iPhone Seeing Share of Problems

Most of what you'll see in the press about the iPhone seems to be raves. But to get a better rounded picture, it's informative to see what customers are saying in Apple's support forum. Some of the complaints:

• No support for AOL, Yahoo, and MSN instant messaging clients.


• No voice dialing support.


• One of the more "locked-down" phones you can find, which means that you're more than usually tied to the service provider - AT&T in this case.


• The headphone jack needs a special adaptor for most headphone sets.


• No support for custom ring tones.


• No to-do list in the calendar function.


• If you aren't careful with what features you leave on, a battery charge can last under half a day.


• Volume is less than on many phones and can require particular "technique" of use to hear.

There is even one person complaining on Slashdot that the phone won't work with the 64-bit version of either Vista or Windows XP and that a post on the Apple support forum about the issue was removed. (Apparently the incompatability is not listed on the iPhone specs, according to Engadget.) And reportedly AT&T insiders were saying to the blog Ethan Says/Homorific that the iPhone frequently drops calls. (Not something you want to support if you're trying to deal with customer perceptions that dropped calls are a carrier problem.) And this is just scratching the surface of the commentary you can find on the web.

Apple has had a good reputation in industrial design and engineering, but ultimately you need a product that works and doesn't just look good. The Apple die-hard group as a percentage is a tiny part of technology consumers and releasing something that starts making people angry is one of the best ways to damage a product line. Negative word of mouth travels faster and farther than positive.