Bloomberg is currently reporting that Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, may have had foregone information that illustrated that the iPhone 4 could have problems with the new antenna that engineers were working on. There’s no mention of who dropped this bomb on the press, and there’s certainly been no confirmation from Apple that this was how things played out.
So, as far as were concerned, it could be complete hokum.
The Rant
We had an interesting discussion in our Macgasm team chat yesterday about the state of blogging, and the way the mac community goes about reporting news. What we talked about in particular was how the sexy stories seem to be contrived in some way, and thereby perpetuated because everyone wants a slice of the traffic. Things get blown out of proportion, and then, before you know it, appear to be legitimately newsworthy, despite giant holes in the original article—in a way, manufacturing the news.
So with that in mind, what evidence is there that Steve Jobs may have known ahead of time about the iPhone 4 antenna problem, if any? Not much, and anyone who says different is seriously illustrating signs of delusion. The conspiracy theorist in me sees all kinds of red flags, including this news that a senior engineer may have raised a couple questions about the new antenna system in meetings. But, we have the luxury of hindsight, and the media gets a free card to play the hindsight game in a way that borders on unfair.
What could have George Bush done better during Katrina? What could have Kevin Costnar’s super oil suckers have done to stop this mess before things got out of control with the BP oil spill? It’s a game that the media plays, but those people responsible for making the hard decisions don’t have the luxury of seeing how a decision plays out until it’s too late.
Did Caballero notice something no one else did? Potentially. Did he tell the right people? It seems so. But, did anyone have any clue how this would have played out when they made the decision to forage on with the new antenna? It’s not likely. It’s easy to find the needle in a haystack when you know that you’re looking for a needle, and who dropped it where.
Let’s keep some perspective here.
Article Via Bloomberg
