2010 - Steve Jobs - Steve Jobs at the Antennagate Press Conference

2010-07-1631:51English

Transcript

Machine transcript in the original language. It may contain errors. Select a timestamp to play that moment.

Good morning. Thanks for joining us here. We saw that on YouTube this morning and couldn't help but want to share it.
So thanks for coming. We would love to answer your questions today.
Before we do, I've got about just a 15-minute quick presentation to maybe go over some stuff in a more efficient manner.
and then open it up for questions.
Sound all right?
Great.
Well, let me get started.
You know, we're not perfect.
We know that.
You know that.
And phones aren't perfect either.
But we want to make it, make all of our users happy.
And if you don't know that about Apple, you don't know Apple.
We love making our users happy.
That's what drives us to make these products in the first place.
So we're going to talk about how we're going to do that today.
Before we get into that, though, I want to talk a little about the problems
and the data that we've got that can help inform us about what the problems really are
so that we can make sure we make all our users happy.
So let's get started.
The iPhone 4 is perhaps the best product we've ever made at Apple.
And we have sold well over 3 million since we launched it three weeks ago.
Just three weeks ago.
And it's been judged the number one smartphone in a variety of publications.
These are just a few.
Wired, Engadget, PC World, Consumer Reports.
So people seem to like it.
More importantly, users seem to love it.
It already has the highest customer satisfaction rating of any iPhone ever and of any smartphone out there.
So that's not bad in the first three weeks.
However, we started getting some reports of people having issues with the antenna system,
which is a very advanced new antenna system.
and the problems they were saying obviously Gizmodo put their video on the
web people were touching X marks the spot here and they were seeing a large
drop in bars and this has been since dubbed antenna gate so we heard about
about this not long after we started shipping, just 22 days
ago from today.
It's not like Apple's had its head in the sand for three
months on this, guys.
It's been 22 days.
And Apple is an engineering-driven company.
We've got some of the finest scientists and engineers
here in the world in the areas that we
need to create our products.
And the way we work is we want to find out
what the real problem is before we start to come up with solutions.
And so we've been working our butts off for the last 22 days
to understand what the real issues are here
so that we can come up with real solutions.
And today, we want to share with you what we've learned.
So let's go right to the data.
AntennaGate.
Doesn't seem like a good idea if you can touch your phone,
or more in particular, grip your phone in a certain way
and the bars go way down.
That doesn't seem like a good thing.
Well, it turns out it's certainly not
unique to the iPhone 4.
That was one of the first things we learned.
You could go on YouTube and see videos of Nokia phones
and Motorola phones and other phones doing the same thing.
Nobody had ever looked at them much before.
And frankly, we didn't trust them either.
So we did our own testing.
We have extremely sophisticated testing here.
And let me just show you an example of some other smartphones.
So we're going to start off with some very credible phones.
These are all good phones.
There's nothing wrong with them.
The first is the BlackBerry Bold 9700, made by RIM.
This is perhaps the most popular smartphone in business.
So let's take a look at what happens when you hold it
in a totally normal way.
So you can see the bars right there.
It's got five bars.
And we're going to grip it like you might easily grip it
to make a phone call.
And you'll see the bars go down to one fairly rapidly.
And you un-grip it, and the bars
go back up to five.
Pretty much identical to the videos on the web
about the iPhone 4.
So there's the BlackBerry Bold, five bars to one bar.
Different people grip phones in different ways,
but you can imagine that's a pretty popular way
to grip that phone.
Next, the HTC Droid Ares.
It's an Android phone.
Let's take a look at it.
Starts off with four bars.
They only have four bars.
And the time it takes for the bars to go down
is dictated by their algorithm.
The signal goes down right away, but the algorithm sometimes
delays it to make sure it's not just a temporary glitch
as to not confuse the user.
So it goes down to zero bars.
And then when you take your hand away from wherever
their antenna weak spot is, it goes back up eventually
to four bars there.
So again, the HTC Droid era, same behavior,
four bars to zero bars.
Samsung Omnia 2, a Windows mobile phone,
let's take a look at it.
It's got four bars to start.
We grip it in a not unusual way.
This one, I believe they have a long hysteresis
in their algorithm.
So it takes a minute or so to drop the bars.
But again, the signal strength dropped immediately.
And the display goes dark quickly.
They're trying to save battery life.
again the signals already down to I believe one bar but they're just taking
their time to show it to make sure they're not making a mistake none of
this is standardized by the way manufacturers come up with their own
delays and so again you'll see it go back up I think they go back up a little
faster than they go down so we get back to four bars here pretty quickly now
Now, these phones, so we could have gone on and on and had another five or six phones
to show you.
They, most smartphones behave exactly the same way.

