At the conclusion of that presentation, Jobs said this:
“We love our users. And we try very hard to surprise and delight them… That’s what drives us, and when we have problems like this and when people are criticizing us, we take it really personally. Maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe we should have a wall of PR people. Keeping us away from all that, but we don’t… But the data supports the fact that the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone in the world. And that there is no Antennagate. There is a challenge for the entire smartphone industry. To be able to improve its antenna performance someday to where there are no weak spots on any smartphone. And we’re dedicated to doing that.”
Following the 30-minute segment, he invited two of Apple’s lesser-known executives, CFO Tim Cook and Senior Vice President of Technologies Bob Mansfield, on stage to answer questions. They sat on stools on the stage and called on members of the press in the audience for 45 minutes. And oh boy is it worth watching.
Steve Jobs dominates the discussion with a masterful display of poise. He curses, he belittles, he jokes, and he seethes, but mostly, we get to watch Steve Jobs command the room and defuse what could have been a much larger scandal. He doesn’t just have an answer for every question, some of which are extremely inane. His answers are detailed, thoughtful, and remarkably insightful. A transcript doesn’t do it justice.
Take this exchange with Joshua Topolsky from Engadget, for instance:
Jobs: Can I replay your question back to you?
Topolsky: Sure.
Jobs: You’re asking me, is there a software fix for smartphone attenuation that’s seen on almost every smartphone when you hold it in certain ways? Is that your question?
Topolsky: In your phone.
Jobs: So could we leap ahead of almost every smartphone that has attenuation when you hold it in certain ways by having better software on our phone? I’d love it.
Watching Steve Jobs barely crack a smile during the whole thing is just glorious to behold. Tim Cook speaks up a couple of times and Scott Forstall makes an impromptu appearance as well, but this is mostly a Steve Jobs masterclass. And we finally get to watch it.
