Jobs not the "apple" of consumer's eyes

Upon reading the Informationweek article by Antone Gonsalves and discussing the catastrophe in class, I can see why Steve Jobs is receiving hate mail.

Apple is great at plugging their products. If I had a nickel for every iphone advertisement... in the myspace generation, it's a given that this sort of product is going to be wildly popular: every new technological gadget seems to be a "must" until something better comes along. Remember the razor? It was outrageously expensive at first too, and now it's free through some wireless providers with a sign up agreement. The reason Motorola isn't receiving hate mail and Steve Jobs is? Timing. Apple waited 2 months to drop the price of the iphone. These people that waited in line to get this product feel like shmoes, and I can't say I blame them.
To add insult to injury, Steve Jobs is a real pompous ass. There's the snide: "We're doing our best to live up to your high expectations" and then there's the response " this is life in the technology lane". I would say that this attitude is unjust. He is essentially making people feel cheated, and then saying "tough suckers!"
There's also a lack of truth in all of this. A classmate of mine in another class has the iphone. He feels like a sucker. But he said that also, his phone malfunctions-not doing the things it is supposed to do, and has a lot of problems. Perhaps the iphone is being reduced because it is not as quality a product as they would lead you to believe? And how about the bills some users were receiving? Thousands of dollars in charges. Was Apple truthful in coming clean with it's product's shortcomings? Apple, and in particular Machiavellian Steve Jobs doesn't seem to have a communitarian approach to business at all. It seems a company driven by profit and spin.
And freedom? These wronged consumers have the "freedom" to invest $100 in a crappy Apple product. Why not just refund their money? They have to make sure it's coming back to Apple pockets.
He even brags at the prospect of getting more iphone users with the price cuts in his open letter, saying that iphone is "so far ahead of the competition." I guess if profit is all you look at Steve, you're right. But if reputation, customer relations, integrity, and truth count for anything, the competition has you beat.

It's Horseplay!!

In "A Scuffle, A Stonewall, and a Season", Scissorgate is discussed and disected. In this case study, we see a great example of how sometimes, rarely, an organization can successfully simply ignore a problem and hope it goes away. This is essentially what it seems is the message organizations give when they issue "no comment" statements to the media. This practice may be viewed as the typical "good ole boy" response, and particularly in the instance of the Cowboys, that seems accurate. However, it seems understanding the media is essential in effective public relations. Media is, by its very nature, a curious and invasive beast. Saying no comment is akin to saying "please interview every person within the vicinity of this event to figure out what really happened since we are being evasive, and dishonest". As is so rightly asked in the article "if it was accidental by-product of horseplay, why not tell details? If not, why not identify guilty parties as a part of the punishment?"
This lack of honesty on the part of an organization can lead to even further complications, and can set the organization to be subject to speculative and inaccurate muckraking. We see this happen all the time, not only with organizations, but individuals. For example, a few weeks ago, comedic actor Owen Wilson reportedly attempted to take his own life. Eventually his publicist released a statement, but in the day or two interim, no less than 1,540 articles (based on a google search) were published speculating why, with reasons ranging from heroin to a woman. Meanwhile, it's potentially ruining this guys career. Nine times out of ten, the media doesn't show sensitivity or compassion. "No comment" can signal the sound of the death knell, not only for the individual, but for the group.

Cosmo #1

In Cosmopolitanism, Kwame Appiah has some really valid points. He discusses how we communicate, what problems arise as a result of this, and how to proceed when perhaps, inevitably, differing views collide. He suggests that disagreements arise because: "we can fail to share a vocabulary of evaluation, we can give the same vocabulary different interpretations, and we can give the same values different weights (Appiah, 66)." In our classroom experiment, we saw how very different people even in the same place at the same time with the same purpose (being students) could vary so much. There were different cultures, races, religions, ages, socioeconomic backgrounds, etc. If there are that many differences in just our class, the differences that exist on a global level must be unfathomable. Later in the book, Appiah goes in to the roll of middle class women in American society just a few decades ago. A woman running for a political office outside of a local election simply would not happen. Luckily that has changed. The same can be said for homosexual couples (Appiah 77). Though there still exist some groups that are opposed to women working outside of the kitchen, or two men wanting to get married, the fact of the matter is that starting the social conversation on these issues helped to make our society as a whole more understanding even if everyone does not necessarily agree. Why is this important? Because everyone does matter. People in the supply chains are no different. We discussed in class briefly the dogfood fiasco, and the mattel toy fiasco that seems to still be going on. When we work from the angle that everyone matters, we see that it is imperative not only that everyone is treated with respect, but that all parties are heard and understood.