In an interview with Charlie Rose, Apple CEO Tim Cook disclosed that the Apple advantage that they work intensively on in all their products is that “the fact is that they just work better”. Now being a long time worker in the IT and Web world, ye Editor cringed just a bit on hearing such a lofty pronouncement coming on the heals of Apple’s iPhone 6 and iOS 8 announcements. It is very hard to get extremely complex, micro-miniaturized electronics and millions of lines of lines of code to work flawlessly.
Why was Tim Cook inviting Murphy to invade the the Cupertino campus and reek havoc on its new product lines?
Well primarily because Apple no longer wins by daring innovation. In fact, iPhone is infamously playing catch up to Samsung, HTC, LG and others in both the smartphone and tablet markets if not the broader electronics innovation arena. In contrast, the new Blackberry Passport launched today is the first smartphone to breaks the “me-too” features & styling of recent smartphones from Apple ad other vendors. Thus, Tim Cook needs to differentiate Apple from Samsung, Google, Microsoft by securing the pinnacle that “Apple works better”.
However, as suspected Murphy has interceded and spread his chaos on the new Apple products in no small way:
1)Apple pulls iOS 8.0.1 after users report major problems with the update.
2)Apple’s Touch ID still vulnerable to hack attacks.
3)Apple Touch ID continuing to have problems even after iPhone 5 hick-ups.
4)Apple iPhone 6 has new “flex-to-permanent-bend” bent phone feature.
5)Apple continues to have OS/X Mail problems.
In sum, Apple has a wide array of both new introductory and continuing hardware and software problems that match if not exceed those encountered by Google, Microsoft, Samsung and others. Despite Tim Cook’s claims of electronic “it just works” pre-eminence, the reality is no vendor comes close to winning that crown. Device & software complexity plus cutting corners to get to market insure that for now.