So, apparently, Apple’s Phil Schiller is starting to talk about Apple’s missteps. After months of silence, one of Apple’s top executives (and possibly the most public-facing one next to Jobs) has started to reach out to the tech community to help explain Apple’s numerous, absurdly embarrassing blunders. Some may be satisfied with Schiller slowly sending private e-mails out to various developers and bloggers.
Not me. I want answers. I think many of us do. And not just about specific issues like the banning of one small iPhone app (Ninjawords). Not just one private e-mail to one developer which the rest of us can’t even read. That’s helpful, granted. And I’m stoked that Schiller was willing to take out the time. But while he’s at it, I think the general public of Apple products users would love to know a lot more. At the very least, I know I would.
So here are 6 questions for Apple’s Phil Schiller that I would really love to know the answer to. Feel free to add to the list in the comments.
(Mind you, I don’t expect to get answers on all of these right away, but eventually would be nice).
(Oh, and some of these are for AT&T also. Primarily because, as far as I’m concerned, they are both accountable for each other’s failures.)
1. What is your App Store policy? Specifically, how do you determine whether apps in the App Store are rejected or accepted? Additionally, why even bother taking on the liability and responsibility of making such determinations? It may have sounded like a good idea at first, but do you still think this is the best course of action given the App Store’s incredible success?
2. I know you won’t answer this, but how my mouth waters at the thought of even asking this question: what does Apple say to the serious anti-trust and anti-competitive allegations brought against it in recent years? If you’re asking “what anti-trust and anti-competitive allegations” please read: 1) Jason Calacanis’s post and 2) the FCC’s concerns about Apple’s blocking of Google Voice.
3. What are you doing about the complaints? Steve Frank wrote in his blog that Apple is “taking these complaints seriously.” How so? What is Apple doing – or going to do – to rebuild relationships with the community?
4. What involvement does AT&T have in the App Store process? They’ve said publicly that they are not involved in the process. I have my doubts. What does Apple say about AT&T’s involvement?
5. Why are developers still complaining about late payments? The last time we wrote about this was months ago, but since then I’ve spoken privately with many developers who say this is still going on. I’ve also heard from these same developers that the App Store review process has taken weeks (sometimes more than a month): is any effort being made to improve this turnaround time?
6. What is the deal with the exploding iDevices and how widespread is the problem? Has Apple taken any action to decrease the risk of overheating in its devices? This isn’t a new problem. Apple has had overheating issues for a while. What are you changing hardware-wise to fix this?
It is obvious that many of these questions will not get answered, but it would be nice if someone at Apple at least spoke to the general principles. Publicly.
In the meantime, MobileCrunch readers: feel free to comment on what questions you may want answered. If you come up with some good ones, I’ll add them to the list.
Phil: My e-mail address is gaganATcrunchgearDOTcom, in case you are willing to address some of these questions.
[Flickr / marzipanguy]
I doubt you will get answers when you ask so aggressively. You should be more polite to people.
Haha – thanks for the tip. I don’t expect a reply, so I wasn’t worried about being too “aggressive,” but I will say that the people Phil Schiller has responded to are not that much more polite:
“Every time I think I’ve seen the most outrageous App Store rejection, I’m soon proven wrong. I can’t imagine what it will take to top this one.” – John Gruber
http://daringfireball.net/2009/08/ninjawords
“I’ve reached a point where I can no longer just sit back and watch this. The iPhone ecosystem is toxic, and I can’t participate any more until it is fixed. As people have told me so many times: It’s Apple’s ballgame, and Apple gets to make the rules, and if I don’t like it, I can leave. So, I don’t like it, and I’m leaving.” – Steven Frank
http://stevenf.tumblr.com/post/152606616/important-note-references-to-i-in-this-post
There is a difference :)
When you ask somebody directly and you are aggressive, it causes a wish either to be aggressive in reply or to ignore the questioner.
Those guys were not aggressive, they were heavily disappointed. I think Schiller is not stupid, he understands that there are problems. I think he wants them solved. He is the guy who can make it happen. Therefore he could decide to respond personally to people, who are disappointed.
