Last week was a tough week for Apple followers as we were bombarded with a slew of stories that sounded dire, but upon further examination maybe weren’t so bad (or maybe they were).
Confused yet? You’re not alone. Let’s look at three stories from last week that illustrate this issue.
The iPhone 4 Antenna Issue
I wrote about this issue on Friday in Apple iPhone 4 Explanation Letter Borders on Surreal. We had people saying there was a real issue. We had Apple’s convoluted letter of explanation that it was an issue, but not really. We had antenna experts telling us Apple was right and Consumer Reports telling us the problem wasn’t so bad.
I had one DaniWeb community member tell me he tried squeezing his BlackBerry and the bars did drop. That prompted me to look at how I held my iPhone 3G. In most cases I held it fairly loosely, even when talking on the phone, but even when I tried to squeeze it (which seemed silly), I had no bars drop.
Who's right? It’s hard to sort through all of this as a consumer that’s for sure.
The Steve Jobs email
Then there was the story of the Steve Jobs email. Boy Genius first reported of a supposed email from Steve Jobs, in which he stated, “Relax it’s just a phone, or words to that effect. Then we had Apple public relations releasing a statement it was a hoax, then we had a slew of condemnations of Boy Genius and his reporting. Then, came this story yesterday from Boy Genius, who admitted errors, but stood by his story.
It’s hard to tell fact from fiction here.
The iTunes Account Hack
Just yesterday, stories began to circulate from Engadget, Mashable and other outlets that suggested there was a fairly elaborate iTunes account hack going on. I even wrote a quick post on my by Ron Miller blog on how to check your iTunes account activity just to be sure it hadn’t been (still a good idea, regardless). But a couple of hours after the story broke came another story that the story was greatly exaggerated.
If you’re not confused by all of this, you probably should be. It’s a mess of he said/she said and yes/no/maybe/maybe nots. As a writer who covers all of this, I keep looking for the angle to respond. Sometimes I’ve jumped right in as I did on Friday with my response to Apple’s Antenna letter, and sometimes I just have to sit back like you and wonder how it’s all going to settle out and how we figure out what's real.
