Apple had good news and bad news on the iPhone 4 product front today.
The good: As promised, it started letting previous and current buyers choose from a number of free cases, which insulate and protect the antenna that can drop calls when touched with the human hand.
The bad: Apple said unexplained fabrication issues with the white iPhones would delay their release again, until “later this year”. Those devices have “continued to be more challenging to manufacture than we originally expected” Apple said in a two-sentence news release–and presumably more challenging than it expected just a month ago, when it promised the models in July. The 20 per cent of customers who already have a case, if they bought from Apple, started getting refunds on Thursday.
As it had warned at its press conference on Antennagate a week ago, Apple has less than a bumper crop of bumpers, the Apple-made rubber and plastic cases. Customers can try to order a black bumper through a new case-distributing application, but Apple reserves the right to ship them something else instead.
The other options include cases made by third parties and which are, for the most part, black.
Perhaps white cases also are more challenging to manufacture than originally expected.
