iPhone Macworld: Apple to hold iPhone 4 Press Conference

[joblack]

Apple published only half of the press conference. The Q&A session has been cut of.

That's strange but censorship was expected.

[scottjl]

Originally Posted by Bremen Cole

Sounds fair enough to me, but I don't own an iPhone 4....

Scott, you have an iPhone 4, and had the problem.... are you satisfied with this response?

well. the free bumper is what people have been asking for. so that's a good thing. you think about it, pretty much every phone out there has a "bumper" around it, the phone case itself, and the antenna is internal. apple making it external leaves it open to the problem it has now, a bumper makes it "internal".

i'm sure apple will re-design the box and include one in it, probably the color of the phone itself.

showing us every phone out there has this issue to varying degrees. well. that was educational for those who didn't know that. for those that did, nothing new.

apple's non-apology. that was disappointing. it would have cost them little and gained them much. at least they didn't outright call their customers stupid. repeatedly saying "we love our customers" got silly. i think if we made a drinking game out of it i would have been drunk quickly.

so not very surprising overall. free bumpers don't cost apple very much. i doubt those pieces of plastic and silicone cost more than $0.50 to make, even 3million of them won't cost apple much, $1.5M is a drop in the bucket. apple didn't admit any fault, which will help them if the class action suits go further (if apple had admitted any fault they would have handed them a victory on a silver platter). apple showed they aren't the only one with issues.

i think next year's model won't have an external antenna. i think other manufacturers will be very careful not to copy this design off of apple.

i also find it very unbelievable that none of apple's 19 phd engineers said "hey, we might have a problem here with this design." if jobs wasn't lying, then they really need to fill those antenna engineer positions with college grads who would probably be able to state the obvious.

end result. am i happy. well. i'm satisfied. will i keep my iphone 4. yes, i'm kind of stuck with it as i can't get my 3gs back and i'm not going to swap the 4 for a new 3gs at this point. will i be an early adopter of the iphone 5? absolutely not. apple has made me wary. i will be replacing this phone in the future? absolutely. more likely sooner than later. and if anything, this gives me another reason to ditch at&t in the future as well. oh and i will be ordering my free bumper. hmm. what color?

[scottjl]

Originally Posted by Bremen Cole

Scott,

My original post got lost in the usual BS Apple hate. What I wanted to know is if you as an iPhone 4 owner, and one who actually had the problem...... Are you satisfied with the OFFICAL Apple response?

naw. i saw it. just took me a while to type out my answer.

[scottjl]

Originally Posted by joblack

Apple published only half of the press conference. The Q&A session has been cut of.

That's strange but censorship was expected.

maybe because the Q&A was mostly off-topic? questions on jobs health had nothing to do with the iphone 4. nor did him leaving his vacation early.

[joblack]

Originally Posted by scottjl

maybe because the Q&A was mostly off-topic? questions on jobs health had nothing to do with the iphone 4. nor did him leaving his vacation early.

Obviously the reason of this partial censorship were the questions:

10:41AM Q: I can't get my Bold to drop right now, maybe you can show me how to do it?
Steve: You may not see it in certain areas.

-> At first it was the software, now it's the area

10:40AM Q: Are you doing anything else to address the issue? Perhaps changing hardware?
Steve: You know, the 3GS has the same problem. We're getting reports from customers that this is better than the 3GS. So I don't know changing the antenna design would help -- I don't know what our next antenna design will look like.

-> The 3GS doesn't have the same problem. Consumer reports showed it.

10:43AM Ryan from gdgt: You showed people almost covering the entire phone in their hand, but on the iPhone 4 it can happen with just a touch. Can you explain that difference?

Bob: When you touch the phone, you put yourself between the signal and your phone, so when you touch that spot you can attenuate the signal, and if you grip it with your whole hand, you can attenuate it even more. We don't build phones with an antenna on top...

-> Not a real satisfying answer.

10:44AM Q: Were you told about the design before the phone was released?
Steve: Are you talking about the Bloomberg article? That's a crock, and we've challenged them to show proof that that. If anyone had said this thing has problems, we would have dispatched people to deal with that issue.

-> Bloomberg is willing to sue for it.

10:46AM Q: Are you willing to make an apology to investors?
Steve: You know we hear from customers who love this phone and have a great experience with it, and we're doing a lot to help them with any issues they're seeing. To investors, you know, you invest in the company we are, so if the stock goes down $5... I don't think I owe them an apology.

