Senior Apple engineer told Jobs antenna could fail
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Surely they had different antenna designs in the process - internal and external. I think the pros outweighed the cons in the decision: Higher reception signal than any internal antenna and a dual use, high strength steel case exterior. The one caveat being that if you cover the lower left, the signal will drop a bit, 10-20dB max. I agree with that logic and as a consumer, if Apple offered both an internal and external antenna iPhone, I sure as hell would go with the external - iPhone 4 reception (unscientifically) is far better in my office than my old 3G and the steel won't dent or crack like 2 black plastic ones I returned.
Now putting glass on the back... the jury is still out on that one.
But, Apple's a company selling devices to the public, and they have to factor in the way "the public" works. And the public knows all about this issue at this point (that the issue exists, that is — not the details of the issue)... and that could have been foreseen. So even if the design is "the best" according to Apple's particularly chosen set of engineering tradeoffs, it still seems apparent they should've used some sort of coating or something.
There are too many anecdotal stories. Personally, I'd like to see the issue quantified.
Edit: Here's a pertinent quote from that article...
"So, an entire day and more than a quarter tank of gas later, here are the results. Holding the iPhone 4 without a case, in your left hand, crossing the black strip can result in a worst case drop of 24 dB in signal. As we'll show in a second, how you hold the phone makes a huge difference across every smartphone - and we've tested thoroughly in 5 different positions.
Now, there are two vastly different possibilities for what happens to the bar visualization after you drop 24 dB. I happen to live less than one block from an AT&T UMTS tower (it's across the street, literally), and have exceptionally strong signal in all of my house - it's part of why I chose to live here, actually. Signal is above -65 dBm in every single room, in most cases it's at -51 dBm. When I incur that worst case drop of 24 dB from squeezing the phone, I fall down to -83 dBm, which is still visualized as 5 bars.
However, in locales that have less signal, but where iOS still displays 5 bars, the drop of 24 dB is visualized much differently. For example, at another test location, signal without holding the phone is -89 dBm, which is still displayed as 5 bars. Cup the phone, and you'll fall all the way to -113 dBm. All the bars dramatically disappear one after the other, people think they've dramatically lost all the signal, and you know the rest."
This fudging means that in a few cases, squeezing the phone will lose all the bars, not just 1 or 2.
Now, they don't deserve to be beat up over their antenna design - they get better signals than the old iPhones, even if you hold them wrong. They do deserve to be beat up for fudging the bar calculations.
I guess that's karma - dishonest behavior highlighted a minor design flaw, and now everyone is hung-up over the minor design flaw.
The same thing happened to Intel with the Pentium 5 FDIV bug. By denying it, Intel turned a trivial bug into a major PR fiasco. Don't forget, it required a floating point division with TWELVE significant digits to trigger the bug.
The only reason that it became a huge PR fiasco is that when a scientific researcher ran into it, Intel tried to hide it.
The thing is that the left-corner problem can be exactly specified. People are used-to but still frustrated-by random problems in cell phones. But this is one problem you can literally and metaphorically put your finger on. So people will focus their attention and ire on this one. It may be a presentation problem and not a serious reception problem - but Apple has previously been the king of presentation and so it seems like the kind of thing they should have stopped even if it's not serious. And indeed, everyone with some of kind of grudge against Apple is not-so-secretly happy they failed to stop it.
And I'm among those happy with the somewhat-unfair presentation of this situation. If an over-blown reception problem is what it takes to ding the progress of Apple's totalitarian walled garden, then then hurrah for an over-blown reception problem.
The lower left corner seems the worst possible of all possible places to put it.
There was an article talking about this when the phone first came out.
A good apology has three parts: 1. “I’m sorry”; 2. “It was my fault” and 3. “How do I make it right”. The last part tells about your sincerity. http://teamrich.wordpress.com/2007/10/20/pausch-last-lecture...
Apple has to hit all of that, with #3 being; "Here is how we are going to make this right."
You can argue all you want about the technical aspects of this, but a few days ago, my local news led with a three-minute report about Consumer Reports and the iPhone. This is a Richter-scale sized PR disaster.
