“Apple CEO Tim Cook on Friday continued his tradition of visiting an Apple Store [Palo Alto] on the day of a big product launch,” Anita Balakrishnan and Josh Lipton report for CNBC. “‘I am thrilled,’ Cook told CNBC’s Josh Lipton on Friday. ‘Here’s what we’re seeing right now. The watch with LTE — the Series 3 Watch — we are sold out in so many places around the world. And we’re working really hard to meet demand. We’ve sold out of iPhone 8 and 8 Plus in some stores, but we’ve got good supply there. You can see what’s going on here this morning — I couldn’t be happier.'”
“Cook also said that a glitch in the new watch’s cellular connectivity, a bug that was picked up on by some reviewers, doesn’t appear to be stemming demand for the product,” Balakrishnan and Lipton report. “‘The issue is very minor, it will be fixed in a software update,’ Cook told CNBC. ‘It has to do with the handoff between Wi-Fi and cellular, and we’ll fix that. It only happens in a rare number of cases. I’ve been using it for quite a while and it works great. So we’re very happy about it.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: While the Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS + Cellular) issue itself certainly is a minor bug, it’s not so minor when such an obvious bug should have been caught early during beta testing, but wasn’t, and you instead ship it out to major reviewers, needlessly tainting the perception of the product around the globe. This is a careless, self-inflicted wound, as Cook well knows, or ought to.
We understand why he’s trying to downplay it publicly. What’s he going to say, “we’re basically incompetent and any random developer with at least $215 in annual revenue, much less $215 billion, would have caught this bug during the first beta, if not before?”
Hopefully, he’s knocked some heads privately. Apple needs to do better. Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS + Cellular) deserved better.
SEE ALSO:
How to remove bad Wi-Fi info so Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS + Cellular) has better connectivity – September 21, 2017
Apple working on fix for Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS + Cellular) connectivity issue – September 21, 2017
Apple acknowledges cellular connectivity problem in new Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS + Cellular) – September 20, 2017
Apple stock falls after company admits issues with Apple Watch connectivity – September 20, 2017
Some reviewers’ Apple Watch Series 3 ‘LTE issues’ due to easily-fixable Wi-Fi bug – September 20, 2017
Open letter to Tim Cook: Apple needs to do better – January 5, 2015