CUPERTINO, California — Apple CEO Steve Jobs kicked off a press conference Friday at his company’s headquarters with an unusual admission of fallibility.
“We’re not perfect. We know that. You know that. And [our] phones aren’t perfect either,” Jobs told the assembled crowd of about 90 journalists and bloggers, addressing widely-reported problems with the iPhone 4’s antenna.
“We’ve been working our butts off to understand what the real problems are,” Jobs added, referring to the problem as “Antennagate.”
Negative press about the iPhone 4 spiraled out of control after Consumer Reports said it could not recommend the device because of its faulty antenna.
A recall is extremely unlikely — and surely something Apple wants to avoid, given the costs and potential damage to its brand. (For an idea of what it could be like, take a look at five of the most brutal product recalls in recent history.)
When the iPhone 4 hit stores June 24, numerous anecdotal reports spread across the web with customers claiming that covering the lower-left gap of the phone caused a significant drop in reception, as signified by cellular bars.
In a letter to customers, Apple said the reception loss was an optical illusion caused by a software algorithm that was making the cellular bars exaggerate the iPhone 4’s signal strength.
Later, a few bloggers and Consumer Reports replicated the problem with testing and concluded that the iPhone 4’s external antenna design was more susceptible to signal degradation (when held the “wrong” way) compared to other phones.
That conclusion compelled Consumer Reports to tag it with an ugly “can’t recommend” to the iPhone 4 — giving a big black eye to Apple, whose products traditionally earn high ratings from reviewers across the board. Duly, Apple’s stock dropped nearly 8 percent Wednesday morning.
When Apple invited members of the press to the event, it only said the topic was “iPhone 4″ and gave no further details. Some journalists have predicted that Apple would reinforce its stance that the device’s antenna issues are related to software, not hardware, which would eliminate the need for a recall. There’s a chance, too, that Apple will offer customers free bumpers if they report experiencing the antenna issue.
That scenario would be the most obvious, but there’s still room for surprise. Apple historically has never held a press conference amid a flurry of negative press, so anyone’s guess is as good as ours.
