“Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook called the introduction of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus over the weekend the ‘best launch ever.'” Tim Higgins and Adam Satariano report for Bloomberg. “He may have spoken too soon.”
“Just three days after announcing that Apple had sold a record 10 million new iPhones over the opening weekend, Cook was faced with multiple snafus related to the bigger-screen handsets,” Higgins and Satariano report. “The company pulled a new mobile-software update, dubbed iOS 8.0.1, after the program caused some people to lose cellular service yesterday, and promised a fix soon. Scores of consumers also took to social media to criticize the 6 Plus and how it can bend if sat on or if enough pressure is placed upon it.”
MacDailyNews Take: SNAFU stands for Situation Normal, All F–ked Up. This is not a normal situation for Apple. Well, on second thought, maybe under Cook, it is.
“The stumbles blemished what had been a carefully choreographed product unveiling that was meant to put Cook’s stamp on Apple,” Higgins and Satariano report. “Now Cook’s rollout of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is marred, recalling incidents that the CEO has faced with other product debuts. Last year, Cook apologized for the iPhone’s warranty and repair policies in China after receiving criticism from state-run media over customer service in the market. In 2012, Cook also said he was sorry for Apple’s malfunctioning mapping software, which was faulted for misguided directions and inaccurate landmark locations.”
MacDailyNews Take: The so-called “bending” issue is nothing more than FUD from competitors and parroted by idiots. The iOS 8.0.1. and Maps releases were fiascos for which Apple and Cook, as CEO, deserve to be lambasted.
“‘I just wish that Tim Cook had a better handle on things,’ said Jason Nochimson, 34, an iPhone 6 owner who spent 2 1/2 hours on Apple’s customer support line after downloading the software upgrade yesterday and finding it stopped his cellular service. ‘I was worried that my daughter’s school was going to call me today and I wasn’t going to be able to get them,'” Higgins and Satariano report. “Apple said in an e-mailed statement that it has devised a workaround for iPhone 6 users who lost voice service or other features. Users can reinstall the previous version of iOS to restore past functionality and Apple plans to release a new version of the operating system, iOS 8.0.2, in the next few days. ‘We apologize for the great inconvenience experienced by users,’ Apple said in the statement.”
“The new iPhones are crucial to Apple. The devices generate more than half of the company’s annual $171 billion in revenue and precede a swath of other products, including new iPads, an Apple Watch and a mobile-payments system called Apple Pay,” Higgins and Satariano report. “Nochimson, the customer who spent 2 1/2 hours on the phone with Apple customer service yesterday, said his representative was unaware there would be a software update. ‘He told me that he was not made aware that Apple was releasing 8.0.1 today,’ Nochimson said. ‘It was a shock to him that that happened. He said typically when they do software updates they know about it days in advance so they’re ready for it.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hey, Tim, we have an idea:
Get your shit together.
Perfection is unattainable, but a company the size of Apple, the world’s most valuable company, simply should never have squatted out something like iOS 8.0.1. You know, we know for a fact they have iOS developers on staff. So, where’s the quality control? And, did Apple even give their iOS 8.0.1 testers actual iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus on which to test iOS 8.0.1? Those were the devices affected by iOS 8.0.1. bugs. (We ask because many Apple employees are still stuck with rather old – in tech time – non-Retina MacBook Pros, so we’re wondering if that practice of lagging on hardware for employees extends to new iOS devices, too.)
Apologies are nice, but they only go so far. Fix the problem(s), Apple.
Here’s a time where Cook actually should ignore Steve Jobs’ advice and ask himself, “What would Steve do?” And then do it.
Related articles:
Apple: iOS 8.0.2 coming ‘in the next few days’ – September 25, 2014
Rush Limbaugh: How did Apple miss the iOS 8.0.1 bugs? – September 24, 2014
How to get rid of iOS 8.0.1 and revert to iOS 8.0 – September 24, 2014
iOS 8.0.1 fiasco: Apple exec responsible for catching bugs before release has a ferocious door-slamming temper – September 24, 2014
Apple pulls iOS 8.0.1 after users report major problems – September 24, 2014
ALERT: Do not install Apple’s iOS 8.0.1; breaks cellular connectivity, Touch ID support for ‘large number of users’ – September 24, 2014
Apple releases iOS 8.0.1 – September 24, 2014
Maybe Apple needs a little less “Gay Pride” and a little more “Apple Pride” … just saying, Keep your focus Apple!!
o-oh… you’re gonna get bashed by the GAYSTAPO for saying that mate LOL!
