Of course this was brought up. Apple generally does a 10-3-1 design process - 10 different fully working prototypes are made and they let the designers go crazy. From that they further develop 3, then go with the best one. I've been in some of these meetings as an external contractor and no detail is left out - we made custom screws for them and did about 50 different design iterations for one application.
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.
That's what's so frustrating about this whole situation... most people seem to be getting much better wireless performance from the 4 than any previous iPhone.
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.
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."
The problem isn't that the signal drops. The problem is that Apple fudged the bars, to make "5 bars" show in more locations.
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.
"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.
most people seem to be getting much better wireless performance from the 4 than any previous iPhone..
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.
FCC regs about how much radiation is absorbed by the user's head when holding the handset up to their ear - apparently most phones have the antenna at the base.
There was an article talking about this when the phone first came out.
I don't recall ever being involved in any project that didn't have risks, and where someone predicted problems - and occasionally the wrong decision is made and they end up right. Especially in RF.
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.
They should just offer a generic case/bumper or $10 rebate towards the sale of a range of cases with proof of purchase. Brand image restored, the world continues spinning.
Releasing a beautiful product that needs a plastic cover to function properly (without this being made known at launch) is no way to restore brand image. That's actually a great way to become a laughing stock and make the early adopters feel like chumps. I think that woud actually be worse than doing nothing--it admits fault.
Apple has never hosted a press conference like this, I doubt it will be for something as simple as a free bumper.
Nah, doing nothing is the ultimate slap in the face. It's like buying a watch only to find out it stops when it contacts your wrist. The guy that sells it says "It's just a watch and look it still shows correct time twice a day. Just wear it differently." Recall is most likely, but I can see the option of a recall or a case being a smart business decision. Many people would take the free case option reducing the actual cost of the recall.
It's very similar to Nintendo's position with the Wii a year or two ago. When people started throwing their Wii remotes through their TVs, Nintendo promptly apologized and started shelling out for rubberized grips, and made it very well known that there was a flaw and the grips will mitigate it. That said, I know many people never used the grips. They are big and ugly and do subtract from the sleek design of the controllers, but at least they knew Nintendo tried to do something about it. That's important.
The difference being very few (if any) people bought the Wii for the remote looks. Changing its appearance was immaterial to the product. The iPhone is a stylish luxury good very much marketed based on its high-end industrial design and you can't get away with changing its looks after the fact and saving face.
You have a point, but what really matters to iPhone and Wii users is how they look/how they'll feel when using said product. If the Wii was essentially a $150 xbox I don't think it would have appealed to its intended audience nearly as well. I agree that aesthetics aren't as important to the Wii as the iPhone, but the solution to the iPhone issue (at least, the case; not the duct tape) is less ugly/cumbersome.
Critics have always and easily posited that Apple makes shiny devices that are easily scratched up in your pocket or through day to day use. Critics have always pointed out the need for a case to "properly use" an Apple product...going as far back as the original 5GB Firewire only, Mac only iPod.
I disagree. I've had my iPhone 3G for 2 years and always carried it in my pocket. I keep keys and coins (and anything else scratchy) in a different pocket. The phone is completely unscratched (apart from tiny and unimportant scratches on the plastic back from being placed on hard surfaces).
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.
Totally disagree with you here. As of (at least) the 3G (and 3GS), Apple has delivered very scratch resistant products. I totally abuse my iPhones, carry them in the same pocket as my keys and coins, and I've yet to put a visible scratch on them. I've got a tiny little chip on the side of my 3GS, but that was from dropping it onto a concrete sidewalk from a height of about three feet.
That the minimum they should do, and if that's all they do people will be like "Meh. That's an alright deal, I suppose..."
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."
Everyone makes mistakes. It's how you respond to it that makes the difference.
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.
I agree, but it's also in line with how he responds to other problems -- largely, Apple's approach has been vehement denial combined with heavy spin doctoring.
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!
A luxury phone people payed good money for. It's like if BMW was selling a car which could only make right turns (ok, not a perfect example, I be more pissed about the car, but bear with me). Obviously this car is defective, but BMW responds by saying, "It's ok, you can still make left turns, because three right turns is the same as a left turn. It's only a car."
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."
Or like BMW selling a car with an extra hand operated lever and an extra foot pedal. And if you don't operate them correctly the car will barely move and maybe even stall...
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.
Honesty and openness is sometimes very nice not just as an ideal, but because it gives you the chance to be the first to shape perspectives like that. And that, asmithmd1, is some very nice spinning of the issue you did there.
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.
Honestly, I don't think it would kill them to include a basic rubber case in the color of their choosing (probably black). It's not like Nintendo Wiis were less popular because they had to put that big rubber cushion on the hand controller. After people were breaking TVs and getting concussions.
If anything it made the controller more attractive since adults could finally hold it.
This situation is definitely most analogous to what happened with the Nintendo Wii Remotes going through TV screens (as opposed to Toyota's acceleration issue).
- 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.
A free bumper is my least preferred resolution. It essentially says you can't have the phone you thought you were buying. Instead, you have to choose: faulty or ugly.
I agree, even though I think the bumpers are kind of stylish.
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.
I'm not sure that would help. I think that would be sufficient if this were a BlackBerry or something where people expect it to look utilitarian. But one of the major features of the new iPhone was it's stunning looks. To then be told you have to put a big rubber bumper on it would be pretty disappointing.
Poor Apple. Every phone suffers from similar problem (admittedly to the lesser degree), but now Apple will be forced to find the solution nobody was looking before, just because all this attention. That would be double annoying to them, especially because iPhone 4 has better reception.
"The company also said that a software error, dating to the June 2007 release of the first iPhone, has resulted in overstated signal strength, leading users to believe they had better reception than they did. Apple said on July 2 that a software fix will be released “within a few weeks.”"
Well, the hardness of the clearcoat would certainly impact the durability of that solution. Specifically, if the clearcoat were too hard, it would have a tendency to chip. Too soft and it might show marks from impact or wear off with the use of a case. It's a harder problem than it seems.
It feels like the external antenna was just a gimmick to sell phones because a new screen + another camera isn't enough to warrant a new phone. I have never had reception issues with the dozens of internal-antenna phones I've owned.
This is just noise created by the media. 2 months from now everybody will be happily using the iPhone without changes, as I do now.
For example, about consumer reports... What was the last time you read that publication to decide what phone to buy? Most people wouldn't care less.
I think the magazine is more widely read than you think. Their mobile phone coverage is actually quite good, and very in-depth - including quite a bit of consumer polling along with their own testing.
Consumer Reports is a non-profit that has a long record of relative objectivity. Consumer's Union is non-profit founded in 1936
"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."
I am not questioning the quality of the magazine, just saying that only a small number of people read it. 99% of the customers just look at the phone, think it is cool, and buy it.
Moreover, even if you read the magazine and see the negative recommendation, I doubt you wouldn't buy the iPhone just because of that.
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.