Apple’s image cracking under iPhone 4 antenna issues

Jul 13th, 10 / 2 Comments

Steve, it’s time to concede the iPhone 4 isn’t quite a flawless home run.  It’s like cutting the video to black just short of seeing the hitter round 3rd and trip, heading face first into the sand.  Stop calling it a “stumble”.  It doesn’t matter if the ball is already outta the park.  Take the fall, get up, brush off and talk about how Apple is going to resolve this issue, and then make it happen.

The longer you wait, the bigger the roar of unhappy customers that are figuring out their recent increase in signal issues isn’t just a coincidence.

I’d love to see some charts from AT&T that show trending for signal degradation across handsets, specifically the iPhone line.  I bet the iPhone 4 leads the pack in sudden degradation.  Who knows if they trend any of this already, but I can guarantee you’ll never see any of it made public.

Apple stock is down, and Consumer Reports, while offering a GLOWING review based on features/functionality is recommending against purchasing until the issue is resolved.  Even devoted fans are cursing their phones due to dropped calls and degraded signal.

Personally speaking, I’ve noticed the issue somewhat intermittently, and believe that, like so many other variables that affect wireless performance, it’s not an issue that by itself can bring the signal to an unusable level, but drastically exacerbates the other pre-existing variables.

What do I mean? Well, think about it.  .  .with any phone, your signal often seems to rise and fall for no apparent reason at all.  Maybe the tower is a bit overloaded, maybe the weather is changing, maybe your “dome” is blocking some of the signal as you move around.   There’s literally thousands of reasons wireless signal may degrade.  If none of these are impacting you, and you degrade your signal by shorting that gap on the iPhone 4, all is well, even if it cuts your signal by up to 50%.  However, if you were in a low coverage area to begin with, or any of the aforementioned issues are affecting you, goodbye call.  This makes it really hard for the end user to identify what’s really causing the issue.

Consumer Reports did their test in an enclosed area with special equipment to virtually eliminate other variables, and determine the real impact of signal attenuation alone.  Guess what?  They’re suggested fix is a piece of tape over the joint to stop attenuation.

Wake up Apple, we want a fix. . a REAL fix.

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Dodge This.

Jul 11th, 10 / 2 Comments

I don’t normally blog about anything sports related, but this photo is chock full of so much awesomeness that I had to.

More info here:

http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/38190786/ns/sports-world_cup/

but the short of it is that this guy apparently sprinted onto the field pre-game and tried to put a hat on the World Cup trophy.  A security official “restrained” him. . and by restrained I mean pwned his face with their fist :)

By the way, just in case you were in closet all day, Spain won the world cup.

UPDATE:

I found a video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCmz2ymM1qU

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News

Winner – Title says it all!

Jul 10th, 10 / Comments Off

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1938370

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Tech, Uncategorized

Candwich FTW.

Jul 10th, 10 / Comments Off

Don’t even bother cooking anymore, Mark One has your back:

http://consumerist.com/2010/07/candwhich-the-sandwhich-in-a-can.html

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News

Scientists develop super-dense energy cubes, decepticons come looking for it.

Jul 6th, 10 / Comments Off

“The chemical xenon difluoride is normally a mild-mannered white powder, but when you crush it with the pressure of 1 million times our atmosphere, it turns into a super substance. Due to some weird science, all the energy used to crush that stuff is stored inside its chemical bonds, making it a terrific energy storage device. In layman’s terms, that would be a battery.”

via DVICE:

http://dvice.com/archives/2010/07/battery-breakth.php

As exciting as this sounds, lithium-ion and lithium polymer batteries already pack a tremendous amount of energy in a very dense space.  I’m all for improving on this, but technology like this one sounds exceptionally scary-dangerous when you figure the force it takes to form the bonds in these materials.  Imagine what would happen if you dropped the thing?

In fact, forget about that, imagine what happens when the decepticons find out you have one  :)

Real picture of the “formed” energy cube:

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News, Tech

NO, I don’t want to be your neighbor in farmville.

Jul 4th, 10 / Comments Off

No, I don’t want to be your neighbor in “farmville”, your friend in “cafe world”, or you’re hooker in “pimps”.  Yeh-yeh, that last one doesn’t exist. . .*yet*.

Social networks are all about repeat visits.  I get that.  If people don’t come back, they don’t see the new ads, they don’t see what everyone’s been up to, and your user base shrinks like ku klux klan sign-ups during a sheet shortage.

Games like farmville get people to come back, again, and again, and again, and again.  People with addictive personalities are especially useful gamers to social networks because they’ll actually HOUND their friends to come play to if it somehow benefits their own progress/success and the cycle repeats.

Think about this: The bigger the userbase, the higher the number of visits, the bigger the “value” of the social network.  What am I talking about? Well, Facebook has an estimated annual revenue of $1.2 billion and 400 million users.  That means each of  you reading this, that are members of facebook, are worth about $3/year.  Some of it comes from ads, some of it just from growth of the co., but roughly speaking, each person that “joins” facebook brings the company~$3 in annual revenue.

Are you starting to see the big picture yet?

I have nothing against the concept of a social network and sites that are designed to connect people, but I have a problem with the idea of turning everyone into a button pushing George Jetson to speed up the growth and value of a company and calling it a “game”.  Games usually involve skill or chance, and I see neither in the current crop of popular social networking games.  The greatest factor driving your success in any of these “games” is your willingness to come back, over and over again.

Count me out.  I’ll stick with “Call of Duty”.  Call of Duty never sends me messages reminding me to come play it, I can play as much or as little as I want, my success is tied to my skill and strategy, and nobody wants to be my neighbor.

