Why Apple is biting its tongue over Samsung's Note7 humiliation

Remember Antennagate? That was the enormous scandal/brouhaha that erupted following the release of the iPhone 4, when it was discovered that, if you held the phone in just the right way and sort of squeezed a little, you could make it drop a bar of reception.

Oh, there was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Apple was embarrassed, Steve Jobs was cranky, and everyone who wanted one got a bit of plastic to put over their phones (which didn’t actually make a difference, but since the problem was largely imaginary that was OK).

Samsung, of course, loved it.

Samsung, at the time, was a relative upstart in the smartphone business — one of a number of big players on the Android side who saw Apple’s stumble with the iPhone 4 and seized the opportunity — and seized it well. Since then Apple and Samsung have had what might be described as a blazing-hot rivalry, sparks flying on both sides.

Turns out, people who live in kindling houses shouldn’t throw matches.

The debacle of the Samsung Galaxy Note7 has done immense damage to Samsung’s brand. Exploding units were recalled, only to be replaced with more exploding units. Commercial jets have had to be diverted. Airlines have refused to carry that specific model. The Royal Mail says it won’t ship them. For the second recall, Samsung has even had to provide special flame-retardant boxes which cannot be shipped by air. You get special gloves. Safety gloves. For your phone.

And, of course, the Note7 has been discontinued. Who would by one now?

Analysts had pegged the number of Note7 units Samsung might sell worldwide at 19 million. That’s roughly $US17 billion that Samsung won’t get now. Sure, maybe some of those prospective Note7 buyers will buy a different Samsung device so some of the money will end up there anyway. But for a lot of people, there will be no more Samsung devices in their future.

It’s worth mentioning here that Samsung has some recent history of fires caused by its washing machines too. It’s starting to get a reputation for flame across its business, which is unlikely to be a good thing. When The Note8 (or whatever it’s called) arrives, expect BBQ jokes.

So where’s Apple in this? People are understandably asking: where’s the gloating? A month ago, when the iPhone 7 was announced, some fans suggested Apple should have been touting the device’s “non-exploding battery” as a competitive advantage. Ah, how they laughed.

Thing is, it wouldn’t look too good to have made that kind of joke if a couple of months down the line an iPhone 7 blew up. iPhones have overheated before, and not long ago Apple had a recall of faulty power chargers that may have been a fire hazard.

Indeed, I’ve been around long enough to remember the PowerBook 5300, the first Apple laptop that used a Lithium-Ion battery rather than the heavier and less efficient Nickel-metal Hydride batteries that had been used to date. It had barely hit the market when one blew up — in Cupertino, not in a customer’s house — and Apple had to recall the line. The number of units in customer hands was nothing like the number of Note7s out there today. And no customer’s PowerBook 5300 ever actually caught fire.

Nonetheless, Apple’s reputation for build quality was badly scorched. The PowerBook 5300 wasn’t the sole cause of Apple’s decline in the late 1990s, but nor was it irrelevant.

So Apple’s being cautious now. Like Ali letting Foreman punch himself to exhaustion in Kinshasa, it’s lying back and letting Samsung do the work. Telling your customers to handle your product wearing special gloves — no response is necessary from Samsung’s rivals.

Electricity is an awesome force, and its storage in batteries that can be recharged is a mix of chemistry and physics and alchemy. It’s almost as much an art as a science, and things can go wrong — particularly at the microscopic scales at which modern rechargeable batteries are engineered. They just can. A micrometer here and there, something a tad too volatile, and boom.

Apple has learned that in the past, and Samsung is learning it — in the biggest, most humiliating way possible — today.

Now, about those Air Pods …

Matthew JC Powell is a technology commentator, philosopher and father of two, in no particular order.