Why Has So Much Gone Wrong for Apple Recently?
In the past month, Apple has had lots of problems, both large and small. It may just be coincidence, but it’s surprising to see a company like Apple have so many problems in such a short time. I shrugged most of these off until last night, when Apple released an update to iOS 8 that cut off cell service and Touch ID for many users.
But if you think about it, a succession of problems, large and small, has plagued the company since early September.
- The nude selfie breach was initially blamed on iCloud security weaknesses. Apple has said that accounts were not hacked, but that people were tricked by phishing emails. But a security researcher alerted the company to some iCloud issues back in March, which were only patched recently.
- The Apple keynote presenting the new iPhones, and the Apple Watch, was plagued with technical difficulties that should not have happened to a tech company of Apple’s size. These turned out to be caused by same Javascript on an Apple web site; a very surprising reason for a video stream to be so messy.
- Then Apple spammed 500 million iTunes Store customers with a free U2 album, that most of them didn’t want. You had to hide it from your Purchased list if you didn’t want it, and Apple had to set up a special web page for those who wanted to get rid of it permanently.
- iPhone pre-orders were disturbed as Apple’s website couldn’t handle the traffic. This isn’t the first time, but you’d think they’d have learned from this type of problem. On the plus side, they managed to sell 4 million new iPhones in the first 24 hours, and 10 million over the first weekend, but the public face Apple shows customers trying to order their products is not what it should be.
- iOS 8 was released without HealthKit – a major feature the company had announced – but, even worse, without iCloud Drive, which means that lots of people who were prompted to turn on this feature found that they were unable to access their documents from their Macs, since only Macs running OS X 10.10 Yosemite can use iCloud Drive. Interestingly, Apple released a Windows version of the iCloud Drive app; so Windows users have access to these features before Mac users.
- Then there’s “bend gate,” or the fact that some iPhone 6s bend if you put them in your pocket and sit on them. I’ll give Apple a pass on that one, because I don’t think it’s a big deal.
- Finally comes yesterday’s iOS 8.01 update. There is simply no excuse for releasing an update that bricks people’s phones. The fix involves downgrading to iOS 8.0.
Looking at each of these incidents on its own, they’re just glitches; but seeing so many problems in about three weeks looks more like fundamental issues with the company. Perhaps Apple is trying to do too much, and their structure isn’t as nimble as it needs to be. But the month of September, 2014, is certainly not one of the company’s best.
But, yeah, they sold 10 million iPhones. So all is well.
Perhaps the most interesting thing in my opinion is the fact that they have announced the Apple Watch so early. I know this line gets trotted out a lot, but I truly don’t think that would have happened with Steve Jobs at the helm.
Why do you suppose they felt they needed to do that? The public has been clamouring for the watch for a long time so it isn’t as if they needed to raise awareness.
Since the Apple Watch emits radio waves, and it’s the first model of the device, it needs FCC approval in the US. Since this approval request requires that documents be made public, they have to announce the device rather than let the news come when people find the FCC request. It’s the same reason they announced the first iPhone 6 months before shipping it.
Except that Apple employees supposedly expected the device this year:
https://www.theinformation.com/Apple-Employees-Partners-Expected-Watch-This-Year
Thanks to Rene Ritchie blog I was able to use my iPhone 6 within 90 minutes of the 8.0.1 upgrade. Can’t imagine what others were thinking or doing without access to a computer or the tech knowledge. Recognition of Rene’s assistance as well as his retweeting of methodology to order your iPhone 6 FOR STORE PICKUP saved me hours of time. Thanks Rene. Tim, not so much. You wasted a lot of my valuable time these past 3 weeks.
Apple’s bruises are disappointing, but not surprising given the size of the company. Any large organization has a difficult time making sure everything is perfect. Fortunately, these are just bruises and not something rotten at the core.
