Apple Oops Ping!
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Posted on 08/21/2008 8:03:04 PM PDT by TomServo
Apple on Tuesday issued what appeared to be a minor update to its iPhone 3G smart phone, noting in its terse support documentation only that the release "fixes bugs." But the size of the iPhone 2.0.2 update, as it's called--a massive 250 MB--belied Apple's attempts at passing this off as a minor update. More important, the company's wireless partners have confirmed that Apple is racing to fix an endemic and embarrassing series of connectivity problems that have plagued the iPhone 3G since it launched last month.
Apple's event marketing approach certainly has its advantages, and with the iPhone specifically the company has garnered press and positive hype that well exceed the device's sales. However, Apple's strategy also requires it to test its products in absolute secret and with a small group of close testers only. This often leads to buggy initial releases which, to date, the company's loyal fans have routinely forgiven, trusting that Apple would eventually fix the products through a series of software updates.
Despite months of delays and dropped features, reliability and stability problems bedeviled early buyers of the latest version of Apple's OS for Mac computers, Mac OS X Leopard, when it was released late last year. But the Mac targets a fairly limited audience. Similar issues have been even more problematic for Apple's mid-2008 non-Mac releases, the iPhone 3G and the MobileMe Internet service. That's because these products are aimed at a much larger audience of PC-using consumers, many of whom aren't quite as forgiving of Apple's standard operating procedure.
iPhone 3G early adopters in particular have been quite vocal about the many problems they've had with the device, citing regularly dropped calls, connectivity issues with the 3G wireless networks that Apple touts as a key advantage of the product, massive reliability problems, and more. Apple has already issued two huge software updates in an effort to stem these problems, some of which have been traced back to a German chip supplier. Unfortunately, the updates haven't fixed some customers issues and have, in fact, introduced some problems of their own. Apple is already planning a third software update for September as a result, according to an email from CEO Steve Jobs.
MobileMe customers have arguably had an even more difficult time with that service, which can charitably be described as being beta quality at best. The service has suffered numerous outages and Apple quietly cut key promised features without alerting customers. To date, MobileMe has been nothing short of an embarrassment for the company, and Mr. Jobs has publicly admitted that Apple should have pushed back its release. Apple has twice given all MobileMe customers extensions on their subscriptions due to the endemic problems.
Ironically, Apple's summer of discontent comes at the same time as a quarterly computer customer satisfaction survey, called the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), in which the company's record score of 85 was 10 points higher than that of any PC maker. Forgiving as they are, most Mac customers certainly love Apple. To be fair, it should be pointed out that none of Apple's Mac products are particularly new, however, like the iPhone 3G or MobileMe. Oftentimes, it's the most mature products that garner the best reliability and stability, leading to better overall customer satisfaction. Today, iPhone 3G and MobileMe customers can only dream of such an experience.
End of Article
You can always find an Apple user. Their the ones with their eyes closed.
Any moment now they’ll be showing up here and blaming Microsoft.
/snicker....
It sounds like a full update of the application framework. It doesn't necessarily indicate how many bugs existed in the previous release. The size of the update is a non-issue for most users.
MICROSOFT DID IT!! They sabataged the network and reverse engineered the software on every iphone simultaniously withotu anyone noticing it. Apple is God, Apple doesn’t make mistakes.
Mac users are almost as bad as Obamites in their devotion. The sad thing is we have so many on this board.
I think this is more Apple envy hype.
I continue to think of my original iPhone as one of the best technological purchases I have ever made.
I think other phones are rather weak by comparison.
I don’t know but alot of pro Apple sites I peruse seem to have a whole lot of stories about the iPhone 3G’s issues from MobileMe to kill switches and faulty plastic and stuff.
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Despite months of delays and dropped features, reliability and stability problems bedeviled early buyers of the latest version of Apple's OS for Mac computers, Mac OS X Leopard, when it was released late last year.
What "dropped" features were those? Most early buyers of Leopard did not have "reliability" or "stability" problems. There were a vocal minority that did have problems... but there is on every upgrade. When I upgraded my G5 Tower, it failed to finish rebooting. That was a problem with an old installation of a third party haxie called APE from Unsanity software. Removing APE solved the problem for me. My G5 has been rock solid since. I had absolutely no problems upgrading to Leopard on my MacBook Pro. We are now on version 4 of Leopard and it is pretty solid.
On further review, I see that the article is written by Paul Thurott. Mystery solved.
I’ve been having mouse (Wacom tablet) & scanner issues since installing an OS X upgrade the other night.
Which update?
Looking for a little 'cultural purification, are we?
I read that and immediately discounted the rest of the article as BS.
Every update is 250MB, because Apple updates the entire device, rather than doing a partial patch. It's a much more reliable (and less error-prone) method.
After the 2.0.2 update I've noticed that I get worse 3G coverage than before the update, i.e. some places where I used to have 3G access now only have Edge access.
The kill switch is a good thing. It should be mandatory for Windows.
DemConvention.com - DNCC Names Microsoft Official Software and HD Web Content Provider for 2008 Democratic National Convention
Ho ho.
Did you mean they're (they are) or did you type this with your eyes closed?
:-)
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