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Live iPhone 4 press event coverage

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Re: Live iPhone 4 press event coverage

#21

Post by rauljara »

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.

Whether or not Jobs is bs-ing about loving his customers so much, I wish more CEOs took this attitude. I think that doing your best to make your customers happy reaps far more benefits in the long haul than doing your best to make investors happy. In Apple's case at least, the fact that they ignored what their investors demanded of them during their dark days actually made the investors a lot more money.

Re: Live iPhone 4 press event coverage

#22

Post by ugh »

tvon wrote: post #16

In Q&A they seem to be glossing over or ignoring the whole "if you bridge the gap the signal drops" issue (demonstrated here with a paperclip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgouzUMlQpY but as I understand it your finger will do the same thing). At least when asked somewhat directly, one engineer gave a complete non-answer.

What you see there is a drop of between 6 and 22dB (from four bars to one [+]). Gripping the iPhone will reduce the signal by at most 24dB.

I don’t know whether they don’t acknowledge that. They showed a “X marks the spot” slide. That, to me, seems to be a pretty clear acknowledgement that merely touching that spot weakens the signal.

[+] http://www.anandtech.com/show/3821/iphone-4-redux-analyzing-...

Re: Live iPhone 4 press event coverage

#23

Post by ccorda »

zhyder wrote: post #18
gjm11 wrote: post #5

Brief summary of what they've said so far: 1. Similar things happen to all smartphones. (They had videos showing them happening to many other smartphones.) 2. This isn't making lots of people return their iPhones. (Return rate ~ 1/3 that of 3GS at the same point in its life.) 3. The iPhone 4 does drop more calls than the 3GS, but by less than 1%. (Not clear whether that's 1% of all calls or 1% of calls dropped on the…

It's 1% of all calls: http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/07/iphone... . Am I the only one that thinks that's actually a lot?

If the norm is a 5% drop rate, that's a 20% increase.

If the norm is even higher, then the increase is less as a percentage, but no wonder ATT won't release the numbers.

Re: Live iPhone 4 press event coverage

#24

Post by sigzero »

Shabaz wrote: post #19

One of the things that most bothered me in the initial responses from Apple (the Jobs emails and the open letter) is that none of them acknowledge that there is a fundamental difference between antennas from other smartphones losing signal and the iPhone 4, where the antenna is exposed and can be shorted, even with one finger. I'm kind of disappointed they apparently still don't acknowledge that (maybe the live trans…

> caused by something completely different

Um, from what I saw it was caused by the same thing. You hold a phone a certain way you lose signal strength.

> that seems like a fundamental engineering flaw, and I would've liked them to acknowledge that.

I watched the whole thing and several times it was acknowledged as such. Maybe you wanted them to say it was only an iPhone4 issue and not a general smartphone problem?

Re: Live iPhone 4 press event coverage

#27

Post by klochner »

zhyder wrote: post #18
gjm11 wrote: post #5

Brief summary of what they've said so far: 1. Similar things happen to all smartphones. (They had videos showing them happening to many other smartphones.) 2. This isn't making lots of people return their iPhones. (Return rate ~ 1/3 that of 3GS at the same point in its life.) 3. The iPhone 4 does drop more calls than the 3GS, but by less than 1%. (Not clear whether that's 1% of all calls or 1% of calls dropped on the…

It's 1% of all calls: http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/07/iphone... . Am I the only one that thinks that's actually a lot?

I wonder if it could be skewed by everyone testing it out and trying to get calls to drop.

Re: Live iPhone 4 press event coverage

#28

Post by cschep »

wmeredith wrote: post #10
ajg1977 wrote: post #6

Those pictures of other phones losing signal were hilarious. Yes, if you hold other smartphones in a clam-like grip then they do lose signal. But not when you place a single finger on one small spot on the outside of the phone. It's good that Apple will be providing free cases, but it's still going to suck when they start releasing phones with tweaked antenna insulation in a few months that eliminates this issue.

I can't believe people still aren't getting this. Their return rate has been ~1%, they've received apple care calls on 0.55% of the phones they've sold. This is a non-story blown out of proportion by the press who obsessively over-cover Apple products. (Disclaimer, Apple iPhone owner, 3G and now 4; no problems with either.)

Yeah, this is what I keep saying. The experience is excellent. A free case? Sweet!

Re: Live iPhone 4 press event coverage

#30

Post by ergo98 »

sigzero wrote: post #24
Shabaz wrote: post #19

One of the things that most bothered me in the initial responses from Apple (the Jobs emails and the open letter) is that none of them acknowledge that there is a fundamental difference between antennas from other smartphones losing signal and the iPhone 4, where the antenna is exposed and can be shorted, even with one finger. I'm kind of disappointed they apparently still don't acknowledge that (maybe the live trans…

> caused by something completely different Um, from what I saw it was caused by the same thing. You hold a phone a certain way you lose signal strength. > that seems like a fundamental engineering flaw, and I would've liked them to acknowledge that. I watched the whole thing and several times it was acknowledged as such. Maybe you wanted them to say it was only an iPhone4 issue and not a general smartphone problem?

>Um, from what I saw it was caused by the same thing. You hold a phone a certain way you lose signal strength.

Apple is playing some extraordinary deception with that. They're comparing a death grip on phones (which is entirely unnatural and I certainly don't hold a phone like that), and saying "See, it's all the same".

That isn't the issue. The issue is ruining the profile of the exposed 3G antenna by electrically distorting it (whether with your body or against the GPS antenna).

It was pretty clear when he talked about the 3GS and cases -- a death grip with or without a case will yield exactly the same outcome. But they're trying to conflate the downsides of an external, unavoidable antenna with holding the phone in a ridiculous fashion.

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