I see people recommending to turn off things they don't need. While this is wise in general that is a bad answer and not unlike Job's telling people to hold the phone different relative to the antenna issue.
This, the Consumeer Report's review and the Nano recall is a defining moement for Apple. The way to handle this is to take the very highest road (which I though Steve Jobs did until I read that dissappointing and pathetic antenna comment). Apple should issue very public appologies and explain that their QC and QA programs and testing programs (at the very least) have taken steps back and that the world class standard they have set for quality has slipped. Apple needs to say it will more than stand by its customers, will work every issue out for them, ensure they will do whatever is necessary to not just fix the problems but ensure not just customer satisfation byt customer delight. They need to say they realize that truly world class customer support, engineering and production are easy things to espouse when times are good but are only really tested when a problem occurs. They should also state that all manufacturing, engineering, testing, and operations processes will be under immediate review and that they will not shy away from dramtic changes if they mean that quality will be paramount.
What happened to Apple is a function of size, drive, ego and complexity. While a lot of it is unavoidable given those criteria strong leadership and the right quality mentality can overcome it. The Jobs statement worries me because regardless of all the buzzwords companies use and regardless of the processes they espouse or actually follow the real determining factor of quality, productivity, ethics etc is leadership from the top down. And by down I mean it has to go all the way down to team leads. Great leaders and teams can overcome bad process and produce stellar outcomes. Likewise poor leadership cannot overcome the best of processes.
I assure you the problems here have very litle to do with the product or that there is some great engineering hurdle. It is environmental. Apple needs to "Apple" itself and make this process to improve very easy and very basic. What are the elephants in the room? How or why did they get here and how do we fix them? The biggest obstacle internal politics and ego. Some things in life require 110% effort and completion not 99%. this is one of them. There will be dozens of areas, groups, processes and individuals to deal with. Pulling back to less than 100% in dealing with each of these will result in not a fix but a slower decline or even death (given the intense competition in this area). just ask RIM or Nokia.
If CMMi practices to Level 5 are targetted and actually utilized, killing elephants trumps politics, morale of the team is just as important as the customer and customers are dealt with utilizing fierce directness, fairness and openess Apple can not just overcome this but do much better because they will have proved they can overcome something that kills most growing companies. But the timeline to do that is very, very short and like I said anything less than 100% especially when dealing with customers and employees will be tragic.
Lastly you may want to consider outside help. The primary reason being an outsdier won't be carrying emotional bagage or too much history to cloud their thoughts. They will be more apt to push, prod to see what is reallly going on and make recommendations others may be apprehensive to make.
