The Apple's Antennagate

Everybody should know about the woe around Apple's iPhone 4 antenna. Now that Steve Jobs held a press conference explaining about this, it means that the problem is real and they are taking serious effort to correct it.

There are some things from the conference that interest me. First of all, Jobs said it himself : "Apple isn't perfect". And the next best thing, he indirectly said that iPhone is not perfect just like other smartphones.

It always baffles me that many Apple products users seem to believe that Apple products are flawless, perfect and superior to other products of its peers. And some of them even condescend and look down to other products, even to the extent of treating non-Apple users with disdain. There's even a saying "Apple and non-Apple products".

Putting Apple aside, there's a good lesson we can learn from this case. You see, I've seen many superiors, or hear stories about superiors who see himself as someone who deserves the position. They feel that they are always right, people should look up to him, or worse, he look down to other people, specially to their subordinates. This is also the case in seniority. And being superior or senior, they have the power to behave that way.

These people tend to protect the image, and become perfectionist. They don't allow themselves to make mistakes or look "weak". When they make mistake, they try to look for a scapegoat to blame, or make it so that it's something normal and not a big deal. Oh, BTW, Jobs showed similar signal-drop case on OTHER smartphones and platforms.

Silly, isn't it?

What I'm saying, I remember I posted something similar, higher position does not give us power to do anything freely as we like. Higher position gives us opportunity to do MORE good things and good deeds. When we continuously make condescending remarks to others - or subordinates, or look down to them, people would love to look for our flaws. And when they DO find one tiny flaw on us, they will make it so big, it matters. And we will end up trying our best to look for justifications, which might make us look even sillier.

So, again, we may be a superior, be it a supervisor, manager, president director or anything. Even a teacher or a senior trainer. We may even be a smart guy who deserve our position. But that's not a reason to behave in such a way that we look down to others. Learn to be a good leader, and make your team a good team.