Steve Jobs Responds To The Antenna Issue: Hold It Different Or Use A Case
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
I suppose this is a trivial feature of iPad's design, since it clearly doesn't apply to iPhone 4, which is beginning to epitomize form over function--no design ought to sacrifice usability, no matter how beautiful. It becomes simply bad, sub-optimal design.
I'm not happy at all about how Apple is responding to this.
Admitting that they fucked up will cut into their profits. Convincing people that the phone is fine and that the user is the problem moves more units.
Apple has investors like any other company. This move is good for the investors.
Any move that is bad for the customers won't be good for investors.
There is no short term vs long term thinking once you reached profitability and have cash reserves. The short term will inevitably become the long term.
The _responsible_ thing to do for your investors is to solve problems before they get any more expensive to solve. i.e. solve your problems _now_
You have to simultaneously satisfy customers, investors, employees and the community you operate within. If you cannot wrap your head around that you cannot be trusted by anyone because you will always be sacrificing one for the other to save your incompetent ass.
Sheesh. This is not rocket science.
Feel free to shout once you've had enough and want the beatings to stop.
:-)
This is shit that should have been corrected in the DESIGN stage.
most likely, the reason being that they field-tested this whole thing with 3gs look-alike dielectric (non-conducting) case...
Admittedly that's a flippant remark but I still haven't seen any indication as to what proportion of users are having the problem. It's getting press because it's Apple, not necessarily because huge proportions of users are having issues. I expect someone here will correct me if I'm wrong though.
That way leads to the Homer Simpson car. Every design makes trades away from an ideal of usability for aesthetic reasons as well as cost and practicality.
Kind of disappointed since I expected some kind of ass-pulled argument about what Apple wants.
Are you talking about the lost signal on iPhones, or are you talking about Apple's response? ... because the later is the real problem for me.
Will the next iPhone have a working antenna in the list of features?
Hypothetically, what if these things aren't true, then what would be the appropriate Apple response?
There, is that so hard? ... No, telling a customer to not hold it like that is not acceptable ... WTF is Jobs smoking? Fortunately for him these news have a closed circuit, as only technically inclined people have an interest in such things; nevertheless ... what if it's a real problem with those phones and it turns out to upset lots of regular people?
Anyone have any idea as to why the human body might be causing attenuation whereas other materials don't?
If you've ever played around with short-wave radio (I suppose people do need to be older than a certain age to have done that :) ) it's possible to improve reception if you touch the antenna.
Every man should be able to fix something with a hammer, a screwdriver, and some duct tape.
I kick my tower computer good and regular, it silences that pesky yammering fan, and keeps it from showing me attitude.
Occasionally i just glare at it menacingly, by now it learned.
That is the problem.
You know, I read this tip in a few forums. What bugs me, though, is this: I buy an 800$ design icon (yes, it costs that much here if you want it unlocked and I _never_ buy a locked phone) to then apply a couple of layers of gaffer tape on my brand new design icon, so that it works halfway as advertised?
It could be me and the fact that my > 5 year old Nokia 9300 is burning holes into my brain tissue, but somehow this really seems completely far-out..
I mean, holding it a different way isn't necessarily that tall of an order, but if anything is wrong here it's not the user's hand position- it's the antenna, and the user is being asked to compensate for Apple.
It's a hand sized device that you hold in your hand. Some holding positions will shield the antenna. As various people and videos show, this is also the case with iPhone 3Gs, iPhone originals and other phone makes and models.
And anyway, they're not being forced to tolerate the intolerable, they can always return the phone and buy a different one.
No the user is being asked to compensate for shitty design. I've yet to have a phone that dramatically loses signal when holding it, and all my phones have had internal antennas. If Apple can't do one of the basics of phone design (you know, making the cellular phone work) it is only and will forever only be their fault.
I stick my motorola phone under my leg (I'm saying literally under my fat ass) whilst in the company truck so I can feel it vibrate and still seem to get enough reception, even in dead zones, to receive texts and calls. If my phone can work through about a foot of flesh, then an iPhone should easily be working through an inch of flesh.
Also, the issue isn't whether or not we're forced to purchase a product we don't like. That is a subtle straw man. The issue is whether or not Apple made wise engineering decisions, and whether or not Jobs is exhibiting the appropriate attitude towards Apple's customers, who WANT to spend their money on a nice iPhone, but are having trouble with Apple's shitty design.
If the claims of it being solved with a bumper or layer of insulating material are accurate, then it does work through an inch of flesh, what it doesn't do is work when the flesh is electrically connecting two separate parts of the antenna system.
One of these days it will be that big a deal.
It used to be Apple fit the we wanted to live, now they want us to go out of our way to conform to them.
"It also looks like one pant leg is longer than the other" the man continued. Murray the Tailor shrugged. "No problem. Lean to your left a little bit, and don't bend that knee so much when you walk." The man pulled his shoulder back, bent his elbow, leaned to his left and strolled in front of the mirror with one leg stiffened. The suit was perfect... except...
"Should this collar ride up so high?" Murray the Tailor smiled indulgently, and chided "You shouldn't let your head droop so low. Push it back so people can see you!" He guided the man's chin up, up, far enough so that the back of the man's head just closed the distance to the collar.
The man studied himself in the mirror and was satisfied. He left the shop wearing the suit and strode happily down the sidewalk, leaning left, stiff legged, one arm held at an odd angle and head back with chin pointing straight ahead. He was noticed by a pair of bystanders, and one of them remarked:
"Murray must be one damn good tailor. Look how he managed to fit that cripple."
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out, but it seems obvious that "hold it differently" is not a viable option.
Maybe we can all move to open-source platforms, so that we can fill the Blogosphere (tm) with self-righteous bullshit about Ubuntu before being swept up by the next commercial trend. Gee, it took a shiny user interface and a meticulously-engineered corporate image to sucker in that last batch, how low can be set the bar this time?
I hate humanity.
Oh, on a second reading I guess it's the people getting suckered in without learning that makes you feel that way… Like this classic xkcd comic: http://xkcd.com/743/
I would say this: Cheer up! The vocal minority of shiny-chasing blogoshpere complainers is not representative of humanity in any way! Most people are quite happy with their iPhones and Steve Jobs knows it.
It wasn't that particular comment I was referring to. But thanks for being patronizing!
I hope nobody realizes this, since they're quite different. MS's primary market is OEMs and businesses, and they care about selling to them.
> Gee, it took a shiny user interface and a meticulously-engineered corporate image to sucker in that last batch, how low can be set the bar this time?
Would you prefer it if shiny interfaces actively drove people away?
Pricing products can be a complicated issue and can involve more than just market forces.
In this particular instance, cases are just an accessory market for Apple. They don't care if they are selling as many of these as possible because it's not even a secondary revenue stream. They can afford to let it just sit there at $29 until it rots or someone buys it.
Any economist will tell you there is cost associated with having inventory sitting on the shelves and not moving. Floorspace in an Apple Store, or any store for that matter, isn't free. There's rent, opportunity cost, maintenance, etc. Basically, if people stopped paying high prices for rubber cases at a store, the store will drop the price because there's cost associated with it sitting there. Maybe Apple can endure a lot more pain than their competitors, but that's not magic, that's because of the pile of cash they're sitting on. If they had less cash, they wouldn't be able to endure as much pain in the market. Yes, maybe there's other forces at work, but basic market forces don't stop applying just because it's Apple.
Exactly. They make enough margin on other things to not be forced to be so aggressive with pricing on other things.
>but basic market forces don't stop applying just because it's Apple.
My point was: the cost of things is much more complicated than "basic market forces" [1].