> There were two key messages from the event. The first message is that there is no iPhone 4 antenna problem. All phones suffer from this, and the iPhone is a superior phone. The second message is that even though there is no problem Apple is going to give everyone a free bumper that will make the non existent problem go away. > > Anyone not in a hypnotic daze will clearly see the conflict between the two statements. If there is no problem, no fix is needed. If a fix is needed, by definition there was a problem. Jobs never did address the disparity in the Q&A session following the presentation. There’s a very simple answer to Arrington’s so-called “conflicting” statements. And that’s that there is no conflict.

First, there is no issue with the antenna on the iPhone 4. And second, no fix was needed. The bumper give away is not to “fix” anything. It’s to change the headline from “Apple refuses to admit there’s a problem – does nothing for users” to “Apple offers free case to all iPhone 4 users.”

Don’t ever try to solve a media problem with logic and truth. It will get you nowhere. (Just ask Al Gore and John Kerry.)

There were two audiences Apple had to reach today with that press conference. The first was a group of technology specific reporters. Those were the invited attendees. Many lean in favor of Apple, which is helpful. But more importantly, most will report on the full story and help the fanboys like me develop a good word-of-mouth strategy. That’s the reason why Apple offered video and hard empirical evidence that there was no problem.

But that only gets you so far.

The much larger audience of your average consumer is the real trick. This story had seeped into pop culture, and threatened to hurt Apple’s reputation in a real way. Readers of Consumer Reports, people watching your local news tech correspondents, etc. aren’t going to care about state of the art anechoic testing chambers. People only read flashy headlines, and don’t really dig into the meat of the story. So you need to change the headline.

I admit, I didn’t think Apple would give away free cases, just because it does SEEM like an admission of guilt. But now I sort of get it. It’s actually pretty smart. Do exactly what all the naysayers were suggesting, and they can’t credibly argue with you anymore.

Note how Jobs phrased it: “People say we should give away free cases. Okay.”

In other words, fine. We’ll do what you say will fix this. What are you going to do now? Argue that your own suggestion was no good?

Well, maybe they will. Consumer Reports, despite having said just a few days ago that they can’t recommend the iPhone 4 until Apple offers a free fix or other sort of way to compensate for the issue, today has said that they still don’t recommend the phone, despite Apple’s offer of a free case or full refund. If that doesn’t make you question Consumer Reports’ motives, I don’t know what will.

At the end of the day, the most important thing to remember about all this is that minuscule number of users who have been affected by this. 0.55 percent of users. Like I said before, Apple made a tough but I think good engineering decision, to help the vast majority of users with improved reception while hurting a very small percentage of users who happen to get slightly worse reception. It’s a tradeoff, just like a thousand other tradeoffs you make whenever you make a product.

Will this strategy work? Hard to know. If the iPhone 4 gets out of the headlines by the end of next week, I’d say it was a successful. There was a problem, and Apple took action. Seems like the story should end there. Wall Street analysts will say this was the cheapest possible way out of what could have been a much larger recall cost. Consumers will be busy choosing a bumper color. And Whoopi and Letterman will move on to other things as well. I’d say there’s a good chance we’ll all be able to move on, with the exception of the usual Apple haters, but that’s a hopeless cause, anyway.

> Democratic New York Senator Charles Schumer on Thursday issued an open letter to Steve Jobs regarding the iPhone 4 antenna issues, calling Apple’s current solutions “insufficient” and asking the company to provide a free fix for consumers. Oh my, now we have US Senators involved in the Apple scandal. Do me a favor, Chuck, stick to fixing our health care system and financial reform.

You’re out of your element, Donny.

> Last year, Ruben Caballero, a senior engineer and antenna expert, informed Apple’s management the device’s design may cause reception problems, said the person, who is not authorized to speak on Apple’s behalf and asked not to be identified. A carrier partner also raised concerns about the antenna before the device’s June 24 release, according to another person familiar with the situation. So now we’re just making $hit up. A person “not authorized to speak on Apple’s behalf” who “asked not to be identified.” Trustworthy source there. That could be Steve Ballmer, for all we know.

Whatever happened to getting three sources to confirm a story? Doesn’t anyone do that anymore?

I could call the New York Times tomorrow, claim that Steve Jobs told a janitor at Apple’s Campus that the iPhone 4 causes cancer two months ago, and the story would get published at this point.

