Apple’s big mistakes a decade ago: U2, Bendgate, botched iOS 8
When Apple hosts an event, it makes history. But when you look back at everything Apple has done, I’m fascinated by a single Apple event 10 years ago. A lot went wrong there, and it will never happen again. I’m talking about September 9, 2014. The day Apple put a YouTube album on every iPhone. But YouTube was the only debacle that came out of that fine day. That was the iPhone Six event that gave us Bend Gate and a botched iPhone release. It was the debut of the Apple Watch, touted as a luxury item, costing up to $17,000 for the most discerning customers. That was also the day Tim Cook unveiled Apple Pay, with the bold promise of replacing the wallet. We still need wallets, but most people only remember the day Apple put a YouTube album on every device, whether you wanted it or not. And that’s what pissed off so many people, I’ll get into it in more detail, but so much went wrong with the launch of this iPhone that we need to talk about it. So as we prepare for the iPhone 16 and Watch 10 event in just a few weeks, here’s one more thing. Let’s look back at the embarrassing moments of the Six event and how much has changed in the decades since I was born Bridget Carey. And this is one more thing. The iPhone 6 was the first time Apple offered the iPhone in two sizes. There was an iPhone 6 Plus that measured 5.5 inches. Now, that’s definitely not a plus-size by today’s standards. The plus-size screen now measures 6.7 inches in diameter. The iPhone 6 was also one of the thinnest iPhones, which may have caused some problems shortly after its release. Some people reported that the phone body would bend under pressure, as if it was in a tight pants pocket, and that earned us the term “bend gate” back then. Apple said iPhones were extremely rare, but certainly no phone had been thinner since the 6. Maybe Apple didn’t want another “bend gate,” but we could return to super-thin designs. Rumor has it Apple is working on it. Slim iPhone 17. Apple analyst Ming Shu Ko says it will have a titanium-aluminum blend frame for strength and only one camera on the back, and we could say goodbye to the Plus size altogether. That’s next year. Some say this new model could be five millimeters thin, which would make it the thinnest iPhone ever. So 10 years after the iPhone 6 Plus, we could return to something that looks like the iPhone 6 Plus. Ben, that was a rough time because it came right when Apple was recovering from a bad iOS 8 update. A week after the release of iOS 8, Apple released a version 8.0 0.1 to fix some bugs, but it brought with it major bugs and resulted in a fork of some iPhones. Users reported that cellular reception dropped and the iPhone showed “No Service” on the display. And others noticed problems with the touch function. Id. Apple had to pull the update. This event prompted reporters like me to warn people to never download an Apple update the first day it comes out. I still find it weird to download iOS updates immediately. The following year in 2015, Apple made the iOS beta program public for the first time. Perhaps this is one way Apple makes sure there won’t be another problematic update like this one. When Tim Cook introduced the Apple Watch, it didn’t reach consumers until seven months later. There was a lot of time to wait and speculate. People wondered why they even needed a smartwatch. And Apple marketed it in many different ways. You see, Apple wanted it to be suitable for runners as well as the high-end fashion scene. Remember, at this point, every tech company was making smartwatches. So Apple went all out on the luxury aspect to differentiate itself. There were three versions, the entry-level aluminum and glass model. It started at about $350. There was a stainless steel version that started at about $550. But the absolute winner was the Apple Watch Edition. A luxury 18k gold model started at $10,000 and went up to $17,000. Grand Vogue devoted a 12-page cover to it. But unlike a true luxury watch, computer screens aren’t heirlooms. You can’t pass them down to your kids. So it was a doomed idea and it flopped. It actually became obsolete. Apple doesn’t fix it anymore and the software hasn’t been updated beyond Watch OS 4.3 0.2 from 2018. A decade later, we still have three versions and the luxury aspect really depends on which strap you buy. Hermes sells a strap for $590 more than buying two Apple Watches. But all those fashion bracelets might as well go to the landfill. Rumor has it that the 10th edition of the Apple Watch will have a completely new design with a new system for connecting the bracelets. So these current bracelets that just slide in and out of the slot here are probably incompatible. Will people quickly upgrade if they lose their entire investment in the bracelets? I mean, if I buy a new pair of pants, at least the belt I bought is still compatible. Apple Pay was introduced as a wallet replacement, but not all retailers played along. At first, stores like Home Depot and Walmart didn’t accept Apple Pay. And 10 years later, you still can’t use it at Home Depot or Walmart, but many other retailers eventually jumped on the bandwagon. And it seems to be available almost everywhere. I could now pay for the New York subway by just tapping my iPhone. But it still has trouble replacing the wallet because of driver’s licenses. Only some states are compatible with putting their driver’s licenses in the Apple wallet. So wallets are not dead. If you’re like me and love those wild lounge fly wallets, you can still buy them with Apple Pay. Ironically, that event in September was packed and it was a live event, which unfortunately I don’t think Apple will do again. But despite all that news, Tim Cook wanted one more thing to close the event, a celebratory moment for the iTunes Store, which had been around for a decade at that point. The band plays the new song on YouTube and then Bono comes on stage with Cook to tease that Apple should pay him money to give the whole album to every iTunes customer if we give it away for free. But first you would have to pay for it, because we don’t mind free music here. And in that magical moment, everyone had Songs of Innocence on their machine. And then everyone was confused about how to remove Songs of Innocence from their machine. If you don’t follow Apple News, you probably just woke up and wondered, “Uh, what is Bono doing on my iPhone?” I’m old enough to remember when devices always came with free media. Windows 95 shipped with a free movie file of the Wheezer Buddy Holly music video and one of the first Samsung Galaxy phones came to T-Mobile in 2010 as the Samsung Vibrant. It came with a full copy of the movie Avatar and I swear to you, that’s how I first saw Avatar on a 4-inch screen, just like James Cameron wanted, but with Bono. Even though it was free and Americans love free things. They don’t like having that music appear on their devices because it was so intertwined with their iTunes music library. It was in the iCloud and you couldn’t just delete it from the iCloud. At least not at first. If you just did the shuffle, suddenly two would play. It was so bad that Bono apologized for the stunt and Apple had to provide a whole solution just to help people remove it. It went that badly. I don’t think we’ll ever get free media again, unless you count free trials of subscriptions. Because so much has shifted to streaming services now. And think about how much music ownership has changed compared to ten years ago. We had MP3 libraries and iPods, and then they took away our CD drives. I guess you could buy an external CD drive, but not from Apple anymore because the Super Drive is no longer available. Just a few weeks ago we had this method of buying and storing music, but the environment has changed around that method. So I don’t blame consumers, because ownership just became obsolete as the infrastructure of ownership changed. As I was writing this story, I realized that my digital music library has been just rotting away on a drive somewhere over the years because I stream everything. I realize it’s been years since I bought a song. And that kind of freaked me out because you don’t actually own anything. When the digital rights to a song you love leave a streaming service, it’s now kind of a mission to get MP3s and figure out where everything is stored and how to move the files. But customers still want a physical device that you can take music with you and also turn it off. Just look at Urban Outfitters. They sell old iPods. The company Retrospect refurbishes old iPods and inspired me to go back to our past. So I bought one. This is a first generation iPod Mini from 2004 and I’ll play around with it a bit and report back later on what it’s like to go back to a basic MP3 player. Even if the iTunes software doesn’t actually exist anymore. Let me know what you’re looking for at the next iPhone event, or let me know if you have any experiences with returning to iPods. But even if you don’t comment, I’ll do a show about it with or without you. Thanks for watching. See you next Friday for some more.
