If you open a window and listen carefully, you can hear the moaning and wailing of the iPhone crowd as their iPhones are malfunctioning today.
(This post isn’t about the pure and flawless Blackberry Pearl I carry around and I promise not to bring up the fact that I’ve never had an update to that phone that left me stuck in ‘Emergency Call Mode Only’.)
This post is about a statement of affairs on what I term ‘the iPhone Crowd’.
You can identify the iPhone crowd by their closely cropped hair, (a la Steve Jobs), their black turtlenecks (a la Steve Jobs),
their jean pants (yep, iSteve again) and their mindless raving about how Apple products “Just Work” TM.
The iPhone crowd is in an uproar because a software update (just made available) rendered the iPhone unusable (for a little while).
In modern day society, we are quite used to ubiquitous reachability. Our social and professional lives kind of depend on it. I take the pain of being out of contact seriously.
My point isn’t that the iPhone not working isn’t a big deal, but the fact that people are surprised.
Maybe to an iKoolaide swigging SteveClone this is unexpected, after all, what part of “It Just Works TM” doesn’t the iPhone team understand.
To many of us, this is simply another software release that has hiccups out of the gate.
I’ve been a part of a number of software released in my time. Most, had great intentions, a nice start, a rushed end, and some issues on deal day.
This has been true across the board. From projects of 2 developers working from a napkin-spec to a developmental army augmented with a cadre of PMP certified project managers furiously tracking deliverables, timeboxing effort and managing the Critical Path.
Software development is not easy. In fact, it is downright hard. I’d be willing to bet 99.99% of all software projects have problems when they go-live. Even the best tested applications find gaps in their testing. Spots where the ugly Real World messes up their nice clean model. It is just how it is.
So, since this software ‘upgrade’ is going just like all other software projects, you can bet these problems are actively being worked on right now by stressed out, hyper-caffeinated people who really want to fix this problem. My iPrediction is that in a day or two, definitely by Monday, the iPhone problems will be largely forgotten.
The iPhone Crowd will be back to prancing around in their black turtlenecks, jeans and closely cropped hair and spouting off marketing babble like “It Just Works” all the while sophmorically pointing and laughing at those with other handset brands…
The problem I have with it all is it doesn’t “Just Work TM“. Actually, it often “Just Doesn’t Work”, (Remember the Leopard release?) but no iSteveClone worth his black turtleneck would dare utter such a thing.
Business as usual, right?