The IT Nerd

…. And here’s what went down.

• First, they played the video that I posted this morning. I’m actually floored by that.
• Second, “The Steve” himself showed up and said this: “You know, we’re not perfect. We know that, you know that. And phones aren’t perfect either. But we want to make all of our users happy. If you don’t know that about Apple, you don’t know Apple. We love making our users happy.” Interesting. I think that’s as close to “Sorry we screwed up” as iPhone 4 owners are going to get.
• Jobs went on to demonstrate that other smartphones will have the same behavior if you hold it in a certain way and you are in an area with low signal coverage. “Smartphones have weak spots — this isn’t just the iPhone 4, it’s all phones.” he said. For non-geeks out there, the phenomenon is called Attenuation. While it is true that all phones can suffer from this,  I can’t replicate the iPhone 4 antenna issues on my BlackBerry Bold 9000. So I think his explanation has a few holes in it.
• Jobs did admit that the iPhone 4 drops more calls than the iPhone 3GS. “This is hard data… the iPhone 4 drops less than one additional call per 100 than the 3GS. Less than one.”
• “El Jobso” then shared with his audience: “When the 3GS came out, we didn’t change the design from the 3G. So there were already lots of cases out there for the phone. And more than 80% of new buyers left the store with a case. Now the new phone doesn’t fit those cases, and we can’t make these bumpers fast enough, so only 20% leave the store with a case… but we’re going to figure it out.” That’s when he got to the solution: “We think this has been so blown out of proportion… it’s fun to have a story, but it’s not fun on the other side. So here’s what we’re going to do to make our users happy. The first part is the software update, that fixes the way the bars report and other bugs, that’s out now. Second, people said the bumper fixes everything… ‘why don’t you give everybody a case’? Okay — we’ll give you a free case.” To take advantage of that, you had to have bought your iPhone 4 between the launch day and September 30th. Oh, and if you still don’t like the phone after that, Apple will give you your money back as long as it is undamaged. That too goes away on September 30th. At that time, they will “examine” the situation again… I’m guess a new hardware rev. will be quietly introduced at that time…. Assuming it hasn’t been already.
• Oh by the way, the iPhone is on its way to 17 more countries on July 30th including Canada, Hong Kong, Spain, Sweden, and Norway just to name a few.
• Jobs also had this to say: “So I have some other updates. We’re tracking some problems with the proximity sensor and we’re working on it. White iPhone, we’re going to start shipping at the end of the month.” At least he admitted to an issue.
• As for that report that claimed that Jobs was told about the antenna issues during the design phase, he said: “total bullshit.” That’s strong.
• I did notice that Jobs apparently still doesn’t like Gizmodo. Here’s the quote that highlights this. When asked about refunds for third party cases, he said no and went on to say this: “It’s really simple, if we tell people what our next product is, they stop buying our current products. Sometimes websites buy stolen property and they get out there… and case makers have a history of showing off their new cases for our new products. The case vendors haven’t had a history of helping to keep our work under wraps.” Bitch slap!

So that’s the news conference in a nutshell.

What do I think? They did sort of acknowledge that a problem exists, and they provided a band aid fix for it. That is positive in a way. But they could have done more to make the issue go away. Because of that, my feeling is that the discussion of this issue won’t go away anytime soon. I may be wrong about that, but I don’t think so. I also find it interesting that “El Jobso” didn’t call out Consumers Reports they way he called out Bloomberg over that report that claimed that Jobs knew about this issue when the phone was being designed. I think that’s significant. In the end, I think that this will keep the fanbois happy and maybe move this off the front page of every newspaper on Earth in the short term. But in the long term, I think that the image of Apple has been damaged.

The true impact will be seen in the Q2 and Q3 numbers. If iPhone sales are down in those quarters, then we’ll know the true fallout from all of this.

UPDATE: Video of the press conference is now available from Apple. Plus there’s some interesting spin information on antenna performance available as well.

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!

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.

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.

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)!

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?

I’m guessing that with all the talk and lawsuits over the iPhone 4 antenna issues, Apple had to do something to try and make this issue go away. A press release that was posted today is likely the first step in that. Here’s how Apple explains the antenna issues:

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. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.

To fix this, we are adopting AT&T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone’s bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.

We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.

There’s one problem with this explanation. It doesn’t explain data and voice problems (such as dropped calls) that people have been seeing (or hearing as the case may be). So the way I see it, unless the phone is checking the signal quality and that’s what causes it to intentionally drop the calls, this upcoming fix will fix nothing.

It’s also ironic in a way that Apple is taking advice from AT&T to solve its problems, seeing as AT&T hasn’t exactly helped Apple’s image since the iPhone was launched. You have to have a chuckle over that.