Phil Schiller, Apple's Senior Vice President of Global Marketing, has a message for those iPhone owners and commentators who have worked themselves into a frenzy over the iPhone 5's purported vulnerability to scuff marks and scratching: Aluminum scratches sometimes.
As has become something of a tradition, reports of an unanticipated flaw in the new iPhone reached a boiling point online shortly after the phone's release. Many are spinning the new iPhone 5's susceptibility to scratches on its new aluminum back as a scandal called "ScuffGate." When Schiller received an email from one such customer asking about the issue, he sent back the below response, which then made its way to 9to5 Mac.
"Any aluminum product may scratch or chip with use, exposing its natural silver color. That is normal," he wrote.
It's a terse, even Jobsian, answer to a customer query, and some might accuse Schiller of being glib or condescending here. But of course he's also telling the truth— plain and simple. The new iPhone has an aluminum back for the first time since the original iPhone in 2007. By all accounts, it's much stronger and more durable than the much-maligned glass back of the iPhone 4 and 4S. But it's still aluminum, and aluminum scratches. That's not a scandal, folks. It's physics.
[via 9to5 Mac]