What does supporting gay rights and other issues have to do with testing software? I doubt that staff were reallocated or weren’t hired because of their support for these issues. I personally support them, but have no real opinion about how vocal they’re being, but bringing it up in relation to this issue is just stupid.
Tim Cook and his top hardware and software engineers get paid millions of $$ a year to produce the BEST software and hardware experience. Loss of cell connectivity is a serious issue. Like MDN said “get your shit together”. I didn’t say the “gay pride” participation was a bad thing, just remember what you’re getting paid to do. There’s no excuse for releasing broken software, not from Apple.
You brought up a completely irrelevant point. Or, if you do think its relevant to focus, we should also worry that Apple’s focus is also affected by their renewable energy agenda, their universal GUI access agenda, their green manufacturing agenda, their product(RED) agenda, etc.
In reality, the problem was not a company wide lack of focus, but a specific team that didn’t do their homework. If it happens again any time soon, then we can all reasonably blame Tim Cook.
At this point there is no long term pattern to make any kind of rational judgement. All companies have glitches in their execution. Apple had many glitches under Steve.
James: “Maybe Apple needs a little less “Gay Pride””
James: “I didn’t say the “gay pride” participation was a bad thing”
Yes, you did, otherwise why suggest less is needed.
The reality is that you wanted to make a dig at Apple’s support for diversity, and did so by making an irrelevant comment that connected two things that were not connected. Troll.
It’s an indication of not having your mind where it needs to be.
Are you serious? You are talking about a company with thousands of employees not having its “mind where it needs to be.” Give me a break, dude.
Just show Kim Vorrath the door and get someone who will actually do some testing before putting their stamp of approval on it.
Agree!
They tried, but it was jammed shut.
Hey Steve J.! Come see this!
This site has become the Fox News of tech. I’m out.
This site has been that way for s long time. Also I must say they seem to have toned it down a bit
Adios!
Oh poor libbies… would you prefer it to more like the MS[ocialist]NBC kinda thing? Pathetic intolerants who hate it when someone tells them truth. Swallow your Kool-Aid kids… swallow your Kool-Aid
Independents get sick of what passes for “conservative” as well as “liberal” too. Also, all the name calling and negativity.
Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
So long!
I’ll bite on MDN’s useless and unwarranted takes, when is MDN going to get there crap together on their useless App, you’ve had over a week now,.. one of these days when someone at MDN actually has more responsibility than running a puny website, perhaps they can try and throw stones at Tim Cook.
If MDN’s app is “useless,” why do you care when/if it’s updated, genius?
Perhaps when Apple gets its shit together and releases a stable version of iOS 8, MDN’s devs will produce an updated app for iOS 8.
The App is currently useless, genius. It loads a story and then crashes before you can get through the first paragraph, genius. That makes for a pretty useless app, genius.
What would Steve do? “You’re holding it wrong!”
Seriously, I feel we should not forget that the more successful Apple is, the more it will be under a microscope. Yes, they should be able to handle it and yes they are huge and have lots of money, but in the end it is people. You can provide each Apple engineer the latest and greatest but if they do not test it, it is like it is today.
Apple is a company that refused to die. It should have been dead in 1997 and it refused to play nice and die. According to studies bij the Open Door University, objects that are thinner and longer are easier to bend and thus break. No shit, Sherlock! People compare individual features rather than the whole package. Thinner, protruding camera, why did they not just make the battery bigger. But in they end someone has to make a choice and decides for thinner. Had the choice been thinker with longer battery life some people would have said “why is it it not thinner, I charge my phone every night anyway…”.
