iOS alarm clock bug - strike two: not the kind of emotional experience Apple was shooting for

Everyone keeps touting the "emotional experience" of the iOS and Apple products in general. In light of that point of view, which I think is definitely accurate (if you ignore the fact that it is a pleasant 'emotional' experience to own something that is 'cool.') Apple should be firing someone over this Alarm clock bug fiasco. There have been a number of major iOS controversies: (1) AntennaGate, (2) the White iPhone4, (3) AT&T's crummy service, (4) children making in-app purchases by mistake, (5) App store developer woes and more.

This is a different kind of problem.

When people wake up late, when you make your customers look sloppy or delinquent, you create a lot of bad brand-karma. In this case iOS is solely responsible for causing its users to look bad. That's the exact opposite of the emotional experience Apple is going for. When you carry around an iPhone they want you to look good.

Now, the fact that it happened once was a royal screwup, but hey, today we live in a beta world. Failing twice just means that Apple doesn't care. They've used up a lot of their credit with this mess. They're extremely lucky that much of their largest markets are on holiday January First, and that's the only thing they have going for them with this problem.

Whoever let this happen twice is going to hang at Apple, and if Apple doesn't get it right this time, if they strike out on this super-simple super-basic iOS core functionality -- then they will lose a lot of credibility.

For the doubters: One important side consideration is that the younger demographic will care a lot less about this screwup, but the younger demographic is also the most fickle. It's the older demographic that will power the iOS market ahead of the Android market, and it's the older demographic that has the most money to spend. If that older demographic moves away from iOS because they can't rely on it, then that's a loss Apple will not be able to recoup and it could actually turn this into a Windows vs. Mac repeat.


Apple's secret weapon  is that iOS actually makes computing easier for the larger and older and richer demographic. I can't emphasize enough that this is the demographic they are screwing over by breaking basic alarm clock functionality. If they lock this demographic into iOS, which they're doing, they've secured their short term future and can focus on dominating the long term mobile market.