Several months ago I visited the Apple Store with four iPods in various states of disrepair. One had a deceased hard drive, another could not longer take a charge and the other two were simply malfunctioning. Joe at the Genius Bar ever so cheerfully tackled each with ministerial zeal. Unfortunately his passion only went so far, two of my gaggle (I believe that’s what they call a group of iPods) were announced dead on arrival. “But they’re still babies” I protested. Joe said “not too worry, for $75 bucks you can buy a new Mini and we’ll give you 10% of your next iPod purchase.” Much to my surprise, I was actually appeased by this measly offering and dutifully bought a couple of replacements.
After that experience, I began to talk to friends about their iPods and it seemed that just about every iPod owner has had some sort of performance issue. Turns out the hard drives in iPods are rather sensitive fellows and don’t handle the bumps and grinds of daily life all the well which kind of a bummer for a product that is portable by design. It also turns out that the batteries Apple selected, particularly for the first batch of mini’s, were prone to ghosting, making them practically useless after a few charges. What is truly amazing is that none of these product problems dented Apple’s delicious reputation nor did it impact on-going sales (on the contrary, all the broken iPods simply meant the faithful needed to buy more!).
So, call me blasphemous, but I’m just not going to buy an iPhone…at least not for a while. Sure it looks unbelievable cool. Sure I hate being the last on my block to brandish the latest and greatest gadget. But unlike the nice-to-have iPod, I can’t afford to have a phone that could die at any second because of little bump in the road. Past experience tells me the first batch (5 million?) of iPhones will be sensitive little beauties and prone to death by merely jiggling. My phone is my lifeline and reliability is more important to me than any of the myriad of really cool features the iPhone promises. [On a side note, as a Verizon loyalist since AT&T/Cingular’s NYC coverage leaves a lot to be desired, it seems I don’t really have the option.]
Fortunately for Steve Jobs, the positive buzz about the iPhone is so super-charged that one voice of dissent is simply a lone fruit fly in a field of ripe apples. Eat up gang but mark my words, you better treat ‘em carefully and hang on to your old reliable cellphone just in case.