Apple’s normally slick showbiz-style presentations came to a grinding halt on Monday as Steve Jobs found himself without an internet connection to continue his unveiling of the iPhone 4′s capabilities.
The major foul-up and crackdown it forced may give Apple pause to consider how it handles in the future its much-hyped exclusive events, which are not shown live and where the media are afforded few facilities.
That has meant bloggers and news organisations have come to the shows armed with laptops and cameras, along with 3G cards and Wi-Fi hotspot base stations to ensure connectivity for their live-blogging of the occasion to a world eager to get a first glimpse of the latest gadget.
The growing availability of devices that can turn 3G signals into Wi-Fi hotspots, such as Verizon’s MiFi, Sprint’s Overdrive and even the new HTC Evo phone had reached the threshold where they were blocking out the bandwidth for Steve Jobs’ presentation of the iPhone’s capabilities over Wi-Fi.
He was using Wi-Fi presumably because of the much-maligned AT&T being unable to guarantee adequate connectivity over its 3G network, a bone of major contention among US iPhone users. But web pages unable to load sent backstage staff scurrying to find the culprits – 570 Wi-Fi base stations among the audience of bloggers, developers and VIPs were blocking out Mr Jobs’ signal, they discovered.
“It’s a testament to how far we’ve come, isn’t it? – that there are 570 Wi-Fi base stations in this room,” joked Mr Jobs.
More seriously, he asked for the lights to be turned up in the hall and said: “All you bloggers need to turn off your base stations, turn off the Wi-Fi, everything, the notebooks – I’d like you to put them down on the floor, if you want to see the demos.”
That seemed to have the desired effect as Apple staff policed the aisles and enough Wi-Fi was turned off for the presentation and live demos to continue.
But if this was bad, in the future Apple will have to cope with audiences using their iPhone 4′s newest feature – the ability to video call and broadcast Mr Jobs’ launches live, causing untold network congestion.
There are steps Apple could take to resolve this. It could ban all phones and laptops from events, which would be severe. It could begin broadcasting its big events live, but that would remove the exclusivity and reduce the hype. It could offer the media the facilities that other companies provide – tables to work at with power supplies and ethernet connections so there is no need for Wi-Fi and all the other paraphernalia piled up on knees, which is worse than trying to type at mealtime in a coach-class middle-aisle airline seat. But then Apple would have to change its whole mindset of control-freakery and that it doesn’t have to be helpful to the media.
So Apple has a nice new phone with clearer calls and better pictures, but a different kind of communications problem that’s also entirely of its own making.
