We will know soon enough, a class action lawsuit has been filed:
http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/06/30/28491.htm
“Apple’s solution to the design problem inherent in the iPhone4 is to tell consumers to hold the phone in a manner inconsistent with normal cell phone use, or alternatively purchase a rubber ‘bumper’ type case that is so far not widely available to the general public,” says lead plaintiff Hung Nguyen.
So their lawsuit claim is that it doesn’t behave like a normal cell phone?
This should be interesting.
Here consumer legislation means you get an immediate refund if the product doesn’t fulfill it’s stated function. So a screen that scratches/ chips doesn’t stop the Iphone from being used as a phone, but I’d expect anntena problems caused be normal handling does stop a phone from being able to be used as a phone.
Just return it, Apple will soon get the picture.
I am surprised that such a problem got to production. It also could be normal mobile phone drop-outs (caused by weather, time of day, surrounding environment, solar flares, electromagnetic radiation, other users) are all being linked to this issue- correlation doesn’t prove causation.
Actually the problem is reproducible and caused by your skin conductance detuning the antenna. This was probably found out late in the game and the slapdash solution was the bumper- cmon even the name is slapdash. Particularly telling is that this is the first iPhone that has an Apple designed cover.
Given Apples testing procedure of putting it in a protective disguise for field testing they probably missed out on that particular detune, especially since the detuning seems to happen with people with moist fingers.
Personally I think that the solution is elegant, structural, functional and aesthetic all in one. Hardly surprising that this happened. Seems like a small issue to me that could be fixed at the factory- perhaps with a surface coating. Some reports indicate that scotch tape and nail varnish ameliorates the situation- perhaps the oleophobic treatment that is given to the screen might help
I think that we are giving a pass to Apple because of their general track record of kickass. The general theory seems sound, and it seems fixable. As to giving design precedence, perhaps it is simply rewarding the teams that come up with the innovative solutions. Seems to me like ID gets a disproportionate amount of credit for Apples success, but I have a feeling that they are doing more than classic physical design. It seems like the Rahms mentality finds its way into the restraint of the systems design, and I wonder if the ID guys are part of the glue that holds the UI, mechanical design and system thought together…just conjecture.
As to whether gizmodo is anti-design- seems like they are reporting gossip from retired disgruntled engineers. They are just reporint from whatever source they can get. You can be sure that Ives and Co will not be uttering a peep.
“Apple made a defective product, and knew about it before delivery”
No. Just no. MasterBlaster is pretty much on the ball with: “Given Apples testing procedure of putting it in a protective disguise for field testing they probably missed out on that particular detune.” They didn’t know, and the didn’t design the bumper as a bandage for the antennae issue; they designed the bumper to be a case.
As for this whole Apple-says-your-holding-it-wrong nonsense. The exact quote is “Just avoid holding it in that way”. Which of course through massive paraphrasing through the web turned into “Stop holding it the wrong way!” I don’t know what anyone was looking for as an alternative solution: recall? The solutions in place are good and soon enough the antennae issue won’t be an issue anymore. (P.S I have an iphone 4 and have tried every way possible to cut off reception to no avail).
It’s easy to repeat blog gossip, but in the end, if you don’t work at Apple then you don’t know.
Gizmodo anti design or have better testing procedure, as compared to apple.
Engadget posted an article recently that the signal reduction and bar loss depends on how good of a reception you have. I know reception in and around Cupertino is pretty good since I’ve used AT&T there for like 10 years. I don’t think it cuts off your whole reception, but the grounding does reduce your reception by some amount of dB, so if your reception was say, at 2 bars, the hit to your reception would be a lot more than if it was say, 5 bars.
The way they display the bars is whack, too. From the 1st bar to the 4th, there’s only 20 dB worth of range. But from the 4th to the 5th, there is a 40dB wroth of range. So again, if you’re in an area where you’re getting badass reception, your loss of x dB would not show up as much as someone with a 2 bar reception.
I might have read the article wrong, who knows.
Either way, I don’t think you can find a blog out there without some sort of bias. I just read all of them cause I have so much free time in Rochester.
The thing that gets me about this whole issue is that Apple HAD to have known that this would be a major issue to overcome right from the very beginning. There is a reason why the other phone manufacturers haven’t done this before, and so Apple would have had to have known that if they were to innovate the antenna design this way it would have needed a hell of a lot of testing, and that would (or should) have started very early on in the design process. Innovation is great, but I wish that they had waited a bit longer before launching it and got THE KEY FEATURE working perfectly.
I have to admit that I am left slightly puzzled by the whole thing, from the initial leak to the antenna problems… have Apple lost their grip on the slick outfit that they used to run?