I think if they wrote directly to him like that, they would not get any answer.
To colnclude this all… My father used to say that they only people who do not make mistakes, are those who do nothing. Apple made a lot with iPod/AppStore and it also made its mistakes. Our purpose is to help them to recover and make their service better for us. I think you agree, don’t you? They already listen and it is great :)
Definitely have some great points here. At the same time, though the soft disappointment may elicit a response, it does not effectively convey the sheer frustration that Apple’s actions have caused myself and others. Ultimately, it was a stylistic decision to be overtly annoyed and to convey my true emotions, and I’m OK with the consequences of such an approach.
@gagan I’m pretty sure Schiller doesn’t care about what you want, because no one else does either, even your own parents.
People are paying ALOT OF MONEY for these iPhones, Dmitry. How would you feel if you were sold a RANGER ROVER®, then months later were told you would no longer be allowed to put it in four-wheel drive?
And Dmitry, when you went and demanded an explanation from the salesman, how would you feel if he explained himself this way:
“Sorry, we’re permanently disabling four-wheel-drive in all our customer’s RANGE ROVERs, because four-wheel-drive facilitates the enjoyment of millions of unimproved roads that haven’t got LAND ROVER® Brand TOLL booths installed and road surfaces which have not yet been approved by LAND ROVER® personnel for use with your RANGE ROVER’s OEM 13″ tires.”
Please.
Apple does not ship an iPhone and then later turn off the iPod, Safari (the light years ahead browser), the video capabilities, the phone, the maps, or any of the other dozens of features built-in and available with the iPhone.
Now Land Rover may very well say tough luck about your third party add-on turbo-charger, it broke your warranty and you are SOL.
The “frustation that Apple’s actions have caused” the author “and others” is just that … frustration. And the approach of whining is all wrong. Who gives a whit if Stephen Frank quits the iPhone?! Who the heck is he? What has he developed on the iPhone that anyone cares about?
The right approach perhaps is not to whine in the echo chamber but instead to reflect what this will do to the millions of millions of users in the long run. Because that is what matters.
Or don’t be polite at all, and plant a bomb there! Uh! I am not being polite! sorry.
Oh, by the way, regarding late payments… Apple pays when they get money from buyers. Credit cards are not charged at the same moment when people buy. If a charge fails later, should Apple pay from its own pocket? May be Aple should, since they set up this system. Instead they nag buyers to check his credit card. I guess this is a reason for delays.
There is definitely a problem with Apple credit card payments because those fail very often. Me and my wife have cards issued by different banks. They work fine everywhere but they fail in more than 50% cases in the App Store. We got and reenter the information and it is billed immediately. No idea what is wrong with their system…
try posting a problem on problem halved iphone app lol
And what about Spotify??
Phil Schiller is no presidential candidate who should, or need to answer them.
I understand that questions are directed to Apple and they certainly make some sense, I don’t think they really deserve an answer. In the market economy, if people hate Apple’s policies, they can always switch to the rivals. And then, there are always lawsuits…. If someone has a problem, why not take them to court?
Apple ultimately exists to make money for its shareholders and they should do business the way they deem fit, as long as its legal.
Great article title btw
Of course they have no obligation to respond. In fact, I wrote that I didn’t think they would.
The question is… should they? I think yes, maybe not to me specifically but to the general population: Apple has a vested interest in keeping its users happy (especially the power users and public advocates like Jason Calacanis, Mike Arrington, John Gruber and Steve Frank). And it is obviously important to them: they’ve enjoyed much success from “Apple fan boys” running around and touting their products to friends. There’s no doubt they need to keep those folks happy; the question is: will they directly respond with a public announcement (unlikely) or will they slowly try to rebuild the community by “making up” for past mistakes (more likely).
Therein lies the problem. Your reaction – and the “outrage” of many others triggered largely in part by the Google Voice issue – is emotional, not based in fact, law, statute, or otherwise.
