It’s not so much a firm denial of reality--even Steve Jobs’ magical reality distortion field only extends so far--so let’s call it a “soft denial.” There’s been too many complaints in the form of YouTube videos out there for Apple not to address the issue. But as of this writing, official company policy remains what Steve’s email said: Just avoid holding it that way.

Apparently, the folks over at Boy Genius Report got their hands on what they claim is an internal Apple memo detailing how AppleCare representatives are to respond to customer complaints regarding their new handsets. It’s a categorical bullet list of how to reply, starting with the pitch that the iPhone 4 is the best phone they’ve ever shipped, better even than the 3G S. This is pretty classic behavior for corporations and just about anyone else when first confronted with a problem: Denial.

Image Source: Gizmodo

From there, you move on Anger: slagging off other mobile phones as being just as bad (“Gripping almost any mobile phone in certain places will reduce its reception...It is a fact of life in the wireless world.”) Should this prove insufficient to satisfy your customers, you move along the cycle into Bargaining: “on your iPhone 3GS, avoid covering the bottom-right side with your hand,” and for iPhone 4 users, “avoid covering the black strip in the lower-left corner of the metal band.” We guess those field testers with their iPhone prototypes in camouflage cases didn’t catch that one.

For Apple customers, the next stage in the grieving process must be taken by you, as you come to Depression: Apple’s bold-faced policy, “We ARE NOT appeasing customers with free bumpers – DON’T promise a free bumper to customers.” That’s right, no free swag to resolve what seems like an intractable hardware issue, nothing more than rumored whispers of a firmware update to fix the issue.

So the only remaining question now in all this is, who will move to Acceptance first? Will Apple realize and admit there is an issue, the partial admission of a problem (“some users may have experienced...etc. etc.”) or will it be customers who shell out for bumpers or a third party case on their own? All we know is that corporations, yes, even Apple, would do well to skip the early stages of this process, get right to the Acceptance stage, and let the story disappear from print, rather than dance around for days on end, prolonging and increasing a self-inflicted wound, letting lawsuits percolate out there.