Antennagate: The Finale?

Marketing can be a chess game. Steve’s made his move, now his competitors get to make theirs. “Them’s fighting words” for these guys, and they’ve already had some nasty things to say about Apple drawing them into its “self-made debacle.” Careful with this one, boys. You may protesteth too much. More and more stories are beginning to appear confirming that this really is an industry-wide problem, and other phones do suffer from a similar death grip.

via kensegall.com

Good article that sums it up well. I chose the above quote because the statements from RIM, Nokia, HTC, etc. have all been non-denial denials. Like the author, I agree this should backfire on them, but believe it won’t because their phones just aren’t that interesting.

Why would a tech site spend their time thoroughly testing other companies’ “death grips” and then publish the results when no one will click the link anyway? Apple gets page-hits, others do not. This stopped being about “news,” or “concern” for the consumer, and crossed over into the realm of SEO and page hits long ago.

Steve Jobs’ Summation At Today’s iPhone 4 Press Event

If a user’s having a problem, it’s our problem. So we’ve been working really, really hard for the last 22 days to try to understand what the real problem is, so that when we solve it we actually solve it, rather than just putting a band-aid on it or giving a certain press person what they think they want us to do.

And we think we’ve gotten to the heart of the problem here. And the heart of the problem is smartphones have weak spots. We made ours extremely visible. Some took advantage of that to demonstrate it; it was very easily demonstable. We screwed up on displaying too many bars and made that demonstration more theatrical than it needed to be. And so for those small number of customers that are having problems we’re gonna give them cases which we think will take care of most of those problems. And for those that still are unhappy we’re gonna give them a full refund. And that’s everything we can do to try to make every customer happy.

But the data supports the fact that the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone in the world, and that there is no “antennagate”. There is a challenge for the entire smartphone industry to be able to improve its antenna performance some day to where there are no weak spots on any smartphone, and we’re dedicated to doing that, but unfortunately that’s a day in the future. So for today, we love our customers, and we’re gonna try to take care of every single one.

—Steve Jobs, July 16, 2010

While many tech sites are too busy being bent out of shape at receiving hard data that refutes their lunacy of the last couple of weeks, I thought someone ought to post Apple’s actual position on this. 

Consumer Reports iPhone 4 Study Flawed

Bottom line. From what I can see in the reports, Consumer Reports replicated the same uncontrolled, unscientific experiments that many of the blogging sites have done.

via mobileanalyst.wordpress.com

For the record, I never posted, tweeted, or otherwise mentioned CR’s beautiful iPhone 4 recommendation from a week ago. The reason is simple: I wouldn’t give you two cents for CR’s “experts” and analysis, good or bad. Sorry, but I’ve seen their methods and conclusions questioned too many times over the years.

I’m only posting about CR today because the same Apple bashers who paid no attention to them earlier are now ready to anoint them the wisest of all organizations. No. It’s still the same dubious, blow-with-the-popular-breeze publication it’s always been.

A Picture’s Worth A Thousand Bars [u]

via tech.fortune.cnn.com

I don’t claim this answers everything, but it does very clearly explain why some people “see” no signal loss at all while others “see” a huge drop.

[UPDATE:] What I find fascinating isn’t so much the obvious emphasis on a supposed good signal, but rather the total deemphasis of a medium signal. I mean, look at that sliver for three bars. Apple goes from “you’re fine” (4-5 bars) to “you’re not so fine” (1-2 bars) almost immediatley. It’s as if they never want you to think that you might be fine.

A Reasonable Look at the Apple and AT&T iPhone4 Lawsuit.

Not surprising I suppose, the lawsuit makes no mention of the perhaps questionable judgements of the plaintiffs who bought the product(s) sight unseen.

The star witness as it turns out seem to be some unqualified blogging site diatribes as technical references.

Frankly as a former RF Engineer myself, I can tell you that the performance issues claimed are inconsistent. The demonstration tests ill-informed. And there are as many wireless network variables as there may be device variables.

via blogs.forbes.com

The frenzy over this issue is ridiculous. How many class action suits is this for Apple this decade? 50? 100? And it’s not just Apple. 

The problem with these nonsense suits—I call this one nonsense based on their cited authorities and how they’re playing it in the media—is that sooner or later they mask legitimate ones.

One is hard pressed to believe this firm is doing anything other than chasing a buck when three of the four links used in support of their initial statement about the “iPhone 4 investigation” are from Gizmodo. Bad enough to use blogs with questionable technical expertise in the first place, but citing one with a recent and obvious axe to grind against Apple seems the height of cluelessness. Meanwhile, the only non-Gizmodo link is to a rumors site. Lovely. 

Oh well, I’ve seen stranger suits prevail (a spilled cup of coffee comes to mind). I guess that’s why firms like Ambulance & Chaser, LLC. continue to try their luck.

Interesting take on the iPhone 4 reception issue

According to a trusted source, there are multiple points on the iPhone 4’s frame for antenna reception. Our source says that the issues “can and will” be addressed by tweaking, balancing, and/or redistributing antennae reception and/or signal strength display via software. When asked if it could be a hardware issue, our source said, “Don’t be silly. It’s not the hardware. Apple’s too smart for that. In fact, most any hardware maker is too smart for that.”

via macdailynews.com

iOS 4.0.1?