You all want Google Voice on the iPhone. But it’s fully within Apples right to control which apps are deployed on it’s phones. If you don’t like it, change carriers (and adhere to the legal contract YOU signed when you became a subscriber, paying the early termination fee).
The Apple/AT&T exclusivity, and the App Store and all of it’s policies, break no law, and are not anti-competitive or monopolistic, no matter how badly you and the other elitist bloggers want Google Voice on the iPhone.
Sorry for the dose of reality.
First off – I actually did not come out and quit my iPhone after the Google Voice issue. I’m fed up about MANY of the things that Apple has done, and that is not exclusive to the Google Voice debacle.
Furthermore, emotion and logic can meet at the same time. So let’s get onto logic.
Just because a law or contract says one thing, doesn’t mean one must agree with it. I do not have to be bound to agree with the text of a contract, even if I’m willing to sign it. e.g. I think owning an iPhone is worth the terms of service that I must abide by, so I still choose to sign the contract. That said, I still don’t love the terms of service and thus can complain about them without being hypocritical at all. It’s not like I custom-chose what parts of the service agreement I wanted and didn’t want. (I’m not proposing it should work like that, of course).
Additionally, I think Apple might be breaking some anti-competitive or anti-trust rules. I don’t know (I’m not a lawyer nor a policy-maker), but from my rudimentary understanding of the Microsoft-Internet Explorer case, it seems like Apple’s current behavior should seek the same level of FCC attention. Oh, and by the way, it is. The jury is clearly still out on whether Apple is violating anti-trust or anti-competition laws.
But Apple’s appeal is emotional. There is no fact, law, statute, or otherwise, that will sell Apple products, only the buyers ‘feeling’ that the product is superior. Apple sell because of their brand, and that’s all about emotion. Things like price and functionality contribute to the feeling a consumer has about an Apple product, but mainly the feeling is a result of things that Apple can’t easily control. Their ads can be full of creativity, their products can have great design, but ultimately they can’t control their emotional relationship with the consumer. They be playing with fire methinks, and I guess that’s why Schiller is making tentative moves to resolve the problem.
My above comment is addressed to Valley Bob.
All the anti-Apple topics on this site are getting old. Is the news world really so slow you don’t have anything else to report on? Enough already, I feel like this is cable news.
You write a positive thing about Apple, one half complains.
You write a negative thing about Apple, the other half complains.
You can’t make everyone happy at once; if you can make most people happy at least some of the time, you’re doing a good job.
Don’t like it? Read another blog. The refund for your subscription is in the mail.
Greg, thanks for the speech, very humbling coming from a 21 year old kid from San Luis Obispo. It is however, what I’ve come to expect from the arrogance of this site.
As an American you should understand the idiom “getting old” in this context. Everyday there are now 2+ topics like this. I think we get it, Apple is evil and the App store sucks. TechCrunch has made its point.
Well you don’t have a few hundred grand in code sitting around waiting for Apple to decide how they will approve applications. Many of these rants are questions surrounding the issues developers face in the application process. I don’t expect you to understand, but I have work waiting to get rolling as soon as Apple decides to allow certain applications with music in them.
They sat on our applications for months, and then announce efforts at providing media with music. Lovely. Why can’t I compete in that space? I won’t have much of a chance after their launch, but I may have in February!
Move along to the happy news page. You’re not adding anything here anyway.
Yawn. You are not adding anything either, just more echoes of what I already know.
You want answers!?!? You can’t handle the answers!!!
We need a serious answer about the widespread bug with iPhone software 3.0 and its effect on WiFi connectivity. This is a problem that is ostensibly affecting thousands of iPhone 3G users. Phones no longer pick up WiFi broadcast signals after the software update.
There is a 40-page thread covering this in the Apple support forums: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2044754&tstart=0
More specifically: Is Apple aware of the problem, will there be a fix in software version 3.1, and when is 3.1 projected to be available?
So some bloggers are no happy about how Apple runs their store?
Really? Who gives a shit?
