Apple delivers a record-breaking quarter, revenue is up, and the iPhone X is the best-selling iPhone every week it is on sale. Apple is delivering excellent results, and the company’s various products are in good health. The Tim Cook era is well established, and everything is running smoothly.
If it is, why has Apple’s Craig Federighi informed the Engineering teams in Apple that the focus has to return to stability, as reported by Mark Gurman and Bloomberg:
His team will have more time to work on new features and focus on under-the-hood refinements without being tied to a list of new features annually simply so the company can tout a massive year-over-year leap, people familiar with the situation say. The renewed focus on quality is designed to make sure the company can fulfill promises made each summer at the annual developers conference and that new features work reliably and as advertised.
“This change is Apple beginning to realize that schedules are not being hit, stuff is being released with bugs – which previously would not have happened,” when Apple was a smaller company with fewer engineers, customers and devices to manage, says one person familiar with the company. Apple declined to comment.
Recent months have seen the incidence of bugs both in Apple’s first-party apps and the core functionality of iOS rise up. From problems with making and receiving phone calls, through managing older batteries, to huge problems getting devices in stock before Christmas, Apple’s focus on putting consumers first and its oft-quoted promise of “it just works’ feels out of place within the company that sells the $1000 phone.
The biggest issue in recent months is the iPhone battery problem. Thankfully for Apple, it has not picked up a jaunty name like ‘#throttlegate’ which would give everyone a single term to gather around, but it has cut through from the reporting by the geekerati into the public conscience. There is a run on battery replacement services, Apple is reiterating at every opportunity that it throttled the older iPhones to protect components and not to generate more upgrades, and questions are being asked of Apple by government institutions around the world.
What the public hears is that iPhone batteries start failing after a year and you need to pay Apple for a repair (albeit a discounted repair). Meanwhile, Samsung has a two-year guarantee on its batteries, which will no doubt be mentioned on stage when the Galaxy S9 launches at the end of the month.
The iPhone 7 has an issue with the main logic board that reports no cellular service, even if you are in an area of good service. The iPhone X has its own curious hardware issue where the touchscreen will become inactive for ten seconds after an incoming call comes in. Both of these issues are part of what makes a phone a phone.
You now have reports that the iPhone X is mistakenly calling emergency services around the world, and thanks to the calling bug that locks out the touchscreen users cannot just hang up and must apologize to the operator. Needless to say, jamming the incoming lines to 911 services is not something to be proud of.
These hardware and software issues on their own may amount to much, but they compound the new image of Apple’s iPhone. The daily questions of ‘what has gone wrong now’, existing customers losing faith in their battery, and potential users looking at issues that are retracted to Apple’s smartphone which do not show up on Android-powered devices… these all cascade into each other.
The iPhone no longer ‘just works’.
Apple CEO Tim Cook is eating through a lot of goodwill to maintain Apple’s revenue and income. The increased price of the iPhone X has comfortably countered the lower Q4 sales and led to record numbers being reported. But behind those numbers the share price fell, iPhone supply orders for Q1 2018 were halved, and total annual sales of the iPhone have been dropping since 2015.
Companies rise, and companies fall. Apple’s press releases will happily tell you why it is still on the rise, but the currents under the surface are shifting to tell another story.
Now read more about the danger signs for Apple hiding behind the iPhone X numbers...
