If a user’s having a problem, it’s our problem. So we’ve been working really, really hard for the last 22 days to try to understand what the real problem is, so that when we solve it we actually solve it, rather than just putting a band-aid on it or giving a certain press person what they think they want us to do.
And we think we’ve gotten to the heart of the problem here. And the heart of the problem is smartphones have weak spots. We made ours extremely visible. Some took advantage of that to demonstrate it; it was very easily demonstable. We screwed up on displaying too many bars and made that demonstration more theatrical than it needed to be. And so for those small number of customers that are having problems we’re gonna give them cases which we think will take care of most of those problems. And for those that still are unhappy we’re gonna give them a full refund. And that’s everything we can do to try to make every customer happy.
But the data supports the fact that the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone in the world, and that there is no “antennagate”. There is a challenge for the entire smartphone industry to be able to improve its antenna performance some day to where there are no weak spots on any smartphone, and we’re dedicated to doing that, but unfortunately that’s a day in the future. So for today, we love our customers, and we’re gonna try to take care of every single one.
—Steve Jobs, July 16, 2010
While many tech sites are too busy being bent out of shape at receiving hard data that refutes their lunacy of the last couple of weeks, I thought someone ought to post Apple’s actual position on this.
The Small Wave. 