The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

because she's so upset she'll throw the iphone 2.0 at the lawyers twice as fast as iphone 1.0 users do ... proving Apple's case. they never said WHAT was twice as fast!

↓↑report

Yeah, Apple's launch of the iPhone has been flawless...

I think it's a legit complaint, legal action is a good way to get attention of the media and Apple.

I'm actally writing this on my iphone 3G, luckily I have good coverage around here, but I would be pissed off if my phone was not getting decent signal due to poor design, or inefficient firmware. 3G definitely could be faster, but what's with all the elitism?

↓↑report

No elitism here. She expects the phone to magically perform flawlessly at twice the speed regardless of the local cellular infrastructure. Unless this is her first cellphone ever, she should already understand the concepts of signal attenuation and finite local coverage.

↓↑report

matt, She expects the phone to magically perform flawlessly at twice the speed because (get this) that is what she was told and sold via their false advertising.

↓↑report

"I think it's a legit complaint, legal action is a good way to get attention of the media and Apple."

That might be the case if the courts were an infinite resource. They aren't. This moron is wasting taxpayer-funded resources that could be better used on actual injustices.

The woman has a phone that can run twice as fast, she just has to be in the right places for that to work. Next we'll hear about a mine worker suing Apple because he can't connect at all from a mile underground.

I can assure you, whatever the iPhone TV commercials might say, before she actually bought the phone the woman was presented with the appropriately qualified statements about cellular coverage. She *certainly* would have been given documents from AT&T stating that performance will vary with coverage.

She can't possibly claim to have been misled. She most likely signed documents that include the relevant disclaimers.

↓↑report

If Apple disclaimered everything that could possibly affect the performance of the phone, they'd be looking at two hour spots.

↓↑report

Richard, I'm trying to make sense of your comment.

You say that you typed your comment from your 3G iPhone and that luckily you have good coverage around you. Coverage sounds like AT&T's deal, not Apples. So lucky for you, AT&T provides good signal around your area. (Assuming your using AT&T)

You then go on to state that you would be pissed though if your phone was not getting decent signal due to poor design or inefficient firmware.

Technically there isn't any difference between the 'design' of your iPhone 3G and the 'design' of Jessica Smith's iPhone 3G. She also has all of the same firmware available to her that you do.

This would suggest that there is probably some other factors at fault for her woes. Perhaps a manufacturing defect or some other issue. Manufacturing defects are not at all uncommon no matter what the product is. That is nature of mass production. Defective products can always slip through the cracks thus most products have return policies and limited warranties covering defects. Last I checked, just about any Apple product has these policies accompanying them.

So... why is that you think it's a legit complaint again? There are other ways to take care of these types of frustrations than to go straight to a lawyer.

I am in no way insinuating that she isn't have problems with her phone. But I believe if you look at the larger picture, you would find that Jessica Smith is part of a minority of iPhone owners that are experiencing similar issues. No tech company is going to have quality control that guarantees 100% of the products coming off the line are in perfect working condition. That's what they strive for but when your cranking out hundreds of thousands of units in very short spans of time, that's a bit of a stretch.

I wouldn't expect someone to go suing McDonalds if they ordered a cheeseburger and were accidentally given a hamburger because there was some sort of error that took place on the assembly line that didn't get caught till the product made it to the end consumer. I would expect the end consumer try and remedy that situation by dealing directly with someone at McDonalds till they were given the 'cheeseburger' that they ordered. This may sound simple but I have been to some McDonalds where this could seriously be a chore from hell. But it still remains the same. The person that got that hamburger by mistake is part of a small minority in the grand scheme of things because according to McDonalds (and their many customers around the world), billions and billions of cheeseburgers have been sold and the majority of customers got their cheeseburger fix.

I can assure you that Apple is trying to pinpoint the issues that as best as they can that are causing the iPhone to behave in this manner for a minority of customers. Jessica Smith could very easily return her iPhone as being defective and chalk it up as a bad consumer experience with an Apple product. But for her to basically claim the iPhone 3G as a defective product across the entire installed user base is just flat out ignorant. I personally am still happy with my Gen 1 iPhone that I bought on the first iDay last June 29th and really haven't found any compelling reason to upgrade at this point in time. I do know plenty of iPhone 3G users though (most of whom never owned the first generation iPhone) that are unbelievably happy with their product as much of the majority of iPhone 3G users seem to be.

↓↑report

I thought Apple was selling and branding 3G as their invention.

↓↑report

AT&T isn't really charging more for 3G. It's more that they are loaning people half the cost of the phone and adding the repayment to the data plan. Sure, they get more in the long run, but every loan has interest (in this case, around 9.5% if I calculated right).

Of course, once the contract period has expired, it costs more than the first iPhone. But it doesn't cost more than you would expect for an unlimited data plan.

↓↑report