Good thing Apple is holding its press conference tomorrow. I think that was an interesting choice. It means that Apple feels it needs to demonstrate or explain something, because otherwise a simple press release of a software fix or hardware revision would do the trick. They want to set the record straight and turn the press around, which means bringing reliable members of the press to their home turf to show them what’s true and what isn’t.

I expect not so much an apology as more RDF magic from Steve and some highly respected engineers.

I still don’t expect any free bumper cases, either. That just doesn’t seem to fit Apple’s style at all, and it’s really short-sighted. It’s an admission of guilt, which Apple is not really known for. Plus, it kills future sales by failing to remove the perception that the phone is somehow flawed. The goal is to convince people that the iPhone 4 is a good phone, not that it’s a good phone that needs to be encased in rubber in order to work.

My guess is that Apple spends a lot more time tomorrow trying to show the phone isn’t flawed than admitting that it is. But who knows? I’m not going to try and pretend that I understand how to control the media better than they do. All I know is that Apple has weathered many similar storms in the past without much damage to its overall reputation.

> Analyst Mike Abramsky with RBC Capital Markets said Wednesday that he is hopeful that Apple will address the concerns of users over the iPhone 4 reception by providing customers with free protective cases. But he also acknowledged that the Cupertino, Calif., company could also face a “broad repair scenario, or even a full recall. We’ve reached the point with this story where the analysts have taken over the conversation, which means it’s just about manipulating the stock price at this point.

Several bloggers are now doing their own informal research, and some tech sites like Engadget and Tech Crunch are as well. The verdict: almost no one who owns an iPhone 4 considers this a big enough deal to either return the unit or fail to recommend it to others. Which means the perpetuation of the story is just FUD being spread by interested parties for obvious reasons. The competition (Google, Verizon, Microsoft) have all taken the opportunity to make digs at Apple, which is understandable. The Apple haters are crying wolf about this being a giant disaster when it’s not effecting sales at all. The satirists are busy making their YouTube clips. The analysts, meanwhile, are talking recall, mostly to make the stock drop enough for some short-term profit.

And why not? It’s an amazing opportunity. Depress Apple’s stock as much as you can a few weeks before a major quarterly earnings call, then watch the stock climb when Apple announces more record-breaking numbers and iPhone sales that are through the roof.

Using the media to manipulate Apple’s stock price is nothing new, and it’s not black helicopter theory. Jim Cramer has been caught on video describing his methods of doing this.

Either way, Apple seems to be riding out the storm, figuring it will go away in the long run. Especially once they announce record sales of the iPhone 4, I don’t see how anyone will credibly be able to make the case that the brand has been damaged, or that this issue is going to make a dent in Apple’s growth.

> While there is little controversy surrounding the fact that some changes can be observed in iPhone 4 signal bars by holding the device a certain way, and that the signal strength may impact call quality and data transmissions speeds, Egan notes that it is not known “what part of this problem is Apple’s and what part is related to the AT&T network. And we don’t know how the observed effect is, or is not, similar to other devices. > > “We also don’t know if placing a finger on the antenna bridge is detuning the antenna or detuning the receiver itself. And neither does *Consumer Reports*.” > > *Reuters* and other new agencies have jumped on the latest blog posting by *Consumer Reports* to suggest that the groups’s [refusal to “recommend”](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/07/12/consumer_reports_changes_stance_cannot_recommend_apples_iphone_4.html) iPhone 4 with a special endorsement is actually [a recommendation against](http://www.reuters.com/article/idCNN1325108820100713?rpc=44) buying the phone. > > The report by *Reuters* described *Consumer Reports*‘ evaluation of iPhone 4 “critical” and a “poor review,” despite the fact that iPhone 4 is the [highest ranked smartphone](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/07/13/consumer_reports_ranks_apples_iphone_4_best_smartphone_available.html) in the group’s mobile phone rankings. *Consumer Reports* does not appear to have “recommended” any smartphone model in its tests. Like I said, Consumer Reports is starting to look like it has a credibility problem. Apple could easily capitalize on this and turn this thing around.

I don’t know. Looks to me like someone at Consumer Reports doesn’t like Apple. Why else would they start off saying the issue is minor (which it is) and then turn completely around to not recommend it, and then still keep the phone as its top ranked smartphone? That’s just not the sort of rock solid, dependable reporting people count on from this publication. Did Steve forget to send someone over there a Christmas card last year?