A Funny Video About The iPhone 4 Antenna Problems

With the much hyped press conference a few hours away, I figured that some humor was in order. So let me present this video that I tripped over on TechCrunch. Enjoy!

Consumer Reports Says Apple’s Bumper Solves iPhone Antenna Problems

I wonder if this qualifies as good news for Apple?

Consumers Reports tested the Apple bumpers that are meant to protect the iPhone 4 and found that it solves the antenna problem the entire Internet is talking about:

In the earlier tests without a Bumper, signal strength on the iPhone 4 dropped significantly each time a finger was placed over the gap, a reduction that might cause a call to be dropped. The signal problem is the reason that we did not cite the iPhone 4 as a “recommended” model, even though its score in our other tests placed it atop our latest Ratings of smart phones, released this week and available to subscribers.

With the Bumper fitted, we repeated the test procedure, placing a finger on the Bumper at the point at which it covers the gap below. The result was a negligible drop in signal strength—so slight that it would not have any effect, in our judgment.

They also go on to say something else:

The Bumper solves the signal-strength problem. So does a piece of duct tape, as we reported earlier, or just being careful how you hold the phone. But these options all put the onus on consumers to solve or pay for a fix. We’re still calling on Apple to provide an acceptable free solution to the iPhone 4′s signal-loss problem.

So it sounds like Apple isn’t off the hook yet. That Apple news conference tomorrow better be amazing. Otherwise this story will not be going away.

It Gets Worse For Apple… U.S. Senator Pens Open Letter To Steve Jobs Over The iPhone [UPDATED]

Can it get any worse for Apple right now? Charles Schumer who is a senator from New York State has penned an open letter to Steve Jobs over the problems with the iPhone phone. The Boy Genius was one of the first to break the news.  But I’ve reprinted some of what he had to say:

Given the discrepancy between Consumer Reports’ explanation of the reception problem and the explanation provided by Apple in its July 2 letter to customers, I am concerned that the nearly two million purchasers of the iPhone 4 may not have complete information about the quality of the product they have purchased. The burden for consumers caused by this glitch, combined with the confusion over its cause and how it will be fixed, has the potential to undermine the many benefits of this innovative device. To address this concern, I ask that Apple provide iPhone 4 customers with a clearly written explanation of the cause of the reception problem and make a public commitment to remedy it free-of-charge. The solutions offered to date by Apple for dealing with the so-called “death grip” malfunction-such as holding the device differently, or buying a cover for it-seem to be insufficient. These proposed solutions would unfairly place the burden on consumers for resolving a problem they were not aware of when they purchased their phones.

While I’m sure that there’s some opportunistic behavior at work here, this is likely something Apple did not need. Hopefully, they’ll hold the press conference correctly and this will start to die down. In the meantime, I’m sure that “The Steve” and his minions are in full scramble mode.

UPDATE: This was posted on the Senator’s website a few minutes ago.

Is Apple Quietly Fixing The iPhone 4? [UPDATED x2]

There seem to be something going at Apple HQ on in regards to the iPhone 4. Gizmodo who are no friend of Apple, have been tracking reports that people who have received replacement iPhones due to an antenna issue, have noted that the issue is fixed. One person did do some extensive testing on the new phone that they received and had these comments:

Dr. Jurg Sommerauer, from Santa Paula, California, seems to have done some more rigorous testing. He confirmed that he cannot longer reproduce the problem after a replacement. He says that he tested it repeatedly before getting the new handset:

I have replaced my phone because of freezing issues yesterday and my new iPhone 4 is by far less sensitive than the previous one with respect to antenna issues. I made extensive signal tests with and without the death grip and can not see any different 3G signal (inside a metal construction hangar) in Santa Paula, CA. Please see one screen shot representing an average of upload/download speed. I did about 20 measurements within 10 minutes. The speed span was between 0.6 Mbps and 2.1 Mbps. I could not see a meaningful difference between applying the death grip and without.

That implies that Apple has fixed the issue on recently built phones. That’s great if you get one of those. But what if you were one of the early adopters who got the ones with the crappy antennas?

At the same time, MacRumors is claiming that iOS 4.0.1 is being released today. This is the version of iOS that Apple claims will fix the signal strength display…. Even though that’s not the source of the problem as Consumer Reports pointed out. Sill the timing is curious… Assuming that this report is correct (which MacRumors claims that it is).

This will make tomorrow’s press conference very interesting. I for one hope that Apple does something very un-Apple like. I hope they admit that the iPhone 4 has a problem, they’re taking steps to fix it, they are going to make unhappy iPhone 4 owners happy again, and promise that a situation like this never happens again. After all, admitting that you have a problem and fixing it without changing your story and blaming the customer creates goodwill with your customers. Otherwise, you become Toyota.

Tune in tomorrow at 1PM EST to see how they deal with this.

UPDATE: Bloomberg is reporting that an Apple engineer was concerned enough about the antenna design that he expressed his misgivings to “The Steve” himself.  Apple didn’t comment on this report, not that you expect them to.

UPDATE #2: iOS 4.0.1 is officially out. iOS 3.2.1 for iPad also hit the streets today with a fix for WiFi. Update away (via iTunes of course)!

Apple To Hold Press Conference…. Are They Admitting That The iPhone 4 Has An Issue?

Word is spreading across the Internet that Apple is going to hold a press conference on Friday at 1PM EST. I’m guessing that they might be trying to put some spin on the whole iPhone 4 antenna issue. So, will it be a recall? Free cases? Something else? Anybody want to take a guess?

