AT&T & iPhone 4: Fewer bars in fewer places

Upon the beaconing of our tech god Steve Jobs some (about 2 Million) people went out and stood in line to get the new must have gadget from the Apple.  It is the iPhone 4 the 4^th generation of Apple’s entry into the smartphone arena and among all the new features it has what is quite possibly the best screen on a phone at the moment but it is only somewhat better than the AMOLED screens in some of the newest phones on the market like the Sprint HTC EVO 4g, HTC DROID Incredible, and the HTC Google Nexus One. Apple calls it the Retina Display and claims that the pixel dimension of the display is so high that it is more than the eye can see.  Steve Jobs says “It turns out there’s a magic number right around 300 pixels per inch, that when you hold something around to 10 to 12 inches away from your eyes, is the limit of the human retina to differentiate the pixels,” the iPhone 4 is at 326PPI,however Raymond Soneria of Display Mate a company that has spent years calibrating displays disagrees a more accurate “retina display” would have a pixel resolution of 477 pixels per inch at 12 inches” (Wired.com) to read more go to the wired magazine article http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/06/iphone-4-retina-2/ .

The newest feature of iPhone 4 is  the front facing camera and the chat program FaceTime however to initiate FaceTime you first need to call the iPhone 4 user  and be on a Wi-Fi network  because the video chatting works over Wi-Fi only for now  coming to 3g sometime later on. You must be on the cellular network to initiate the call in the first place, weird huh and it is ONLY iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 which limits the number of people you can FaceTime with, making this feature a cool thing you can’t really use.  Now the real revolutionary feature the antenna design which consists of 3 Stainless steel   bands which make up the thickness of the phone the top left antenna being the 3G GPS antenna the top right being the Wi-Fi Bluetooth and the bottom being the GSM cell phone antenna 

apple claims it gives you the best coverage of any iPhone so far. Or so they thought as soon as the iPhone 4 started to hit the streets there were reports of being able to short out the 3G and cellular antenna by holding the phone in their left hand making the phone lose service completely, and there are numerous videos of people demoing this and being able to do it on command.  A friend of mine let me see his new toy I was personally able to replicate the problem without any difficulty at all on command multiple times so I can say it is a problem.  What is more ludicrous is Apple’s initial response to the problem “Your holding it wrong”  I’m not kidding  and apple advised their Apple Care support team to NOT give out free Bumper cases (the Apple frame case) which will remedy the problem . Why because doing that admits we screwed up which they did admit last Friday saying that “Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.”  So what Apple is saying your iPhone has been lying to you the WHOLE TIME!!!!! ‘ so when the iPhone says it has  5 bars full signal  it is really 2 – 3 bars  add this to the absolutely horrid state of AT&T’s network  all one can say it WTF Apple and AT&T?  Read the whole press release at http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/07/02appleletter.html .

You might call me anti- Apple but I am not I proudly own and love my MacBook (fall 2007 black polycarbonate) I do own and use a Verizon Wireless Rim BlackBerry Curve 8330 and have no intentions of buying an iPhone or moving to AT&T but if Apple puts the A4 chipset and retina display in the next generation iPod Touch you call stand in line behind me.

image source  http://live.gdgt.com/2010/06/07/live-wwdc-2010-keynote-coverage/#10-35-26-am

Ethical Journalism…. Gizmodo…And the iPhone 4G

Last week the tech world was in a tizzy over the stolen / lost (however you want to call it) iPhone 4g prototype and how the story of it getting into a certain gadget blogs hands does not add up.  The story as it is currently stated goes like this , an Apple engineer  working  on the radios that for the new iphone  possessed a working prototype out in the wild (you do have to test this stuff) was in a bar and “lost“ the phone in the bar.  The phone then was swiped / stolen by a bar patron and  apparently knew what he had found  taken some photos and sent them to some media outlets  the gadget blogs took the bait and posted the photos most with some suspicion having seen Apple look-a-likes before . But wait there’s more the unknown holder of the device was willing to sell is warez to anyone willing to pay his price $5,000 now most ethical publications and blogs stayed far far FAR away from this and want no part of this, except for one Gizmodo a gadget blog owned by Gawker media whose editor in chief Brian Lam with permission of the head of Gawker Nick Denton bought the device off the unknown third party.  Denton who came from a British tabloid (ethical right) broke one of the key rules to ethical Journalism he paid for an exclusive.  To make it worse Denton who runs Gawker admittedly participates in what is effectually called “checkbook journalism”.

The Gawker employee who actually possessed the device Jason Chen took pictures did a video and a tear down of the device and posted all of this on Gizmodo.  After posting this to the site Gizmodo got 1million plus hits to the story, then they got ballsy they actually outed the Apple Engineer who lost the prototype (I will not  … if you really want to know look it up for yourself) and then to verify their warez they would not turn it back over to Apple unless Apple sent them a formal request for it.  They did eventually hand it over but he story does not end there  Chen the “journalist” who had the iPhone prototype  lives in California and  that being the home to a lot of tech companies  and secrets they have there is a special law enforcement team called R.E.A.C.T  Rapid  Enforcement Allied Computer Team  got a warrant to search Chen’s house and took away all of the computers , servers , flash drives , cameras  and even his iPad as evidence. However the story does not end here Gawkers believes Chen is protected under California’s shield laws which protect journalists and their sources from prosecution. Gawker is hoping that themselves and Chen are protected by these laws; however, it is unclear at this time if the R.E.A.C.T   team is after Chen and Gawker or the source who sold them the phone.

What will come of Chen and or Gawker and Gizmodo is yet to be known , will there be charges filed will there be a lawsuit.  One thing is almost certain Chen / Gizmodo knowingly bought/ received stolen property and that is a misdemeanor. But Gizmodo will go to any extent to get the story even if it means breaking the law in this case, Gizmodo  in my opinion acts like the TMZ of the tech blogs post first then verify, and possibly that is why they are banned from attending the Consumer Electronics Show  for using a TV B Gone device to turn off demo tv’s at the show and post a video of them doing it on YouTube ( a lot of intelligence there).