13
iPad users complain about Wi-Fi
A man plays with his Apple iPad in San Francisco, Calif.
To view this content, Javascript must be enabled and Adobe Flash Player must be installed.
TEXT OF STORY
Bob Moon: Whenever Apple CEO Steve Jobs holds a press event, it's always, well, an event. Today he unveiled -- wait for it -- a new iPhone operating system! It can run dozens of applications at the same time.
Jobs also announced that consumers have snapped up 450,000 iPads since Saturday. What he didn't mention is how Apple has been in a frenzy to fix the iPad's Wi-Fi problems. As in, users are complaining they can't connect -- or stay connected -- to the Internet.
Now, this is Apple's biggest release in years. And you might have thought the company would catch this kind of glitch before it went on sale.
So we asked Marketplace's Stacey Vanek-Smith to find out how this could happen.
STACEY VANEK-SMITH: Call it the curse of the early adopter. Every time a hot new gadget hits the market, it seems there's a big problem the manufacturer missed.
CARL HOWE: I, for example, had a problem with my iPad this morning.
That's Yankee Group analyst and proud new iPad owner Carl Howe. He's had some problems with his iPad's Wi-Fi connection dropping out. He says, this is inevitable for an innovative product like the iPad.
HOWE: Any time you're doing something really new, not in just one dimension, but in several dimensions, where you've got new hardware, new software, new user interaction, then you're going to have more problems.
So why don't companies catch big glitches like these?
Rene Ritchie is with TiPb.com. He says, it all comes down to cost-benefit.
RENE RITCHIE: They decide how much money they can spend on testing versus how much money it will cost them to fix problems later and whenever they start to cross that line, that's where they stop.
But Ritchie says Apple has more of these problems than most companies. He says that's partly because Apple is so secretive. Companies like Microsoft put a product out months before a launch. So select users can try it out and report problems. But not Apple.
RITCHIE: Apple's got a completely different culture, and they market based on that kind of a culture. They don't do beta testing, they don't let the public even see it before Steve Jobs puts sneaker to stage. I think that kind of compounds the problems for them when it does hit the market.
It also compounds the hype. Yankee Group's Carl Howe estimates Apple will sell more than three million iPads this year. And it's already got a fix in the works for those Wi-Fi glitches.
I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith for Marketplace.
Pages
Marketplace has a problem sourcing tech interviews; for me, this casts a pale on all of their reporting. Microsoft did not "beta test" the Zune anymore than Apple beta tested the iPad. Companies beta SOFTWARE, not hardware. Shallow thinking, shabby work. Apple has a ton of issues - e.g. hubris and arrogance - but Rene's was a non-sequitur comparison
I had the same problem with my new iPad, the wifi range was really poor. I spent quite a bit of time researching, for a solution, with no luck. All of the methods I found didn't work for me. Right when I lost all hope, I came across WIRED magazine and found a review of Pong Research cases www.pongresearch.com After seeing the great feedback on their products, I bought one and it finally put an end to the problem. Besides that, this also comes with an improved version of the Apple Smart Cover which asides from retaining the sleep/wake function, because of its origami design, you can fold it and stand it in 5 different positions - very cool in my opinion!
This story is almost totally incorrect. Yes there are reports of W-Fi problems. However, Apple does not have more issues than other manufacturers. That is basked up by many independent industry reports. New products do not always have defects. And so on through the report. Information in this piece is readily available and can be verified by impartial sources. I very strongly suggest that Marketplace practice basic journalism and fact check before getting stories out, and then get multiple independent sources to verify the facts. This report looks more like the Dan Rather - George Bush mistake than good journalism.
Rene Ritchie is wrong to imply that more money or a different corporate culture would solve this problem. This failure falls into a category of failures called "normal failures" or "normal accidents." Charles Perrow has written extensively on the subject. They are an inevitability of complex systems with tight coupling, of which the iPad is a prime example.
I found the statement that Apple does not do any Beta testing, and that Apple weighs the costs of coming out early with a product 100% without merit. As said by multiple listeners, I would also love to put Apple's innovation and product reliability against any other consumer electronics in the world. Apple is more reliable than any company, period. I have owned multiple Apple products and have found they last and last, far exceeding my Microsoft adventures.
Don't worry first-generation iPad purchasers (also known as "suckers"). Any and all problems with your iPad will be fixed in the next nine to twelve months. The fix will be called: the second-generation iPad. So be sure to start saving your money because you know you want it and, like the lemmings that you are, you will buy it. Why? How else does Apple survive? They need the Apple-faithful to keep buying their high profit margin goods. So keep it up and start saving your money for the next upgraded Apple product. It is literally just around the corner, suckers!
Not sure what all the fanboys are defending but my iPad does have WiFi issues. It connects fine but a laptop on the same WAP (Netgear) has far higher network speed.
Apple does testing very much as the article says, I know this to be a fact. You are left to discover it for yourself (my fellow early adopter beta testers). Sony is similar. Please stop defending this company as if it were some kind of church- it's just a computer company for petes sake.
I, for one, have been using my iPad since April 3rd, without any WiFi problems. I cannot be happier about the product. Let me also add that Mr. Ritchie (of whatever the TIPb.com is) does not seem to know what he is talking about. Apple rarely, if ever, releases products with major glitches. And don't get me started about Microsoft...
Pages