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Life, Opinion

Boston rocks, iPhone 4: woes, wins & humor, & Why can’t pet AT-AT’s be real?

Jun 28th, 10 / Comments Off

Back from Boston!  Ok, well, I got back late last Friday night, and I’m just posting now, but I’ve been B-U-S-Y.

Boston rocked.  Complete 180 from other big cities I’ve been to.   There’s open space, richer history, and the atmosphere is just calmer and more cohesive.  NYC, for example looks recycled, regurgitated, and temporary in comparison.

Trip Pics

Boston seamlessly blends “trendy new” with cobble stone, granite, brick and nature.  It’s got it’s skeletons and armpits too, but hands down, my favorite urban blend.  If I could change one thing it’d be the time chit closes. . .   On a FRIDAY night in the SUMMER, half the bloody city shuts down at 6pm, and the rest is closed by 9pm.  No, I don’t mean there’s a curfew, but good luck finding anything open.  I literally couldn’t find an open Startbucks at 9:45pm.  No joke.  If you’re a night owl, stick to NYC.  In comparison it literally is the city that never sleeps.

Got home late Friday night, and low and behold by iPhone 4 had arrived while I was gone.  In fact, it came Wednesday, a full day before the official release. Go AT&T.  You mind-fucked me with your nonexistent status and bullshit answers when I ordered, but a full day early . . . rock-on.

Saturday morning: Wake up, activate iPhone, call AT&T to swap #’s around (had to purchase on my wife’s number originally to get the upgrade pricing) and wow, kickass features in order of importance:

1) Amazing screen

2) Kickass screen

3) Jaw-dropping gorgeous screen

4) STFU and look at the screen

5) Everything else

The “retina” display is truly remarkable.  It’s mesmerizing to look at stuff on it.   It’s “realer” than “real”.  In fact, MOVE over real, the new real is whatever I’m looking at on my iPhone 4 screen. Real is yesterday.

Sunday morning: I wake up,  grab by phone to catch up on the news until my daughter wakes up, and 10 minutes in, the screen flickers like a campfire in the wind, splits into double vision, fades to white, fades to black, fades to sparkly silver, and finally: fades to black.

Power button = no response.

Home button = no response.

Hard reset = no response.

Hold down home button = voice dial prompt!, but screen still blank, so obviously the screen had gone off the deep end.

I call AT&T, who has me step through the usual hoops and perform the usual steps, and after 45 minutes they pronounced the screen dead.

What now?  Well, AT&T offered advanced replacement with  a ship date of 5-6 wks.  No thanks.  Other option was to show up at Apple, and give them the case #.  A quick call to Apple yielded a 3:15pm genius bar appt the very same day, and the expectation of  a “replacement phone”.  Surely this sounded a little nuts since I know damn well they’re sold out, but I figured worst case scenario I could at least get a 3GS loaner until more 4’s are on the shelves.

Arrived at Apple, and lo and behold, they maintain a seperate stock of replacement phones and they had 1 16GB 4 left!!!!  YAY, back in business.  I’ll spare you the part of the story where I went to 3 different places shopping for a case, but they turned out to be as scarce as the phones themselves.

This video, while bashing the iPhone 4 pretty much sums up why:

. . .and while you’re at it, check this one out too.  If you don’t want a pet AT-AT after watching this, you’re broken:

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Life, News, Opinion, Tech, YouTube

Leaving for Boston

Jun 23rd, 10 / Comments Off

About to get on this plane and depart for the RHEL Summit in Boston via Philly Airport.

It only looks about twice as big as my truck :)

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Life, Work

AT&T ships my iPhone 4!?, and some first thoughts on iOS4

Jun 21st, 10 / Comments Off

Just checked my status at AT&T again for my iPhone 4, and it shows shipped!.  The FedEx tracking # doesn’t work yet, but this really does seem to solidify that at least I’ll be getting a phone sometime this month.

I’m loving iOS4 on my 3Gs so far.  It’s a little cumbersome at first to scroll through the running apps after a double click, but feels intuitive.  The unified inbox is also nice, but it leaves we wondering: why didn’t they color code the messages based on the account received through, or present an option for this?  Maybe it -is- there and I’m missing it.  If not, Steve, can you hear me?? Color coding on emails. . kthx

Pandora runs in the background just as expected (continues to play), and didn’t cause any noticeable lag.

Wallpapers on the home screen just feels right.  Just like a good case adds a custom look and feel to the iPhone, so does a customizable home screen, and this should have been an option for day 1.  Folders is another great feature that works exactly as you’d expect it would, but again, it should have been there since day 1 :)

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News, Opinion, Tech

iOS4 has been released!

Jun 21st, 10 / Comments Off

iOS 4 (previously iPhone OS), has been released and is available for download through iTunes.  If you haven’t updated your iTunes recently, you’ll need to update that as well before performing the firmware upgrade on your iPhone.  If you’ve got an iPhone 3GS, you can look for the following new key features:

Multitasking, Folders, Unified Inbox, iBooks, 5x Digital Zoom, Tap To Focus Video, Faces and Places in Photos, Home Screen Wallpaper, Gifting Apps, Spell Checking, Bluetooth Wireless Keyboard Support, and much much more!

If you own a 3G, most of these features will be available, save for multitasking.  The 3G just simply doesn’t have enough juice (mem/cpu) for multitasking to work well.  If you’re still kicking around an “original” iPhone, you’re out of luck, as this update doesn’t support that model at all.

Happy updating!

UPDATE:

Looks to be about 378MB, and is downloading  at ~5mbps for me.

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