The main problem, and this is just my opinion, is that the Apple Computer people see a different Apple from the one they loved so much. More and more talk about shareholders etc. Well, we would like for great products to make happy investors and thus high stock price, but the right choice for the user / consumer is not always the (short term) right choice for the investor. I do not care for its stock price, I care for the products. I love Apple, the company that makes products I like to use, not the Apple firm making me rich. If I were an investor and had money and MS was a good share I would buy it and buy Apple products with the diffident.
I’ve been running it in Safari, not an ideal situation. Come on MDN, get your shit together.
I agree the situation is not ideal. The MDN web page loads two dozen ads, some animated, some hover bait, some snatching you away to a surprise location. I feel the tentacles of Google analytics clutching at me like the Kraken, hungry for human flesh.
Epic browser works for me….. i got less skin in the Kraken
They forgot the U2 album launch fiasco. How easy would it have been to have it in the iTunes Store free of charge?
What a week, Tim
Yes, just like they’ve just done with the John Paul George & Ringo album. A very civilized free album distribution. No clue why they couldn’t have done the same thing with U2.
The U2 album was available free in the store shortly after launch. They tried doing it a different way, probably because it was splashier than just making it available for free. It caused a stink with some people who like to complain, but I’d hardly call it a “fiasco.” They probably chose a different way to distribute the Beatles album in reaction to the complaints.
See, sometimes doing and trying new things leads to mistakes. The people who like to wail and whine and tear their hair out over this stuff ought to be happy when these things happen, because it gives them another reason to wail and whine and tear their hair out. It’s a win-win, really.
See, sometimes
Apple customers are Apple customers BECAUSE we hold Apple to a higher standard. This is update is a major problem, fortunately Apple is on it quickly. Hopefully a solution will be coming quickly.
As I stated in previous comments the primary purpose of an iPhone is to be a PHONE. Nothing EVER should be done to undermine the confidence in the functionality of the phone. That didn’t happen in this case. That’s bad. Like I said before, the ball is in Apple’s court.
It’s amazing how many coincidental problems have sprung up just as Apple/Cook were riding the Apple watch intro and iPhone 6/Plus rollout good news. Hopefully the Apple watch rollout in (February?) won’t have the same kinds of “coincidental” problems. Not everyone wants to see Apple succeed and I’m sure some of those parties are keen to see a repeat of this week at the beginning of 2015.
So, Samsung and/or Google broke into Apple and released iOS 8.0.1?
Apple stupidly shot themselves in the foot with iOS 8.0.1.
They may not be directly responsible, but they certainly have proven track record of paying astroturfers and “journalists” to magnify any minor glitches. Samsung and Microsoft users never encounter these kinds of things, apparently. Either it never happens, which we know is not the case, or it’s so commonplace that it’s not news.
I think that’s because nobody really cares about Samsung and especially Microsoft phones.
Calm down folks. As Gene Munster at Piper Jaffrey commented “Apple compared with anyone else has a flawless record in product, and that raises the bar to catch them on something. It has become a game with these releases: Who can find the first problem?” The fact that problems with the update did not affect everyone shows that that testing prior to its release, which was certainly done, did not and could not replicate every possible HW and SW combination of iOS devices. Apple reacted promptly and responsibly to deal with the issue. Recall that Steve often denied that problems were important or legitimate and was slow to initiate corrective action. Tim Cook has been more responsive IMHO.
Hold on, there is more s**t shoveled Apple’s way: the bash vulnerability and ignoring brute force attacks on iCloud accounts for 6 months. So, issues or non-issues, we’ve got tech people all over the world talking about bendgate, 8.01., U2, bash, and iCloud vulnerabilities. 5 Apple related issues in 1 week. I’ve never seen anything similar in years
I hope Tim Cook learns a few lessons this week. None of these issues are so bad that won’t be solved in days, but there is too many people waiting for apple to make a mistake and hope to spiral a FUD campaign out of control. There are PR mistakes that Samsung can make that Apple simply cannot afford.
Bendgate is a non-issue but the iOS 8.0.1 rollout is. It is frankly astonishing that Apple’s QA process didn’t pick up on this monumental screwup. Is it possible that a simple mistake lead to an incorrect build being released as kosher? Perhaps we will never know but I’ll put my last pound on the fact that midnight oil is being burnt to ensure that situations like this never arise again.
