Apple Inc. is taking a lot of heat for its iPhone 4 antenna reception problems – and the company’s refusal to address the matter.
The day after Consumer Reports said it cannot recommend buying the latest iPhone, Apple fans are complaining of deleted forum threads on Apple’s website and hoping for a product recall. Investors aren’t thrilled with the Mac-maker either: Shares of Apple closed down 2.13 percent at $251.80 on Tuesday.
Apple has known for a couple of weeks that its iPhone 4 antennas are not reliable. Instead of owning up to the problem, though, the company has said it’s a software glitch. Consumer Reports, however, discovered otherwise in lab tests – the problem does come back to Apple’s hardware, the magazine said on July 12. The publication then said one fix would be to put duct tape around the iPhone 4 antenna – just what someone who paid hundreds of dollars for the latest version of the most in-demand smartphone wants to do.
Through all, Apple has continued to avoid giving any sort of official statement. For other companies, such a head-in-the-sand approach would signal a death knell. Imagine if Toyota had ignored its sudden-acceleration troubles. Apple’s out, however, appears to be that its issue isn’t “life-threatening, for God’s sake,” as Needham & Co.’s Apple analyst Charles Wolf told USA Today. But the Apple antenna problem could be life-threatening. What happens when someone calling 911 loses reception because their hand happened to touch the antenna?
Rather than asking users to change how they hold their phones, and rather than requiring them to uglify their iPhone 4s with duct tape, Apple needs to step up – that’s the consensus floating around the Internet. Apple needs to recall the iPhone 4 or send protective cases to users. Either move would be a good start toward repairing Apple’s image, which will grow more tarnished the longer the company shrugs off its customers’ complaints. That would make for one bad Apple.