Switch carriers if you don’t like Apple/ATT. That’s it.
Apple:
Enough of this madness. These aren’t phones anymore. I do more than make phone calls and text. They’re computers and they should be treated as such. People are told if they don’t like the way Apple controls “their?” phone, simply switch to another device. I gave you hundreds of dollars to “own” my mobile phone. I should be able to do as I please with it.
Phil:
When Steve took the stage to announce the iPhone, the crowd roared in excitement because it ran OSX. What if your customers had to buy all of their iMac software through an Apple owned store? Then what if you told us what sort of apps we can run on that iMac? Would every torrent app be rejected? Would you reach in and delete porn or would you just remove it (Amazon thought that was a great idea). It’s getting a little ridiculous and I’m sure most of you at Apple agree.
AT&T:
No comment.
Apple is listening but they aren’t talking (publicly). Big problem there. I’d hate to get rid of my iPhone, but this situation is scary. They’re like the new kid in class who everyone thinks is cool and wants to be friends with, even if they’re treated like sh…
Why shouldn’t a company be able to limit apps? They built the phone. If you don’t like it, that sounds like a business opportunity for ANOTHER company to step up. It’s called competition. Somehow no one complains that Apple makes such a compelling laptop that people put up with paying hundreds more for it…but Apple’s compelling iPhone (even WITH a closed app store) is unacceptable. Hypocrites.
I paid thousands, not hundreds for my MacBook Pro and I’m happy with it. Wanna know why? Because I can install whatever I want on it.
no you can’t. you can only install what is available.
Huh? Name a Mac app that I cannot install.
Obviously, you missed the point.
I’m with Jesse 100% on this. Everything he said makes total sense.
Of course sellers can limit what features are available on the products they are selling. That is their right, and surprise, surprise: NO BODY COMPLAINS. They just don’t buy the product.
So what’s the difference here, RM? THE TIMING. A seller has absolutely NO right to deprecate the operability of the merchandise AFTER its been sold! YES, RM — people tend to complain when their stuff no longer works they way it did when they bought it!
Many people, like myself, ONLY bought the iPhone because it runs a multitude of third-party Apps. Now, months later, we are hit with a sudden change by Apple, limiting what we are allowed to install, resulting in a MUCH depreciated product.
Understand now? You buy something, it changes for the worse, you get upset. Get it?
i used to dig ‘crunch, nowdays you guys come off like a bunch of whiners … which i really don’t have time for so seeya round
Any and all negative talk about Apple is always an emotional subject. See the great post from Jason Clacanis “The case against Apple in 5 parts” http://calacanis.com/2009/08/08/the-case-against-apple-in-five-parts/
As a marketer I find this fascinating. Apple has a great brand. They have a great brand because they make great products and they do great advertising. This brand has created an army of loyal followers. These followers get very upset when others talk badly about Apple. Even when Apple is acting badly.
I have no stake. I use both Apple and Microsoft machines and I love my Apple devices. That said, a great quote form the Clacanis blog sums it up
“Think for a moment about what your reaction would be if Microsoft made the Zune the only MP3 player compatible with Windows. There would be 4chan riots, denial of service attacks and Digg’s front page would be plastered with pundit editorials claiming Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were Borg.”
The Calacanis post is riddled with exaggerations, inaccuracies and bad logic. After reading Jason’s email it appears he doesn’t understand much about technology & gadgets. Pretty sad, really.
“Think for a moment about what your reaction would be if Microsoft made the Zune the only MP3 player compatible with Windows. There would be 4chan riots, denial of service attacks and Digg’s front page would be plastered with pundit editorials claiming Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were Borg.”
The quote you point to is a great example: Apple hasn’t done anything close to this. There is no corollary.
Instead, think for moment about what your reaction would be if Microsoft made the Zune work on the Mac or PC, sold you DRM-free music through it’s companion Zune Software which you were then free to use on the Zune or any other PMP or computer or other device that supports common file formats, and let you fill the Zune with music from a multitude of sources including their own very popular Zune Music Store as well as other major providers like Amazon or eMusic or from music ripped from the CDs they already own. Imagine the outrage!! Wait, that’s what Apple offers today.
