samsungmobile.com www.youtube.com/.../watch
bye bye iphone
Civisi - open source, free and standard compliant. QED.
As for the iPhone launch, I just cannot understand how people are so happy to buy a piece of outdated junk and be so happy with it.
I suspect people have developed Stockholm's syndrome with Apple.
It gets worse 2.0 (no pun really intended, honest).
"While many new iPhone 3G owners have griped that the device's occasionally yellowish hue is evidence of a defect, Apple has now gone on record to say that the tint is a deliberate choice to improve overall usability."
You can read the rest here:
My post wasn't to directly "attack" the actual product - in this case the 3G iPhone - rather simply how Apple executed it's launch is simply unacceptable and that customers should not accept this as a tolerable thing from ANY company. Microsoft has made mistakes in product launches, so has Google and Yahoo. Google's Lively (their 3D internet world service) ignored Mac users and upset folks there. I actually picked up the 3G iPhone today. I'll be posting my thoughts on waiting in line and making the purchase in another post.
Josh, you're right - blogosphere be rational? Not sure what I was thinking!
Stuart, I TOTALLY agree with you. Now that I own the iPhone I certainly can point out numerous inperfections and irrations with it. It is certainly NOT perfect by any means and has quite a bit of room for improvement. But everyone always has room to improve.
Firefox is free, and has a lot of plugins that explorer does not offer. Vista costs an arm and a leg, and still performs poorly.
So when you paying big bucks for techno gadgets, you have high expectations.
Plus, how could Apple create an expensive phone, on which you cannot COPY and PASTE? My uncle's 30$ Samsung can do it, and the phone is 3 years old...
Oh how I laughed at yet more disaster for Apple. Not only was the last iphone a flop (O2 and CPW were instructed not to release sales figures) the new 3g launch was plagued with connection issues. Oh how I laughed at my 2 friends who waited for 4 hours and came back with an unusable iphone that is still not connected. Whilst I sit here able to send 5 mpixel pics with my fully usable and superior Samsung Tocco.
More disaster for Apple? Don't think so. It's a great phone, unlike your stupid Tocco.
Grow up, it's just a phone!
Disclaimer
The posts on this website are provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent the views of my employer in any shape or form.
I agree. It seems as if it's okay if the "underdog" screws up. I was listening to Leo Laporte on Twitlive.tv as he was complaining about FireFox 2. He said he hated it because it crashed a lot and used up a lot of memory. Yet he still recommended it to callers of his tech radio show. Yet these are his same complaints of VIsta (and Windows in general).
I'll never understand it, and I don't think I want to.