Indiana Grain Company, LLC

Posted: 07/16/10

By: tomgrisafi

Steve Jobs took the stage at Apple's press conference this morning from the company's campus in Cupertino and promised to answer questions about the iPhone 4's antenna dilemma.

"You know, we're not perfect. We know that, you know that. And phones aren't perfect either," Jobs said, first noting the record sales and popularity of the iPhone 4. "But we want to make all of our users happy. If you don't know that about Apple, you don't know Apple. We love making our users happy."

"We've been working on this for just 22 days," Jobs said, suggesting that "Antenngate" caught Apple off guard just as it did everyone else.

Citing internal tests (because YouTube clips weren't adequate), Jobs said his company "first learned that this doesn't just happen to the iPhone. Nokia, Motorola and other phones have this issue...." Demonstrating how the BlackBerry Bold 9700 and the Samsung Omnia II similarly lose bars when held improperly, Steve Jobs clearly wanted to make it known that the iPhone 4 isn't alone in the world of Death Grips.

"This is life in the smartphone world. Phones aren't perfect. It's a challenge for the whole industry. Every phone has weak spots."

So what's the solution, we all collectively ask? Apple's answer: free bumpers and iOS 4.0.1, which was released Thursday and "fixes bars and exchange bug."

"We think this has been so blown out of proportion," Jobs said, verbalizing what his comments implied all along. "It's fun to have a story,

but it's not fun on the other side. So here's what we're going to do to make our users happy. The first part is the software update, that fixes the way the bars report and other bugs, that's out now. Second, people said the bumper fixes everything... 'why don't you give everybody a case'? Okay, we'll give you a free case." Jobs added: "If you got one, we'll give you a refund."

"We're going to send you a free case. We can't make enough bumpers. No way we can make enough in the quarter. So we're going to source some cases and give you a choice."

"And if you're not happy, you can bring the phone back. We'll give you a full refund within 30 days. No restocking fee. We want to make everyone happy, and if we can't make you happy we'll give you a full refund."