Apple may be able to avoid a PR disaster of recalling the iPhone 4 in favor of a software fix, according to a Thursday report. The problem of dropped calls “exposed a longstanding weakness with the basic communications software inside Apple’s phones” rather than hardware trouble, the New York Times reported.
The newspaper also became the latest to claim Apple will not announce a recall of its latest iPhone. The Wall Street Journal has also reported Apple will not unveil a product recall of the iPhone 4. The Apple insider also told the Times the problems with reception were caused by what the newspaper described as a “complex interaction between specialized communications software and the antenna.”
Thursday, Apple denied a Bloomberg report that CEO Steve Jobs was aware of potential antenna problems as early as 2009. Jobs did not know of the problem until June, when the iPhone 4 shipped, the source told the NYT.
Along with the PR fiasco of the Consumer Reports refusal to recommend the iPhone 4, now government involvement in the issue seems on the horizon. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) told Jobs in a letter iPhone 4 buyers must receive a “permanent fix” to the reception problems. Some analysts have suggested Apple could provide inexpensive “bumpers” that prevent users from interfering with the new external antenna.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