Enough with TechCrunch, i have no time for all this anti-Apple bias.
Schiller’s response will probably go like this:
“Apple is a great company and we have lots of loyal customers who are several millions strong. If you don’t like what we’re doing, move your bitch ass to another device or provider, like Arrington, as I’ll be smiling when you come back. Have a nice day. – Phil”
All Th&T glitters is not gold
I want to know why the iPhone 3GS’ bluetooth is not compatible with so many bluetooth enabled products (such as bluetooth speakers in my case)?!? Iphone related forums are full of complaints from people whose bluetooth accessory doesn’t work with the iPhone 2nd and 3rd generations but works with Blackberry and other branded smart phones.
“2. I know you won’t answer this, but how my mouth waters at the thought of even asking this question: what does Apple say to the serious anti-trust and anti-competitive allegations brought against it in recent years? If you’re asking “what anti-trust and anti-competitive allegations” please read: 1) Jason Calacanis’s post and 2) the FCC’s concerns about Apple’s blocking of Google Voice.”
Blowhards throw around terms like anti-trust and monopoly without having any understanding what they mean.
I don’t give a rdarn if someone famous uses a buzz word. Ooooooh, Calacanis is curious about anti-trust allegations – WOW. His email shows he knows little about tech & gadgets. Clearly, he doesn’t know much about the law either.
Regarding the AT&T issue:
My sense is that the whole mobile carrier business in the US is going to change dramatically in the next couple of years. There’s just so much consumer dissatisfaction in the category that it’s ripe for someone to come along with a disruptive model that will be a real game-changer. The oligopoly that the US moble carriers have enjoyed just doesn’t seem sustainable much longer – given the level of consumer dissatisfaction and angst.
So, the question Apple needs to ask itself is whether it wants to continue to be part of that change.
I suspect that with the AT&T contract coming up for renewal they will be anxious to do things much differently. iTunes was a disruptive model that completely changed the economics of the music business, and I’m sure that Apple would like the next chapter in the iPhone story to be just as successfully disruptive in the mobile business.
Stay tuned.
Just some thoughts:
Apple makes fantastic software experiences, but why is the hardware not up to par? This intrigues me, why cannot Apple make a product with fewer hardware faults?
For as long as the company has excisted, there have been heat issues. If you have a look at the Apple Support forum, there are people talking about following issues: heat, hard drive, screen, wi-fi, connection etc.
I know that computers and phones are mass produced. But I read approx. 10 gadget sites every day. And I rarely read about heat issues for Dell, HP, Sony Ericsson, Nokia, HTC etc.
Why is that?
Is it because Apple outsource their production, and thus are not able to maintain strict quality controle?
Is it because their focus on design is not compatible with function?
I am not an engineer, nor designer. So I have more questions than answers to give.
But one thing that I know for sure is that looks is not always a sign of quality.
I’d be very surprised if the statistics of hardware failure are higher for Apple than they are for Dell, HP, Sony, Nokia, etc.
I’d also be very surprised if any of those companies outsource manufacturing to any lesser degree than Apple does.
Seem like specious argument to me.
“…the App Store review process has taken weeks (sometimes more than a month)”
That’s being too much too kind. If the longest it ever took was one month that’d be fine!
Although generally the turnaround time for our apps has been 1-2 weeks max, we have also had some pretty bad experiences.
For example, we have an app in the approval process since December 2008, and that was from a second submission after being rejected for minor UI issues the first time round a couple months prior.
We have another submitted March, 2009 – no word from Apple. A rejection would be better than waiting for months for nothing.
Whatever, iphone has its own advantage.
Add as a follow up question to #2:
Did Apple request (demand) that multi-touch be removed from Android?
Were there any other features (eg. 3.5mm jack) kept out of the first Android devices due to an Apple request?
I’d like to ask. Why did they create a phone that only appeals to girls and gays?