Bob
Boy, I was already feeling a bit uneasy about Apple’s self-inflicted wounds lately, but when you summarize them all into one post like this, it’s actually kind of scary.
iOS 8 in general is sort of mystifying. Watching the WWDC keynote, I was as giddy as anyone else with “Apple has its mojo back” sentiment. And yet, in the actual release of the update, the excitement has worn off. When I try to explain to more casual users what they should be excited about… I can’t really come up with much. “It’s just a collection of little details” is what I usually resort to. I’m baffled as to why they released iCloud Drive and Photos and Handoff/Continuity on iOS before their necessary equivalents were available on OS X. Couldn’t they have just released iOS 8 without them and waited for a .1 release coinciding with Yosemite?
Combine that with all the QA debacles across the company and it’s getting a little worrisome. It’s not like stuff like this didn’t happen under Jobs. Obviously MobileMe and Antennagate and other things were on his watch. But it’s hard to imagine Tim Cook hauling people on the carpet and threatening to make heads roll. Which seems to be what needs to happen.
Oh, and we can add the “Shellshock” vulnerability to the list. That’s not Apple’s fault, but they better act quickly to fix it.
“Oh, and we can add the “Shellshock” vulnerability to the list. That’s not Apple’s fault, but they better act quickly to fix it.”
Yeah, it’s not Apple’s fault, but I do think it’s embarrassing that they haven’t issued a statement to guide their users while they work toward a fix.
I disabled the “Web Sharing” and “Remote Login” I had enabled on a Mini the first thing after I’d had my coffee this morning. And while I know those things aren’t enabled by default, it’d have been nice if Apple had issued a statement simply saying, ‘until we have a fix, we think these things should be disabled’, rather than me having to piece the story together myself. Even more than quick fixes, guidance to users in crises is good.
“Then there’s “bend gate,” or the fact that some iPhone 6s bend if you put them in your pocket and sit on them. I’ll give Apple a pass on that one, because I don’t think it’s a big deal.”
Of course, it’s turning out to be a generalized “you simply can’t keep it in a pocket” issue. Not just a “you can’t sit on it the way you could previous iPhones” issue.
And given the non-fanboi Twitter streams I read, of both tech and non-tech folks, there seems a pretty widespread sentiment of either holding off on buying the 6, or not buying it at all.
On the other miscues, Apple’s upgrade QC has been highly problematic for a few years now, and its online services have been problematic forever. So all that is just par for the course, if bizarrely concentrated in a short timeframe.
But the bendgate thing is going to have a serious ongoing impact, even if it doesn’t bother Kirk. Far more long-term impact than antennagate.
Apple has said they have had a total of 9 customers complain about bent iPhones.
“Apple has said they have had a total of 9 customers complain about bent iPhones.”
I’ve read more than 9 “front-pocket” bending horror stores today alone. Maybe they’re all made up. More likely not. I certainly can’t verify. But they’re a symptom of something.
And Apple seems to have developed a pretty immense credibility gap over the past year or two. After all, against all the available evidence, the iCloud breach was just phishing scams, right? Not to mention the book-fixing and labor-fixing schemes…
But if you just follow Gruber and the Apple PR Wurlitzer, I’m sure the Cupertino line seems reasonable.
(FWIW, I listen to a combo of my iTunes library, NPR, and college music radio station streaming. Two different college radio stations this afternoon had DJ’s essentially screaming about bendgate. One did a call-in, and all of the calls were anti-Apple. Two female college students said they had moved from iPhones to Android, not because of bendgate, but because of the iCloud breach. But regardless, I continue to think that in sheer publicity terms, the iCloud breach will fade, while bendgate will haunt the company for a long, long time.)
“Apple has said they have had a total of 9 customers complain about bent iPhones.”
FWIW, the initial PR response to Antennagate was to say there were an absurdly low number of customer complaints.
So, I want to get on record saying that Bendgate is going to be big. It will dwarf Antennagate, and do much more damage. You just need a certain percentage of units that irreparably break in pockets, multiplied by a lot of phones, along with surveys showing this wasn’t an iPhone v1 through v5 issue, and that isn’t a Samsung or LG issue, and voila!
My guess is is that things will peak, and then plateau for quite a while, in a 3 to 12 month range timeframe.
Could be wrong, but I’m staking my claim.