Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.
The first step is admitting you’ve got a problem
Another iPhone launch, another set of high-profile problems. It’s true that the media (including, granted, this very reporter in this very article) loves to talk about Apple’s failings. Still, sometimes the company plays into the media’s hands a little too accommodatingly.
This year there were three candidates for a “-gate” suffix: the new FineWoven cases scuffing and staining far too easily; 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max models overheating alarmingly; and someone making a video in which they tried to snap one of the new phones and, well, largely succeeded. None of these are exactly reassuring, but for obvious reasons–excessive temperature is always a worry–the overheating issue is proving by far the most headline-friendly.
I’m not here to argue that #hotphoneouchgate isn’t worthy of the attention it’s getting. This is no confected scandal: “Piping hot” is an adjective that should be applied to soup, not phones, and even Apple itself acknowledges that this goes well beyond the slightly increased temperatures that are expected with newly set-up devices. It’s troubling, too, that such a significant issue didn’t emerge in internal testing, just as nobody at Cupertino apparently thought to put a FineWoven case in a pocket with a set of keys. Apple’s famed details-oriented approach appears to have been diluted somewhere along the line.
But another change in the company’s approach is altogether more pleasing to see. The first and still most memorable iPhone launch scandal was Antennagate back in 2010 when the iPhone 4’s new design caused reception to drop out when it was held in a particular way. Let’s be clear, that is a hilariously fundamental and disqualifying failing for a phone. But Steve Jobs, who was running the company at the time, was offensively dismissive when a customer complained about it. “Just avoid holding it that way,” he wrote, giving every impression of chuckling and rolling his eyes while typing.
The funny thing is that, several years later, it emerged that Jobs wasn’t dismissive at all. In fact, he was allegedly so torn up about it that he wept. But the company’s official public response was to play down the seriousness of the problem and hope it went away… which it obviously didn’t.
Maybe that’s why things changed. Because as worrying as #toohottohandlegate may be in what it says about quality control at Cupertino these days, it’s hard to deny that the company’s response has been kind of exemplary. It acknowledged the problem was real, and provided details about the hardware and software elements that were and weren’t related, including the third-party apps that users should stop using until updates could be issued (which put pressure on those app makers to issue them). Finally, Apple issued an update to iOS 17 that solved the problem once and for all.
Sure, there was a degree of self-protection in the public statements, including an atomic smackdown on one pundit claiming the phones would need to be slowed down in order to fix the problem. But on the whole, this was a case study of the way we want companies to handle situations like this. And there’s nothing hotter than that.
Foundry
Trending: Top stories
The USB-C transition hasn’t been as smooth as everyone expected. Was the iPhone actually better off with Lightning?
These awesome iPhone 15 Pro features would be even better on the Mac.
Sorry Pixel 8 fans, I’d still rather have an iPhone 15 in 2030–guaranteed.
The Action button has made life miserable for iPhone 15 Pro case makers.
The $17,000 Apple Watch is officially a solid-gold paperweight.
Podcast of the week
The iPhone 15 launch wasn’t as smooth as anyone hoped it would be. Reports of setup problems, overheating, and broken phones fill the internet–then there’s the talk about FineWoven. We cover all the iPhone 15 issues in this episode of the Macworld Podcast!
You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.
Reviews corner
The rumor mill
Did Apple just leak the Dynamic Island for the Mac?
The M3 MacBook Pro will reportedly get a display upgrade to boost battery life.
Software updates, bugs, and problems
Apple has released the iOS 17.0.3 update to address iPhone 15 overheating issues. (Plus, thermal tests show how the fix works!)
What’s that you say, the iPhone 15 is overheating? Nothing to TSMC here!
And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters. You can also follow us on Facebook, Threads, or Twitter for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.
