Jonathan Ive on the design of the iPhone 4
core77.com
core77.com
Reminds me of that scene from Jurassic Park where the kids find the night vision goggles in the back of the truck:
Gennaro: Hey, where'd you find that?
Tim: In a box under my seat.
Gennaro: Are they heavy?
Tim: Yeah.
Gennaro: Then they're expensive, put 'em back.I don’t know whether they picked that material for sentimental reasons (all iPods back to the first one – except the smaller ones – had that back) and whether you are just supposed to accept that back that’s slowly getting more and more scratches. (I won’t use cases. Never. I have to be able to put your gadget in my empty jeans pocket. If I can’t there’s something wrong with your product.)
Apple knows and used better materials. My trusty six year old brushed aluminum iPod mini pretty much looks like new and has been treated far worse than my iPod touch.
Likewise for the chrome bezel. Within an hour of ditching my iPhone's case, I nicked the damn thing with a very slight bump. It was a huge relief to see Apple lose the chrome for the iPhone 4. But after one of Engadget's phones got a nice big scratch on the back, I can no longer assume they're using gorilla glass on both sides.
I'm forced to believe they make questionable material choices merely to increase the "shiny", which is one of my main gripes with Apple. It's undoubtedly why they use glossy displays by default on MacBooks, iMacs, and iPads, even though matte is far more usable.
The likely explanation, to me, is that professional graphics people (Apple's high-end core market) will set up the environment of the device to be perfect for it (i.e. "studio lighting"—basically the same as the Apple stores) rather than expecting the device to conform to the environment. Glossy is better under perfect conditions.
I would actually argue that glossy displays are not ideal in any lit environment, for the simple reason that blacks just turn the display into a mirror. This is also a problem if you've turned down the brightness in order to save power.
Matte really needs to be the default for any display, with glossy as an option.
Glossy was better. (lcd panels were from different manufacturers, so my results may not apply to every case)
edit: unlike in the linked blog-post, backlight intensity of both lcd-s I tested was roughly the same.
Personally, it's incredibly rare for me to be using a laptop outside on a sunny day, so even if glossy were better in sunlight, I'd never base my decision on that fact. But I can tell you that I did get to compare a matte and glossy MBP of the exact same model in an Apple store, side by side, and saw no significant difference in brigntness.
It is a really interesting look at how the feel of an item affects the emotional attachment to it.
from the internal photos at ifixits iphone 4 teardown[1] this doesn't appear to actually be true... or am i crazy? ( i am fully prepare to be called crazy/blind :) )
It was basically a fancy academic term for "shop class".
We made gears, arc welded (still have a scar from that), cut screw threads, riveted sheet metal, worked milling machines & saws, turned fixtures on lathes, and glued/bagged/baked carbon fiber.
At a very visceral hands-on level were introduced to the materials, workflows, and structural fastening tech that makes up the shells and supporting frameworks of physical goods.
At the time, it was a royal pain in the ass (I'm not a natural kinesthetic learner) and I didn't "get it", but looking back it was an extremely valuable experience.
Aside from the welding scar on my left thumb, I think the biggest takeaway was gaining an appreciation for the EXTREME ROI gained in designing processes which have "loose" tolerances where it's acceptable and "tight" tollerances where it's required.
WiFi has a completely separate antenna which is unaffected
It's possible the Wifi would go out and then the bars would drop, I suppose. Any signal issues I've seen have been non-wifi though.
The WiFi icon (which acts as a signal strength indicator for WiFi connections) unfortunately does hide the cellular data indicator, which shows whether you're connected to EDGE or 3G.