The people who have iPhones that didn't work were upset about it. Based on Steve's numbers, they got reports from over 16,000 people about it. The flack they got online was completely disproportionate, but Apple didn't help things by telling those who had real problems that they were holding it wrong, or that they should spend another $30 to get their phone to work better.
Edit: I have an iPhone and I live in Philadelphia, where the signal is awesome. We're renaming one of our subway stops AT&T station here, even. AT&T has wired our subways so that I can use my bloody iPhone underground, and it's awesome. I'm not sure why I'm getting downvoted for pointing out that the flack was disproportionate but that 16,000 people reportedly had problems with their phone. What do you disagree with, if you're going to downvote that?
>Steve also claims that only 0.55% of people who bought the iPhone 4 have called into AppleCare to complain about the antenna, and the phone has a 1.7% return rate at AT&T, compared to 6% with the 3GS, though he would cop to a slight increase in dropped calls over the iPhone 3GS.
In the press conference, Steve said 0.55% of AppleCare calls about the iPhone 4 were about reception or antenna issues. That's a big difference from 0.55% of iPhone 4 purchasers.
I'm not sure what your implying. I'm going to bet that the majority of iphone 4 owners haven't ever made an applecare call. This would mean that an even smaller percentage of iphone 4 users have complained about this problem.
There's lies, damn lies, and statistics. 0.55% sounds great, and not a big deal. In reality, 16,000 people get dropped calls - almost statistically insignificant. But if you're one of those 16K people, then it happens 100% of the time to you!
(It's fun to play with statistics to alter public perception)
When you deal with many millions, tens of thousands really aren't that big a deal, unless it's a really serious problem. Companies work at a different scale than you or I, and it's not reasonable to apply your own feelings about numbers to the numbers they work with.
And it doesn't happen 100% of the time for anyone, it's just very visible to some people when they try it, hence the complaints.
A phone that can't make/maintain proper calls IS a really serious problem.
Lying to your customers about perception (5 bars always, making the first two bigger) IS a serious problem.
When the Uberphone that was supposed to be mega-awesome has a repeatable hardware issue this IS a serious problem(even if the issue itself is minor, which it's not).
Nah, if you read the ars technica report on it, the perception explanation does turn out to be reasonable due to the way the "reception bars" graph works. Besides that, it explains that despite the fact that the phone suffers greater attenuation than most others, it still actually performs well due to higher sensitivity.
Edit: I have an iPhone and I live in Philadelphia, where the signal is awesome. We're renaming one of our subway stops AT&T station here, even. AT&T has wired our subways so that I can use my bloody iPhone underground, and it's awesome. I'm not sure why I'm getting downvoted for pointing out that the flack was disproportionate but that 16,000 people reportedly had problems with their phone. What do you disagree with, if you're going to downvote that?