Should Tim apologise for this fiasco? Absolutely! Ultimately, the buck stops with him but it would be folly to assume that he needs to micro-manage every last tiny detail—that’s what his teams are for. I strongly suspect that Kim Vorrath’s head will roll over this.
We hold Apple to such extraordinary high standards and 99% of the time, they reward such faith. When a cockup occurs, like this one and the Maps fiasco, the tendency is to magnify it out of all proportion because of the high standards we hold them to. This is not to say that such cockups are any less worthy of criticism, or to suggest that such criticism is unwarranted, but to point out that Apple are, ultimately, human and mistakes do happen.
At least they rapidly rolled out a fix to allow people to easily revert to 8.0 and no doubt will have a permanent one in a few days.
Am I annoyed with Apple? Hell, yes! Do I have any less faith in Apple’s ability to provide me with the best tools and experience? No!
=:~)
Exactly!
iPhone 4. Record sales. Antenna-gate. Continued record sales.
iPhone 5. Record sales. Scratch-gate. Some users said their phones were easily scratched. Continued record sales.
iPhone 6. Record sales. Bend-gate. Expect continued record sales.
Wow. It’s almost as if someone tries to look for a “scandal” each and every time a new iPhone is released. Couldn’t be…
——RM
iPhone 7. Record sales. Fly-gate. Teleportation feature turns some users into monsters like Jeff Goldblum. Expect continued record sales.
iPhone 8, Record Sales. Black Hole Gate. Singularity reached in pocket cyclotron causes the universe to collapse into 0.5 cubic millimeters. Expect this was the last iPhone sold
Calm down. shit happens
I’m a patient man. I’ve never found it necessary to have the latest greatest as soon as a new product is available. Have we ever seen the release of a product, especially an advanced product like the Apple smart phone, released without any glitches? Of course not. Pretty much an impossibility. I usually try to wait a month and avoid all the fuss. I’ve been getting a new phone every other year since they debuted. My patience has always paid off and I have been rewarded with a pretty much hassle free experience.
As far as bending is concerned, what kind of idiot buys a $600 plus smartphone and shoves it into a tight pants butt pocket. Simple common sense dictates, you’re taking a high risk of damaging your phone treating it in such a matter. That’s why I use a holster that clips and loops onto my belt. Not a chance of losing my holster. It keeps my phone clean, cushioned, and safe with no worries of bending, dinging or scratching my device. DOH! Besides, competitor phones in the same size category have the same exact issue. It’s also mostly been the plus model, not so much the iPhone 6. I’m amazed at the level of stupidity and lack of common sense seen with users complaining of this issue. Apple is not responsible for your total lack of good judgement and idiocy. Learn from your mistake, and buy a good holster and/or case.
The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. After what I’ve read, I would never shove my iPhone 6 in my back pocket. Better to learn from someone else’s mistakes, than your own. So thank you all you morons who’ve bent their phones.
Oh my god! Oh my god! Apple made another of their very occasional mistakes. Let’s dump vitriolic crap all over them. If only they could do consistently good work like Microsoft, Samsung and Dell and etc. etc.
I am really tired of how every foul-up by Apple is seen as a reason to get rid of Cook. The unsaid implication is that he’s not living up to Jobs, because Jobs was freaking perfect and never would have allowed such a colossal failure under his watch.
Except that I seem to remember the rollout of a certain cloud service while Jobs was at the helm. That didn’t exactly go as planned. And how about Ping? Not the same type of failure, but an embarrassing failure nonetheless.
We need to stop expecting Cook to live up to the unrealistic standard of a Jobs who’s been retroactively made the perfect CEO, all his virtues magnified, all his flaws forgotten. Nobody can live up to that. If Cook, who was hand-picked by Jobs if you remember, can’t do it, what chance do you think Cook’s successor would have?
——RM
But..but…what about my resale value…???
Do it right or don’t do it at all. The 8.0.1 is quiet frankly an amateur fumble… People need to get fired… The frame bending IS NOT FUD, YOU CLOWNS.. If the frame has a flaw – FIX IT – do it quickly and VERY quietly. The frame issue can be slammed shut… The bad software and it’s idiotic release is a deep chunk out of your ass.