Is Apple mortal after all?

One of the enduring mysteries of medieval France revolves around whether the French queen, Marie Antoinette, ever actually utter the phrase, "Let them eat cake"? Another enduring mystery of our times seems to revolve around whether the Czar of the technology design world Steve Jobs, famously retorted to a customer "either hold the phone a different way or buy a case!"

Apple, after long denying the "Antennagate" phenomenon finally, bowed to public pressure applied by legions of fans who usually explain away every Apple design flaw gratefully as the "price of genius" and/or "the price of being given the opportunity of owning an Apple product".

That it took no less than a visibly weakened Steve Jobs to address public and admit that he was "stunned and upset and embarrassed" to learn about the iPhone's design flaw that in his words "is not unique to the iPhone4" and in the same breath claim that "this has been blown so out of proportion that it's incredible", seems to bely the triviality of the issue. Mr. Jobs, you wouldn't have handed out $29 x 3 million worth of cases ($87,000,000 + transaction costs) if you sincerely believed that "we're not feeling right now that we have a giant problem we need to fix". You're an incredibly smart businessman, probably the brightest ever, so we don't quite believe you when you say it's a "small matter" and you "aren't worried" about it.

Apple also claims that the main problem is actually with the software on board the phone that shows a stronger signal when the reception is not actually that strong. Does the software do this by itself? Or was it designed to show a signal stronger than the actual signal reception capability of the phone? That we'll never know. Signal strength is a critical USP for many a phone manufacturer. Yes, maybe all phone manufacturers resort to dialing up 'signal strength' and then maybe none of them do that. The point is Apple wasn't "that sort of a company" to start with. A dialed up signal display isn't an inadvertent flaw, Mr. Jobs - and maybe it was done knowing well that the phone's new antenna design wasn't performing quite as well as Apple expected it to? Because now that you mentioned it, we (commoners) can't help but think that way.

The crux of the matter is that like Toyota, Apple took its time to admit to the presence of a problem or let's say admit to a consumer perception of a problem when none may have existed (or if it did exist it didn't warrant a global media frenzy). The fallout from this episode is that Apple now seems to be very mortal after all. It's products have shortcomings and defects (serious or not) which its legions of die-hard fans and new-found fans are finally coming to admit - in public. Is this a sign that Apple's customer base has grown far beyond the numbers that qualify as a "cult"? Has the Apple fan-base been contaminated by "ordinary mortals" drawn to its admittedly fashionable and oh-so-sexy persona? Does this new legion of not-so-forgiving consumers/fans spell further trouble for Apple? Was Apple meant to cater to these "masses"?

Apple's success lies in making and marketing fabulously designed products that perform almost as admirably or not as another functional brand in the market, to a customer base that can well afford the equally fabulous price-premium Apple demands as a membership to an elitist club that is second to none. Few humans can deny that an Apple product does not stir desire in them. Suddenly more than a few humans could afford to join 'the club' - Apple's ambitions made it so. The problem - for Apple, is that these new-kids-on-the-block aren't as price insensitive as the 'fanboys' are and neither are they as forgiving of "minor issues common to all phones that have been blown so out of proportion". This a new breed of consumer, a breed VERY different from the one that made Apple a boutique technology player.

Apple must carefully consider its ambitions and and match its own attitude and delivery with the expectations of the new consumers their ambition will attract. The consumers that made Apple the uber-successful company it is today are the "common lot" and not the 'fanboys'. Mr. Jobs and his company would do well to spend more time understanding the inhabitants of this new territory of the market they have occupied and possibly change either their approach to product design and/or quality management, or their approach to tackling problems when they crop-up. Like Toyota did, Apple must not believe it is immortal, even if they say they aren't, because when they say "we aren't perfect" they should sound like they mean what they're saying and are saying what they mean.