When did reporters stop doing any legitimate research?
Jefferson Graham of USA Today must have watched a different Apple press conference than the rest of us Friday. In his article titled
he states:
At his press conference, Jobs demonstrated antenna issues on phones from RIM, Motorola and HTC, saying they experienced the same dropped calls if gripped on the side in poor signal areas.
No mention of Motorola was anywhere to be found in the July 16th presentation that I watched. I never saw/heard Steve Jobs mention Motorola nor demonstrate signal strength on a Motorola device in the long drawn out press release, where he tried to drag other smartphone manufacturer's down with him. He specifically called out the RIM Blackberry Bold 9700, the HTC Droid Eris and the Samsung Omnia II. He even drove the point home with a graph. Do you see Motorola anywhere on this graph?
I have to admit, I had to watch the 34 minute, 2 second press conference twice to confirm because I started to tune out when he started patting himself and Apple on the back and still...no Motorola.
I was forwarded the article from USA today that came up in an Apple Mobile Me RSS feed of all places that was just plain wrong. I was just about to comment on the article until I saw how many people were commenting on other issues regarding the press conference that it incited me to write yet another article about this whole mess.
What's really nagging at me is that lately I have been reading a lot of articles that are just plain wrong. It leads me to believe that reporters are reading each others articles and just putting their own spin on it instead of getting the full story from the source or at least from trustworthy sources.
Earlier this week, I corrected a story over at Phone Arena. They obviously rode somone else's coattails in an article about the first Droid X winner from Verizon's big Droid X give away by calling Francis Choung a "she" throughout the article. If they had actually followed the story, saw a picture or video, they would have known it was not a "she." Below is Francis with HIS new Motorola Droid X.
They have since fixed the story, so they tell me in an email.
From: PhoneArena Tips
Subject: Re: Fwd: Droid X Contest-Bad info in your article Received: 7/9/2010
Size: 10 KB
We are very grateful to you for taking the time to contact us about this. We've fixed the mistake. Thanks!
PhoneArena
Should I stop there? No, I just can't help myself, now I have to rant about Jobs' presentation. I watched the entire 34 minute press conference and was just plain disappointed that he couldn't just be transparent and fess up in a two minute press conference that the antenna was faulty instead of trying to drag other smartphone manufacturers down with him. He was intent on driving every point in Apple's favor home twice, and all the back patting he did about how much Apple has done for their customers setting up genius bars, antenna testing facilities and Apple Retail stores was getting just plain nauseating. How much they do for Apple customers? Excuse me but we pay for those services, since every Apple product has a healthy price tag.
I'd love to know how much "We, the Apple consumers" spent on the Corporate Crisis Manager aka Spin Doctor that came up with that presentation. 15 minutes patting Apple on the back, 15 minutes trying to drag other smartphones down and maybe 4 minutes of what they are going to do to fix it.
- Get a free bumper
- Get a free case
- Return the device for a FULL refund
I sure hope no one made the switch to AT&T for this device. I don't see them having any recourse should they decide to return the device and end their contract.