Apple Censors Any Discussion Of Consumer Reports iPhone 4 Non-Recommendation

I guess that Consumer Reports bitch slap non-recommendation of the iPhone 4 has caused a reaction inside Apple HQ. Instead of owning up and fixing the problem, they are apparently censoring any discussion of it on their discussion boards according to TUAW.com:

If you were looking for a message thread on Apple’s support forums pointing to Consumer Reports’ article ‘not recommending’ the iPhone 4, it’s not there any more. Apple’s support forum moderators deleted the thread. Bing cached it.

If it happened once, maybe you’d say it was a glitch. But what if it happened twice? Three times? Four times, five, six?

Now to be fair, this is their discussion board and I suppose that they can do whatever they please, but the optics of this suck. Apple once claimed when they launched the original Macintosh that “1984 won’t be like 1984.” However in 2010, it seems like Steve Jobs is using George Orwell’s 1984 as his playbook for dealing with the iPhone 4 antenna issue.

Apple really has to get a clue here and just deal with the problems that they have rather than cover them up. Otherwise there won’t be much of a market for their shiny iDevices.

Another Reason To Replace Your iPhone With A BlackBerry: RIM announces BlackBerry Protect

If an iPhone user wanted to have ability to remote wipe their phone, back up their iPhone over the air, and the like, they have to pay $99 a year for MobileMe. But according to RIM, if you’re a BlackBerry user, you can get all this and more with BlackBerry Protect that RIM announced today. Here’s what the product does:

BlackBerry Protect allows you the ability to wirelessly backup, restore and locate your BlackBerry® smartphone. In the event that your BlackBerry smartphone is misplaced, lost or stolen, BlackBerry Protect provides features like: remote device wipe, remote device lock, ‘Lost and Found’ screen, locate device on a map, remote activation of the BlackBerry smartphone loud ringer, and wireless device backup and restore.

Here’s the best part, it’s free. It’s currently in a closed beta but it will be available in an open beta for all to try later this year.

So let me ask the question. Now that this exists (or at least is on its way) for BlackBerry, precisely what incentive do I have to pay for a iPhone and MobileMe on top of that?

Bad News For Apple Comes In Threes

The universe has not been kind to Apple. Three different kicks to the nether regions have likely put Steve Jobs and his hordes of fanbois into despair. The first thing that popped up is that Apple is going to replace defective Time Capsules manufactured in early 2008 according to a support document that was posted on Apple.com. Now I do recall hearing about some issues with Time Capsules back around that timeframe. One has to wonder why it took them this long to do something about it.

The second thing that popped up for Apple is that a lawsuit against them and AT&T was certified for class action status. The lawsuit claims Apple, in making AT&T its exclusive partner, drove up prices and killed competition in the smartphone market. The suit seeks to, “keep Apple from selling locked iPhones in the U.S. and from determining what iPhone programs people can install.” Charming. We’ll see how the iLawyers respond to that.

But the big news comes from Consumer Reports who has confirmed what we all knew to be the case. Apple’s brand new iPhone 4 has an antenna problem that is hardware related. It’s apparently so clear cut that Consumers Reports won’t recommend the phone:

When your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone’s lower left side—an easy thing, especially for lefties—the signal can significantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you’re in an area with a weak signal. Due to this problem, we can’t recommend the iPhone 4.

They do suggest a fix though. Duct tape:

Cover the antenna gap with a piece of duct tape or another thick, non-conductive material. It may not be pretty, but it works. We also expect that using a case would remedy the problem. We’ll test a few cases this week and report back.

That makes Apple’s software update that they claimed was the cure for the issue totally bogus. So “The Steve” will actually have to come clean on whatever issues plague the iPhone 4 sooner rather than later one suspects.

Over to you Steve.

Patent Troll Files Lawsut Against Google, Apple, HTC, LG, Motorola, and Microsoft

A company called NTP who is best known for extracting $612.5 million from Research In Motion back in 2006 is at it again. They’re suing Google, Apple, HTC, LG, Motorola, and Microsoft for patent infringement:

“The filing of suit today is necessary to ensure that those companies who are infringing NTP’s patents will be required to pay a licensing fee,” Mr. Stout continued.  ”In view of the USPTO Board’s ruling, the debate over whether Mr. Campana was an originator in the field of wireless email is over.  No patents in U.S. history have received as much scrutiny as NTP’s patents.  We are delighted that the USPTO Board has recognized the groundbreaking innovation of Mr. Campana by confirming 67 of NTP’s patent claims.  We are also confident that the USPTO’s rejections, which are on appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, will be overturned.”

The thing is NTP is generally regarded as a patent troll as they have also filed lawsuits against Palm, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless among others that make similar claims. Not to mention that their only assets are 50 or so patents that relate to wireless email and RF Antenna design. I hate companies like NTP as all they do is sit on technologies and don’t even develop them. They just wait for companies to infringe and then attack them. The result of this is that this chills innovation. I really hope that they get what’s coming to them, which would be nothing.

Facebook Gets Sued By Canadian Law Firm Over Privacy Issues

Facebook has had a number of privacy related issues lately, and now they’ve gotten worse. A Canadian law firm called Merchant Law Group has filed a lawsuit against Facebook on behalf of Donald J. Woligroski and they want it certified as a class action:

“The defendant’s acts of deceit and omissions have breached the duty of care it owed to its users and have caused the plaintiffs to suffer injury, economic loss, and damages, which they continue to suffer,” the lawsuit states. “Facebook has demonstrated and taken a cavalier and arbitrary approach with respect to its legal obligations to the plaintiff and class members and the methods by which Facebook misrepresented to its profit, its privacy policies and how Facebook would share, use and disseminate the personal information of the plaintiff and class action members.”

Facebook to nobody’s surprise blew this lawsuit off:

“We see no merit to this suit and we will fight it vigorously.”

Good luck with that. Even they beat the lawsuit, the optics of being sued like this aren’t good for Facebook.

So I have a question for the Canadians out there. Are you going to join the lawsuit and put the boots to Facebook?