Transcript

Machine transcript in the original language. It may contain errors. Select a timestamp to play that moment.

Good morning. Thanks for joining us here. We saw that on YouTube this morning and couldn't help but want to share it.

So thanks for coming. We would love to answer your questions today.

Before we do, I've got about just a 15-minute quick presentation to maybe go over some stuff in a more efficient manner.

and then open it up for questions.

Sound all right?

Great.

Well, let me get started.

You know, we're not perfect.

We know that.

You know that.

And phones aren't perfect either.

But we want to make it, make all of our users happy.

And if you don't know that about Apple, you don't know Apple.

We love making our users happy.

That's what drives us to make these products in the first place.

So we're going to talk about how we're going to do that today.

Before we get into that, though, I want to talk a little about the problems

and the data that we've got that can help inform us about what the problems really are

so that we can make sure we make all our users happy.

So let's get started.

The iPhone 4 is perhaps the best product we've ever made at Apple.

And we have sold well over 3 million since we launched it three weeks ago.

Just three weeks ago.

And it's been judged the number one smartphone in a variety of publications.

These are just a few.

Wired, Engadget, PC World, Consumer Reports.

So people seem to like it.

More importantly, users seem to love it.

It already has the highest customer satisfaction rating of any iPhone ever and of any smartphone out there.

So that's not bad in the first three weeks.

However, we started getting some reports of people having issues with the antenna system,

which is a very advanced new antenna system.

and the problems they were saying obviously Gizmodo put their video on the

web people were touching X marks the spot here and they were seeing a large

drop in bars and this has been since dubbed antenna gate so we heard about

about this not long after we started shipping, just 22 days

ago from today.

It's not like Apple's had its head in the sand for three

months on this, guys.

It's been 22 days.

And Apple is an engineering-driven company.

We've got some of the finest scientists and engineers

here in the world in the areas that we

need to create our products.

And the way we work is we want to find out

what the real problem is before we start to come up with solutions.

And so we've been working our butts off for the last 22 days

to understand what the real issues are here

so that we can come up with real solutions.

And today, we want to share with you what we've learned.

So let's go right to the data.

AntennaGate.

Doesn't seem like a good idea if you can touch your phone,

or more in particular, grip your phone in a certain way

and the bars go way down.

That doesn't seem like a good thing.

Well, it turns out it's certainly not

unique to the iPhone 4.

That was one of the first things we learned.

You could go on YouTube and see videos of Nokia phones

and Motorola phones and other phones doing the same thing.

Nobody had ever looked at them much before.

And frankly, we didn't trust them either.

So we did our own testing.

We have extremely sophisticated testing here.

And let me just show you an example of some other smartphones.

So we're going to start off with some very credible phones.

These are all good phones.

There's nothing wrong with them.

The first is the BlackBerry Bold 9700, made by RIM.

This is perhaps the most popular smartphone in business.

So let's take a look at what happens when you hold it

in a totally normal way.

So you can see the bars right there.

It's got five bars.

And we're going to grip it like you might easily grip it

to make a phone call.

And you'll see the bars go down to one fairly rapidly.

And you un-grip it, and the bars

go back up to five.

Pretty much identical to the videos on the web

about the iPhone 4.

So there's the BlackBerry Bold, five bars to one bar.

Different people grip phones in different ways,

but you can imagine that's a pretty popular way

to grip that phone.

Next, the HTC Droid Ares.

It's an Android phone.

Let's take a look at it.

Starts off with four bars.

They only have four bars.

And the time it takes for the bars to go down

is dictated by their algorithm.

The signal goes down right away, but the algorithm sometimes

delays it to make sure it's not just a temporary glitch

as to not confuse the user.

So it goes down to zero bars.

And then when you take your hand away from wherever

their antenna weak spot is, it goes back up eventually

to four bars there.

So again, the HTC Droid era, same behavior,

four bars to zero bars.

Samsung Omnia 2, a Windows mobile phone,

let's take a look at it.

It's got four bars to start.

We grip it in a not unusual way.

This one, I believe they have a long hysteresis

in their algorithm.

So it takes a minute or so to drop the bars.

But again, the signal strength dropped immediately.

And the display goes dark quickly.

They're trying to save battery life.

again the signals already down to I believe one bar but they're just taking

their time to show it to make sure they're not making a mistake none of

this is standardized by the way manufacturers come up with their own

delays and so again you'll see it go back up I think they go back up a little

faster than they go down so we get back to four bars here pretty quickly now

Now, these phones, so we could have gone on and on and had another five or six phones

to show you.

They, most smartphones behave exactly the same way.