Apple's iPhone Learning Curve

Once again, an Apple launch is accompanied by complaints and lawsuits. But the actual number of instances is small—and unavoidable

by Arik Hesseldahl

Whenever anything complex is manufactured in large quantities, there's bound to be a certain amount of failure.

When the product being manufactured is as complex as an iPhone, where there are a scores of components, each of them complex in their own right and subject to their own potential failures, then the mathematical likelihood of a glitch in the final product increases.

What's important about bugs or glitches in any new product, annoying as they may be, is what the manufacturer learns from each individual episode and what's done about it to ensure that it doesn't recur. Henry Ford called failure an opportunity to begin again more intelligently.

Touch Screen and Charge Issues

So why am I putting the word's "failure" and "iPhone" so close together when from all outward appearances, Apple's (AAPL) iPhone has been nothing but a success (see BusinessWeek.com, 7/26/07, "iPhone by the Numbers")?

It's because a small number of people experiencing problems with the screens and the AC power adapters that came with their iPhones have been sharing their experiences on a few Web forums. Naturally, these problems gained some notice in the media over the past few weeks. This roughly coincided with the appearance of "refurbished iPhones" selling on Apple's Web site, proving that Apple, like nearly every tech company, resells products that are in good working order but have been returned by customers who for whatever reason decide that they don't want them after all.

The complaints focused generally on two things. First, customers noticed that sections of the iPhone screen—a strip of space along the top or bottom of the screen—had stopped responding to touch input. Second, others reported problems with the AC power adaptor and the iPhone's ability to charge. Actual numbers are hard to come by, but as far as I've read, we're talking about no more than a dozen incidents so far.

Legal Déjà Vu

This is part of a long-established pattern with high-profile products launched at Apple. Remember if you will, the pocket-sized kerfuffle in 2005 over the scratch- and crack-prone screens in the first-generation iPod nano, which fueled a batch of class actions that, as I opined at the time, did little more than enrich the lawyers involved.

Basically, the pattern goes like this: Apple unveils a product at a high-profile event, often complete with an appearance by celebrity CEO Steve Jobs. The product hits the market, and reviewers fall all over themselves to praise it, with varying levels of mild criticism thrown in just to make the reviews look balanced. Consumers buy, and Apple declares success in a press release or earnings report revealing how many of this or that thing were sold. Then come the complaints, and often the lawsuits. Already the iPhone's battery—the one that can't be removed by the iPhone's owner and only holds a full charge through 400 charge cycles—is the subject of at least two class actions.

Complex Construction

But let's talk about these screens with the so-called dead zones for a minute. The touch-sensitive screen is easily the most advanced feature on the iPhone and the one thing that truly sets it apart from everything else on the market. Apple owns the patents to the multitouch technology that allows the device to respond when touched by two fingers at once (see BusinessWeek.com, 3/15/07, "Apple's Magic Touch Screen"), and the company that makes it for Apple is a German concern called Balda (see BusinessWeek.com, 4/5/07, "Balda: The iPhone's German Accent").

It's a very complicated piece of gear. I talked with Andrew Rassweiler, Teardown Services manager at market research firm iSuppli, and David Carey at Portelligent, both of whom have taken iPhones apart to see how they're built (see BusinessWeek.com, 7/2/07, "Taking the iPhone Apart").