Meet The Secret Apple Team That Fixes The IPhone's First Fatal Flaws

Hours after a new iPhone hits retails stores, couriers start putting defective devices on FedEx planes and shipping them right back to Cupertino. There, engineers try to figure out the problem and come up with a solution, which can be relayed to assembly lines in China before they manufacture more faulty iPhones.

It's a fascinating cycle of events that Bloomberg neatly captures in an article.

The idea is to keep problems from becoming punch lines for late-night comics, says the article. Many times, Apple's engineers jury-rig a hardware fix and then coordinate a solution across Apple's global supply chain, because lets face it: when you mess it up, you pay an enormous price. You piss off customers, and then you have the economics of reworking your supply chain, Michael Fawkes, the former head of HP's supply chain tells Bloomberg. "Every day they don't recognize a problem," he says, "they are potentially manufacturing more bad products..Read more..