Keeping Apple honest

Even if the iPhone4 doesn't work properly, it's still nice to look at.

NEW YORK TIMES media columnist David Carr had an interesting piece in last Sunday’s paper looking at the role Consumer Reports played in the iPhone4-reception debacle.

The magazine said it can’t recommend the phone because of issues with the antenna, which wraps around the outside of the device. If the phone is held a certain way, dropped calls can result.

In an effort to manage this mess – Antennagate – Apple is offering to send iPhone4 buyers free “bumpers,” cases that wrap around the edge of the phone and appear to mitigate the problem. (Consumer Reports had suggested using duct tape.)

Apple CEO Steve Jobs at first denied there was an issue, and blamed the media for blowing the whole thing “so out of proportion that it’s incredible.” But he was forced into addressing the criticism, Carr notes, largely due to the editorial authority of Consumer Reports:

“The iPhone’s antenna problems might have remained a dust-up between Apple fanboys and skeptical bloggers except that Consumer Reports — that stolid, old-media tester of everything from flooring to steam mops for the last 74 years — came out with a report detailing the issue and concluding that ‘due to this problem, we can’t recommend the iPhone 4.’

“The article in Consumer Reports was devastating precisely because the magazine (and its Web site) are not part of the hotheaded digital press. Although Gizmodo and other techie blogs had reached the same conclusions earlier, Consumer Reports made a noise that was heard beyond the Valley because it has a widely respected protocol of testing and old-world credibility.”

Jobs acknowledged the impact of being dissed by the venerable mag: “We were stunned and upset and embarrassed by the Consumer Reports stuff,” he said, “and the reason we didn’t say more is because we didn’t know enough.”

Carr thinks the matter “is a reminder that media that are unsupported by advertising can often have an impact that more traditional publishing, or even the most tech-savvy, enterprises don’t.”

It was a coup for Consumer Reports, to be sure, even though they were simply doing what they always do. But I doubt the wacky-antenna hullabaloo will have much of an impact on this phone phenom’s sales. Apple has already sold more than three million iPhone 4s in the U.S., and on July 30 will begin peddling them in 17 other countries, including Canada.

Even if Apple doesn’t completely solve the reception problem, they can rest assured that Canadians, no strangers to crappy wireless service, likely won’t notice a difference.

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com

Related: Jobs is both a genius and a jerk