Bendgate and iOS gremlins

When you are on top, everyone wants to bring you down as the saying goes. Well in the case of Apple when you have set the standards so high, people are very critical of your product. If you are prominent on social media you would have seen 2 big criticisms of Apple. So much so that the stock was down nearly 4% yesterday.


The first complaint was against the new operating system. Apparently calls were being dropped and certain applications were crashing. The complaints were legitimate. In fact Apple had to release a new version IOS 8.0.2 which users now have to download again. It's an irritation, especially for those who have bought the new phones and had a bad initial user experience. But the issue is easily fixed and I am sure this will soon be long forgotten.


The other issue and a more serious one in my opinion is what is now known as BendGate. Apparently the iPhone 6 plus is quite soft and bends easily. I went and watched a clip on Youtube (it had 38 million hits in 2 days) which clearly shows a man bending the phone with his hands. This is certainly a concern, especially for hipsters who wear very tight pants. Taking digs at hipsters aside, your phone goes with you everywhere and if it is going fill all those functions (camera, GPS, reader, communicator) it needs to be durable.


Of course Samsung jumped on the bandwagon with the following image.





With social media these days this type of thing is spread everywhere which inevitably blows things out of proportion. I am not trying to paint a better picture here as a staunch Apple fan and shareholder, this is terrible publicity. Apple came out saying that the warping was extremely rare under normal use and that they had only received 9 complaints out of 4 million iPhone 6 Plus phones sold.

This type of thing has happened before. Siri was criticised (rightfully so but it made no difference), new operating systems were bemoaned and the antennae of the iPhone 4 was considered below standard. But every new version kept breaking records and it seems to be going the same way for the 6's. We will use this drop as a buying opportunity.


In better news for Apple, this article from the business insider suggests that all the big Banks in the US are gearing themselves up for Apple Pay. How exciting is that? If Apple extracts 15 basis points per transaction this could be absolutely huge! We were discussing it in the office and who will absorb these costs?


Essentially the banks will push this onto the consumer and the merchant. Rightfully so in my opinion. The consumer benefits by not having to draw cash or risk credit card fraud. The merchant benefits from the convenience of the transaction and the ease of the shopper experience. And of course you have a choice, if you are not happy paying slightly extra (next to nothing) then don't use it. But that isn't going to happen. Payments and healthcare, 2 huge and exciting themes which Apple are targeting. We remain long.