Maybe the Apple Product Managers shouldn't "Just say no!"

Alright, so some of you may have seen my earlier post Apple Product Manager? Just say No! but I am starting to think that perhaps, they need to listen to their engineers occasionally. It hasn't come out yet but there has got to be an RF engineer somewhere around Cupertino that is sitting there at the moment thinking

"I told you so!"

In case you've missed it, I am referring to the "debacle" surrounding the funky antenna design on the new iPhone (I am guessing that the "funky" new design hasn't been used with any other phones because, well as we can see, holding the antenna directly causes attenuation issues.)


It would appear that the culture of saying no has spread to the customer service and PR ranks of the company, now it isn't just the Product Managers saying no, the PR flacks are now saying

 "There are no reception issues with the iPhone4"

 And in the latest blow to the companies image the Boy Genius Report has managed to get some leaked documents for how Apple Care representatives are to deal with calls regarding the antenna issues. The full text is:

1. Keep all of the positioning statements in the BN handy – your tone when delivering this information is important.

a. The iPhone 4’s wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped. Our testing shows that iPhone 4’s overall antenna performance is better than iPhone 3GS.

b. Gripping almost any mobile phone in certain places will reduce its reception. This is true of the iPhone 4, the iPhone 3GS, and many other phones we have tested. It is a fact of life in the wireless world.

c. If you are experiencing this on your iPhone 3GS, avoid covering the bottom-right side with your hand.

d. If you are experiencing this on your iPhone 4, avoid covering the black strip in the lower-left corner of the metal band.

e. The use of a case or Bumper that is made out of rubber or plastic may improve wireless performance by keeping your hand from directly covering these areas.

2. Do not perform warranty service. Use the positioning above for any customer questions or concerns.

3. Don’t forget YOU STILL NEED to probe and troubleshoot. If a customer calls about their reception while the phone is sitting on a table (not being held) it is not the metal band.

4. ONLY escalate if the issue exists when the phone is not held AND you cannot resolve it.

5. We ARE NOT appeasing customers with free bumpers – DON’T promise a free bumper to customers.

Which certainly does seem bad, but really that is pretty much how I would expect them to react. Two things surprise me the most about this issue, one is the fact that Steve Jobs doesn't give a shit and the second is the vehemence that people have reacted to the problem. I am not surprised that that there are issues with the new phone, its a new hardware platform, the only thing mature about the iPhone is the OS. The Evo has a 12 second battery life but we haven't seen the same level of vitriol surrounding the issue. I guess the main difference is that they have at least made a noise about attempting to fix it in the next revision.

I can't help but think if Steve had said something more along the lines of we'll investigate the problem instead of hold the phone like you're a contortionist on a lunch break then we wouldn't see this level of reaction.

At the end of the day, the new iPhone has much better reception than the 3GS and most people will probably shove the phone in a case anyway, rendering the whole issue moot. Of course, if AT&T's network didn't suck balls then this whole issue may not even have been noticed.

Apple Product Manager? Just say No!

So it occurred to me the other day as I was chatting to a former colleague what it is that makes Apple good at delivering products that your average consumer goes gaga over, makes the average bogan rush out and spend their baby bonus. The answer is simple.

Their Product Managers say no.


Admittedly it sounds simple. What? The key to their success is the ability to say no? Yup, that is it. They pick core features that they believe the customers will use and don't include all the extra stuff that I crave as an Engineer. Everybody thought they were stupid for releasing a new mobile phone with a camera that didn't support MMS.

How many MMS messages have you actually sent in your lifetime? I remember getting my first MMS enabled phone and sending a couple to friends, of course none of my friends could view them, or if they could they didn't look that good anyway. Every phone seemed to send them in a format that every other phone couldn't read. Overall I probably sent say 10 I would say.

What did the iPhone give you?

An easy way to email photos to people, or through the App store an easy way for you to upload it to FaceSpace or Twitter, or send it via IM. All of which worked better than MMS anyway, because there weren't compatibility issues.

Apple was widely criticised by the geekish elite, by every tech blogger from hear to the moon, except for the odd Apple Fan Boi everyone thought their shiney new phone wouldn't sell well because it offered limited features. But the vast majority of people, the people that Apple sell most of their products to don't care if you can't MMS, or can't transfer files via Blue tooth.

They want a phone they can use!

Initially they bought because it was a well designed phone that made the core functionality intuitive to use. Then more people bought it because you could add games easily, you could have fun with it and it was still easy to use.

So, what does this have to do with the Product Managers saying no? They stopped scope creep. Every Engineer that I can think of loves to add features, countless times I've heard

"Wouldn't it be cool if......"


in a lunch room or a project meeting. We all want to add features, I know I am guilty of it. In fact we wouldn't really be doing our job properly if we weren't thinking of what cool features we could out to what ever product we are working on at the time. I am certain that this also happens in the lunch rooms at Cupertino. The difference is that the Product Mangers don't allow the scope to creep, they also don't allow a partially completed feature in, think about Multitasking for a second.

When the iPhone was initially released there was a very clear statement that multitasking would not be allowed because it impacted battery life and performance too much. This indicates that multitasking was planned and even had been implemented and tested at least at the prototype stage. Clearly the Product Managers and Engineers weren't happy with it's performance and decided not to ship it initially. I'm willing to bet that there has been a team working on multitasking and getting it efficient and intuitve since the inception of the iPhone project and until the 3GS came out and iPhone OS4 allowed sufficient performance there was no mention of it.

Because the Product Managers said no.

Of course I am also willing to admit that there is a possibility that it is just Steve that has the power of veto, but there is still someone within the organisation that is saying it and that is the key.