-> it was over 55 USD loss since the Iphone 4 release

http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/16/l...ss-conference/

[scottjl]

well joe. you're not satisfied with the answers, but you don't have an iphone 4.. so really. does it matter?

[joblack]

Originally Posted by scottjl

well joe. you're not satisfied with the answers, but you don't have an iphone 4.. so really. does it matter?

Does it matter if there are slaves in the world even if you're not one of them? Does it matter that millions are living in poverty but you aren't one of them?

You don't have to suffer from cancer to understand the illness.

So you don't have to own something to be interested in the truth.

My opinion: Yes it does matter but I cannot speak for your opinion about the acceptance of lies and deception.

And it's Jo not Joe

[David Munch]

Originally Posted by joblack

Obviously the reason of this partial censorship were the questions:

-> At first it was the software, now it's the area

Apple never said it was the software. In fact, it never was anything except bad reception, due to bad antenna coverage.

-> The 3GS doesn't have the same problem. Consumer reports showed it.

Actually it does. I have a friend who can reproduce this problem on his 3GS.

-> Bloomberg is willing to sue for it.

Lets see how far that gets, since the 'leak' is apparently the person who did the tour for the media in Apples new facilities yesterday. That really speaks against it I would say...

[scottjl]

Originally Posted by joblack

Does it matter if there are slaves in the world even if you're not one of them? Does it matter that millions are living in poverty but you aren't one of them?

You don't have to suffer from cancer to understand the illness.

So you don't have to own something to be interested in the truth.

My opinion: Yes it does matter but I cannot speak for your opinion about the acceptance of lies and deception.

And it's Jo not Joe

i'm sorry. you make phone calls on the iphone. it doesn't free slaves, it doesn't solve poverty nor cure cancer. you really can't compare the two.

you sound like you have a lot of energy you want to put forth on good causes, maybe you should invest it in those other causes you mentioned than worrying about a phone you don't own and have no plans on buying.

[scottjl]

http://www.informationweek.com/news/...leID=225900098

looks like apple kicked the hornets nest now.

[HarryT]

What a lot of silly fuss over nothing.

[Crowl]

Originally Posted by kjk

Apple has posted video of the press conference, plus a video of their Antenna Design and Test Labs: http://www.apple.com/antenna/testing-lab.html

Antenna info: http://www.apple.com/antenna/

One thing I think lots of people would want to see added to that page is the setup and methodology whereby they managed to produce the issue on phones where nobody else has reported it despite them having been on the market for a year or more because as they stand those videos with such dramatic changes are just staged demos of dubious standing until then.

Don't get me wrong, I don't deny that these other phones could lose a bar or two as you can find videos like that on youtube, but the amount apple showed without showing how seems a bit dodgy.

[Crowl]

Originally Posted by scottjl

i think next year's model won't have an external antenna. i think other manufacturers will be very careful not to copy this design off of apple.

I think it is very unlikely that anyone else would have needed to copy apple's design even if it worked, but as far as the next model, it could have the same design with just a simple coating on it to prevent the user causing the issue by holding it.

[Bremen Cole]

After all this I have to say.... If the 1.7% return rate is accurate, then this whole thing has just been media driven hysteria.

It is interesting to me that it came out this week that it was driver error that was behind the whole Toyota problem. You had to look to see the story, unlike when the media was in full pile on mode against Toyota. Per the Department of Transportation (DoT) there never was a mechanical problem.

If there were real problems with the phone, then people would return them. It is not uncommon to have return rates in the 20's and 30's in retail for "lemon" products. To have that low of a return rate (I think that rate is even lower than average) speaks volumes. Of course the antena design is an issue, but in the end just a tempest in a teapot.

BTW my wife's Palm Pre has varying signal strength, depending on where you hold it, and what direction you face.....

The above is my personal opinion. Please do not call me a "fanboy"', or sheep or idiot. I am simply expressing an opinion. As stories like this play out, opinions can change. I at first was against Apple, I will admit at this point that I am leaning more to defending them. But, even that does not change the FACT that they handled it wrong, and by doing so fanned the fire.

[joblack]

Originally Posted by scottjl

you sound like you have a lot of energy you want to put forth on good causes, maybe you should invest it in those other causes you mentioned than worrying about a phone you don't own and have no plans on buying.

Don't worry, I do change the world.