What’s more sad: the very fact that the iPhone 4 is completely unusable if you’re left-handed—President Obama is left-handed!— or that Apple fanboys are doing everything in their power to divert attention away from the issue? Check MacRumors. It’s a fine site, yes, and one I read every day, but to call it an “Apple fan site” would be like calling the Sun hot. “Upset that your brand new iPhone 4 doesn’t work? Don’t be: other phones do this, too!” Because that’s what you want to hear: your phone may be a piece of junk, but so is the other guy’s phone, so it all works out. Um, no. It doesn’t work like that.
The issue with the iPhone 4 isn’t that by merely picking it up you interfere with signal, it’s that holding the phone in a specific manner renders it all but useless. “A specific manner?” Holding it with your left hand, of course. So when Steve Jobs, who described the phone as “really cool engineering,” says “don’t hold it that way,” well, that’s a load of bunk. Why not, I don’t know, design a phone that works when held in your left hand? Because we’re Apple, and the normal rules don’t apply to us!
And really, how unfeeling of Jobs to tell people not to “hold it that way.” There’s zero sympathy in that statement. It’s like he’s not even bothered—not even a little bit! Nothing like, “Yeah, that sucks. We’re working on a fix and I’ll get back to you. Sit tight.” Nope, just an uncaring shrug of the shoulder. It’s almost like he’s saying, “Hey, not my problem, dude. Go buy a case or something.”
Maybe I should just take my business elsewhere? Clearly Apple has demonstrated that it doesn’t give a toss about the plight of its users right now.
The very idea that some people are trying to say, “All phones lose a little bit of signal when you hold it, this isn’t a big deal at all.” What nonsense. Other phones don’t completely die when you hold it in your hand. That’s the whole point—it’s a serious design flaw, and it’s something that would ideally be addressed with a little more urgency than “don’t hold it that way. It’s a non-issue.”
Pretty disappointed with both Apple’s reaction to this mess and the Apple apologists out there.
It’s one thing to be a fan of a company, but it’s another thing to make excuses for said company when it’s so very clearly in the wrong.