I'm thinking they'll announce some sort of swap program for a new phone with a non-conductive coating on it or somesuch.
That way they can continue to sell their $29 bumpers for a ridiculous profit (which will make up for the cost of refurbing the old models).
They need to go above and beyond to create confidence going forward - something that'll actually make people happy with the resolution. Throw $50+ of store credit in to apologise for the concern/confusion they've caused, or similar.
Everyone makes mistakes. It's how you respond to it that makes the difference.
Apple wants people to walk away from this thinking "They messed up, but they really went out of their way to make things right. I'll trust them with my future purchases."
Exactly. I think Steve Jobs responding to a customer's email with "Don't hold it that way" was one of the worst responses ever to a growing PR problem.
It's also how Apple responded to the performance comparisons -- like commissioning a benchmarketing firm to run a mangled suite of SPEC tests that showed that even though Apple's G5 was FAR below expectation, Intel's horse was slower if you put heavy enough balls on its feet!
I think people might be a tad bit outraged, less so about the problem, more so about the response. "it's just a car? You've been telling me in all your advertisements that it is the pinnacle of german engineering. If I wanted to deal with problems in the design and live with them, I would have gone with your much cheaper competitors."
However, we shall see what they say tomorrow.
Apple could have handled this much better saying it is a high-performance, tuned antenna. If you choose to operate it correctly you get superior performance; or you can ignore it and get the same performance as any other hidden antenna.
Outright denial of something which is shown in several seemingly honest online videos was a bad move all around. It was socially equivalent to publicly calling some of their early adopting customers liars. Of course the public reacted badly to it and didn't let the matter drop.
Apple has never hosted a press conference like this, I doubt it will be for something as simple as a free bumper.
Every iPhone case I've seen has looked ugly and clumsy to me. The 'bumpers' are better than most, but there's no way I'd be prepared to use one, even if it were free.
I don't know if it'd help the antenna issue, but they work great for protecting your devices from scratching without covering up their good looks. I've got a similar skin for my Nexus One and have been very pleased so far.
I expect them to offer a thirty day money back guarantee. That admits nothing but instills lots of confidence.
http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/salespolicies.html#...
If anything it made the controller more attractive since adults could finally hold it.
- Both happened when products were used without cases or safety straps
- Both are hard for experienced users to reproduce (well, it's easy to toss a Wii Remote, but I doubt any hardcore players lost a TV to it)
- Both rely on anecdotal evidence (I own a Wii, as do my friends, and nobody has sent a Wii Remote sailing through anything)
- Both are annoying but not a deal-breaker in the use of the product
- Both can be alleviated by holding the product a different way
- Both have hilarious class action lawsuits against the parent company
- Most importantly, both were discovered shortly after the launch of a highly desirable product and nobody returned theirs because of this issue
The last point is what annoys me the most. It's not reasonable to say "if this antenna is such a big deal, why isn't everyone returning their iPhone 4?" A problem doesn't have to be some titanic issue to need to be addressed. Nintendo did the right thing and packaged the Wii Remote with $0.50 of plastic, even without anyone beating down Gamestop's return desk. We shouldn't accept anything less from Apple.
But Apple's between a rock and a hard place. Either they lose millions now proving free bumpers/gift certificates to customers, or they lose millions later by ignoring the issue and suffering a huge hit to their reputation.
Or worse, they attack Consumer Reports. I would love to see that fight. A for-profit company that lots of people love but not necessarily trust, versus a non-profit that lots of people trust but not necessarily love.
Bug or feature?
Ding!
If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
"Consumer Reports does not print outside advertising, accept free product samples, or permit the commercial use of its reviews for selling products. Its publisher states that this policy allows the magazine to 'maintain our independence and impartiality... [so that] CU has no agenda other than the interests of consumers.'
"Consumer Reports states that all tested products are purchased at retail prices by its staff, that no free samples are accepted from manufacturers, and that this avoids the possibility of bias from bribery or from being given "better than average" samples."
Moreover, even if you read the magazine and see the negative recommendation, I doubt you wouldn't buy the iPhone just because of that.