All Articles Tagged steve speaks

Because of Apple’s high media profile, Greenpeace likes to have a little fun with them. Nothing gets headlines like bashing Apple in the tech industry, especially if you’re hippie enough to make Steve Jobs seem more like Stephen Colbert. With Al Gore on their board, however, it’s probably safe to say Apple has to at least appear to be one of the more — if not most — environmentally friendly major tech company in the US. Case in point, and unprecedented second open letter from Steve Jobs:

For the past several years, Apple has made a concerted effort to be more transparent about the steps we are taking to protect the environment and make our business more sustainable. In this environmental update, I’d like to inform you of our recent progress and introduce you to a groundbreaking system of reporting that we believe is unmatched in our industry.

The iPhone got a brief mention as well:

More recently we introduced our first BFR and PVC-free iPods and iPhone 3G with mercury-free displays.

Sounds okay? Second steppish enough at least? Not quite for Greenpeace:

Not quite the breakthrough we were hoping for.

Ouch. Though, to be less sensationalistic, they did have lots of positive feedback as well.

Hopefully Apple will make true on their timeline, and other manufacturers will follow suit.

It’s not easy being green, but I don’t think any of us want to live on the earth from Wall-E, do we?

Gotta love Steve Jobs and his blunt-force emails. This time, it’s a lucky AppleInsider reader who sent it on a complaint about crash-prone applications, a problem which has plagued the iPhone 2.0 pretty much since launch. And what did the drive-by-Steve’ing say?

This is a known iPhone bug that is being fixed in the next software update in September

Will that be the still-in-beta 2.1? Another hotfix like 2.0.2? Jobs, of course, didn’t elaborate. Smart money, however, would be on a 2.0.3 rev. so that Apple doesn’t have rush 2.1 out prematurely, with just more of the same issues.

I know my Apps experience the dreaded Home Screening of Death (HSOD) semi-regularly, especially the new/updated ones. What about you? Smooth sailing or lots of crashes? If the latter, how far away must September seem? (And is it just us, or is the unresolved bug list for 2.x pretty dang scary compared to the relatively stable 1.x?)

UPDATE: Former Apple employee Chuq Von Rospach has just blogged about a meeting with an unnamed current Apple insider who let slip that:

90% of the disconnects are initiated inside the phone, which would exonerate AT&T. Most of the disconnects are being generated by crashes in the driver code for the 3G chip, which comes from the chip vendor, not something Apple written and outside of Apple’s direct control. Complicating this — even though Apple is handing over “here is the bug, here is the fix, update the driver”, the turnaround from the vendor on driver updates is on the order of 2-3 months. Said, um, lack of urgency not exactly making people inside the projects happy.

Understated much? If he’s not, as he says, being lied to, Chuq thinks this lack of responsiveness may be why Apple went ahead and bought PA Semi a few months back: to bring the chipset in house and more fully under their own control.

Remember that 3G network connection glitch we mentioned a few days back? The one that might be a hardware problem with a software fix? (Apple Insider weighs in today that this could, in fact, be likely). MacRumors is reporting that Steve Jobs, as he or someone acting on his behalf is sometimes want to do, has responded to an email inquiry about it, and provided the following:

We are working on some bugs which affect around 2% of the iPhones shipped, and hope to have a software update soon.

If this is authentic, and 2% is a solid number, given that the iPhone 3G sold 1 million units its first weekend, and may be over 3 million units now, that’s a staggering 60,000+ users potentially affected, — never mind 20 more countries set to launch later this week.

Unless Apple pushes out a 2.0.2 hotfix, firmware 2.1 has been in beta for a while already, and in general rumored to be heading towards a September-ish release (probably to coincide or follow up Apple’s tradition fall iPod and Mac product Special Event, which last year introduced both the iPod Touch and the WiFi Music Store).

Casey recently posted that the current 2.1 beta removed support for the Push Notification services (Apple’s conceptual replacement for multitasking functionality) to allow for more internal development, but perhaps also to fast-track the 3G fix?

That could leave the 2% in the slow lane for a while still…