Perhaps Steve Jobs was ‘holding it wrong’ when he couldn’t hook up to the WiFi at the iPhone launch…
Bingo.
No, it’s just the general attitude of calling the product a failure of design, and a failure of design-driven culture, when at the same time calling it the best smartphone ever.
But who is to blame? I’m guessing the blame rests with the engineer(s) responsible for the antenna design and the engineers responsible for the testing. They should have recognized, escalated and mitigated.
Sorry 1st post
First of all the statement that you have issue with is not saying that you should compromise design at all. What it’s saying is that the relatively poor antenna design (or poor placement perhaps) may have been caused by an internal issue at apple where aesthetics take priority over functionality. You mean they should compromise functionality?
The other statements are true only if you think that Apple is the only tech company with good design which is debatable and just because a product breaks sales records does not necessarily mean it’s good, it just means that it is popular. Brittany Spears sold a ton of albums, that doesn’t mean that it is good music.
The last statement “That’s like saying Ferrari’s are crap because the paint scratches.” does not work in this context because paint scratches are not a design flaw but instead an inevitability. The antenna was designed like that on purpose and then was found out not to work well in all situations.
So they say, “Well, we gotta get this out the door anyway…” and we’re supposed to let them off the hook because they’re Apple? Sorry.
Steve Jobs tells Bill Gates he’s getting sued:
Seriously though, it will be interesting to see if this antennae ends up doing more good than harm. Apple is a pretty solid company and although I’m not a fan of some products (Tv, one button mouse), I think they will bounce back from this and will probably undertake a more rigorous route before releasing a product. Others I do enjoy (iphone 3g), and I can’t wait to see them improve their product line as a result.
However none of that can excuse releasing a defective product. I mean you don’t have to be an electrical engineer to know that when you apply a charge to a piece of exposed metal you’re gonna have conductive issues… I think that’s why virtually every antennae in the world is insulated in some form or another.
Do you mean that gizmodo has sensationalist reporting or do you mean that Apple = Democrat and Gizmodo = Republican.
As far as Apple not knowing about the antenna issue is not only highly unlikely but also does not give much credit to Apples design team.
The first reason I say this is that they have had many loss of signal issues on previous models of the iphone. Do you think that they wouldn’t test the crap out of their new devise especially with a newly designed antenna that no one has tried before?
The other reason is a little bit more revealing. This is the first time that Apple has actually made a case for the iphone which just happens to cover only the edge to separate your hand from the antenna. This is the part of the phone that is the less likely to break or even cause a problem by getting scratched compared to the screen.
All I’m saying is that they probably found out the issue a little too late in the design process to be able to change by the deadline or just too costly. Hence the bumper case. Do you really think that Steve Jobs initially wanted to cover up such a beautiful product with a rubber band?
Haha.
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I think it’s highly ironic that here we are discussing the iPhone in another thread for 8 pages and here for 3-4 pages and yet we haven’t mentioned the MS Kin phones ONCE. Today, I see those are being canceled after selling “thousands” over 6 weeks v. thousands of iPhones per day.
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cg: The problem probably comes down much more to testing prototypes too late in the process to make changes. I’ve had ideas that I tested on a rough prototype and found to be faulty in hours. I’ve seen others go to production before realizing something doesn’t work. Similar to Chevy with the Corvair or Ford with the Pinto, a company faces a risk assessment in this case. Do a few angry people with bad reception out-weigh these huge sales figures? Apparently, Apple thinks so.
I think there are probably a lot of whiners in all corners at Apple. Everyone wants to cover their arse. It’s happened everywhere I’ve worked. The reality is it’s the whole teams fault. Some designer must have proposed this and some engineer had to have green lighted this idea early. Maybe later on the engineering team voiced stronger concerns, but after a ton of money had been dumped into this concept.
I meant the sensationalist reporting.
They did “test the crap” out of their new device. As I said, Apple is known for using external bodies over their products to test them in the real world while retaining secrecy. I suppose you can say “well they should have tested them without that”, but when much of your revenue comes from your product’s surprise factor, coupled with other companies wanting to copy your designs, that’s just not an option.
A case is a case. They made a case for the ipad, do you think they had deceitful intentions there? More than anything else the case is there for people who want extra grip on those hard edges. It also protects the most fragile part of the phone, which are the edges of the glass that can chip if the phone suffers a long fall.
I really don’t know what people want to hear in this situation. There’s no internal cultural dissonance within Apple, no complete and utter failure of the product, and no disingenuous plotting on behalf of Apple. We’re human, sometimes things like this happen.
What I would like to hear is less emphatic pronouncements about what Apple did or didn’t do by people that don’t work there.