ON XBOX AND iPHONE WOES

MOUNTAINS AND MOLE-HILLS

It's definitely not all fun and games for Microsoft with it's Xbox venture.  In case you missed it, the company had the following to say in a press release:

"Microsoft Corp. today announced that it will expand its global Xbox 360™ warranty coverage. Any Xbox 360 customer who experiences a general hardware failure indicated by three flashing red lights will now be covered by a three year warranty from date of purchase. All other existing Xbox 360 warranty policies remain in place..."

"...Microsoft will take a $1.05 billion to $1.15 billion pre-tax charge to earnings for the quarter ended June 30, 2007 for anticipated costs under its current and enhanced Xbox 360 policies."

Pioneering new innovative products that are on the bleeding edge, no doubt has it's unexpected risks.

The announcement particularly made me think of Apple's hottest new product launch, especially given my anecdotal experience with the two Apple iPhones I purchased on June 29th.  Since then, I've had to visit the Apple store's "Genius bar" several times for both phones.

First up was seeing a "missing SIM" message on my iPhone the day after the phone was finally activated by AT&T.  Rather than taking the risk of screwing something up by fiddling with the insides of the phone myself, I decided to schedule an appointment, and visit the Apple Genius bar. 

As you'd expect, they were pretty busy and running behind, not only because of the iPhone, but also all the regular Apple product line-related customer questions and problems.

After listening to my tale of woe, the Apple Genius took my iPhone in the back, and returned 20 minutes later with it working properly again.  He said he had to remove and then re-set the SIM.  So my iPhone was back to normal, for now.

Then yesterday, while on a call with a friend, my wife found her iPhone just blanked out. 

Thinking it was a dropped call, she re-dialed the number, using the touch screen.  Just as the phone started to connect with the number, the screen blanked out.  Then it wouldn't respond to any screen tapping or button pushing for several minutes. 

Next, just as suddenly as it'd blanked out, it finally decided to come back on, after a siesta of a few minutes, responding finally to repeated pressings of the Home key.

I then tried making several calls, with the exact same blank-out results.

So I took THAT phone in today to Apple, again making an appointment.  While I was waiting, I noticed the woman next to me getting a replacement 8Gb iPhone in exchange for hers, that obviously was not working.

This despite the fact that the Apple store, like most around the country, was sold out of the gizmos. 

Apparently, the Apple stores were holding a few units in reserve for units that had to be returned for malfunctions.

Talking to her, I found that she also had her iPhone blank out.

When my turn finally came, the Genius tried and successfully re-created the problem I described above.  His manager instructed him to restore the firmware on the device and try to re-create the problem again, which he was able to do with 20 minutes of effort.

Then the boss officially declared my wife's iPhone as DOA (dead on arrival), upon which I too got a replacement phone.

The only saving grace of the whole experience was that after re-activating the phone with AT&T via iTunes, I got a very welcome message in iTunes, asking if I'd like to automatically restore my wife's phone, with all her data and settings.

Apparently, unbeknown-st to me, iTunes had made a backup of her phone (and presumably mine), and was able to fully restore her new iPhone to be a familiar clone of the old one in about 20 minutes.  Including the personal picture she was using as her start page "wall-paper".

That helped restore my shaken faith a bit in Apple's newest baby.

Hopefully, these are but teething problems of a version 1.0 product, and not a harbinger of Xbox 360 sized woes.

Comments

[metroxing]

That is the difference between a company that thinks through selling and one that just randomly releases stuff expecting it to sell because they stamped their name on it.

Look at most products with a giant sheet of paper telling customer FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, DON'T THINK ABOUT RETURNING THIS TO THE STORE YOU BOUGHT IT FROM - CALL OUR 800# (BUT NOT ON WEEKENDS). Instead of the millions printing the idiotic sheet, why not just make it easier?

Or Apple, isn't it nice that no matter what happens there is a store with a guy who will try and answer the question and not just say, call the 800#.

[Joe S.]

Big Difference. There seems to be a 33% failure rate on the Xbox.

http://www.dailytech.com/Retailers+Estimate+Xbox+360+Failure+Rate+High+as+33+Percent/article7892.htm

[Dennis]

Michael,

My iPhone apps crashed all the time and it drove me crazy so I went to see an Apple Genius and she told me to reset the phone and it works so far. But I will tell you, my confidence in iPhone has been shaken.

[fukumimi]

This auto-restore capability, did it restore _all_ the data and settings on the phone?

Apple has a copy of every single piece of data on the iPhone, including data which you probably thought was confined to your phone?

That seems rather spooky to me.

[Michael Parekh]

Fukumimi,

I'm assuming iTunes makes a local, backup copy of your iPhone data on your own computer, rather than on Apple's server.

Although I don't know that for a fact.

If that's the case, it's not as spooky as it would be at first glance.

Anyone know for sure?

Thanks.