Steve Jobs

with your tail between your legs,” he advised. “You should just say: ‘Phones aren’t perfect, and we’re not perfect. We’re human and doing the best we can, and here’s the data.’” That became the strategy. When the topic turned to the perception of arrogance, McKenna urged him not to worry too much. “I don’t think it would work to try to make Steve look humble,” McKenna explained later. “As Steve says about himself, ‘What you see is what you get.’”
    At the press event that Friday, held in Apple’s auditorium, Jobs followed McKenna’s advice. He did not grovel or apologize, yet he was able to defuse the problem by showing that Apple understood it and would try to make it right. Then he changed the framework of the discussion, saying that all cell phones had some problems. Later he told me that he had sounded a bit “too annoyed” at the event, but in fact he was able to strike a tone that was unemotional and straightforward. He captured it in four short, declarative sentences: “We’re not perfect. Phones are not perfect. We all know that. But we want to make our users happy.”
    If anyone was unhappy, he said, they could return the phone (the return rate turned out to be 1.7%, less than a third of the return rate for the iPhone 3GS or most other phones) or get a free bumper case from Apple. He went on to report data showing that other mobile phones had similar problems. That was not totally true. Apple’s antenna design made it slightly worse than most other phones, including earlier versions of the iPhone. But it was true that the media frenzy over the iPhone 4’s dropped calls was overblown. “This is blown so out of proportion that it’s incredible,” he said. Instead of being appalled that he didn’t grovel or order a recall, most customers realized that he was right.
    The wait list for the phone, which was already sold out, went from two weeks to three. It remained the company’s fastest-selling product ever. The media debate shifted to the issue of whether Jobs was right to assert that other smartphones had the same antenna problems. Even if the answer was no, that was a better story to face than one about whether the iPhone 4 was a defective dud.
    Some media observers were incredulous. “In a bravura demonstration of stonewalling, righteousness, and hurt sincerity, Steve Jobs successfully took to the stage the other day to deny the problem, dismiss the criticism, and spread the blame among other smartphone makers,” Michael Wolff of newser.com wrote. “This is a level of modern marketing, corporate spin, and crisis management about which you can only ask with stupefied incredulity and awe: How do they get away with it? Or, more accurately, how does he get away with it?” Wolff attributed it to Jobs’s mesmerizing effect as “the last charismatic individual.” Other CEOs would be offering abject apologies and swallowing massive recalls, but Jobs didn’t have to. “The grim, skeletal appearance, the absolutism, the ecclesiastical bearing, the sense of his relationship with the sacred, really works, and, in this instance, allows him the privilege of magisterially deciding what is meaningful and what is trivial.”
    Scott Adams, the creator of the cartoon strip
Dilbert
, was also incredulous, but far more admiring. He wrote a blog entry a few days later (which Jobs proudly emailed around) that marveled at how Jobs’s “high ground maneuver” was destined to be studied as a new public relations standard. “Apple’s response to the iPhone 4 problem didn’t follow the public relations playbook, because Jobs decided to rewrite the playbook,” Adams wrote. “If you want to know what genius looks like, study Jobs’ words.” By proclaiming up front that phones are not perfect, Jobs changed the context of the argument with an indisputable assertion. “If Jobs had not changed the context from the iPhone 4 to all smartphones in general, I could make you a hilarious comic strip about a product so poorly made that it won’t work if it comes in contact with a human hand. But as soon as the context is changed to ‘all smartphones have problems,’ the humor opportunity is gone. Nothing kills humor like a general and boring truth.”
    Here Comes the Sun
    There were a few things that needed to be resolved for the career of Steve Jobs to be complete. Among them was an end to the Thirty Years’ War with the band he loved, the Beatles. In 2007 Apple hadsettled its