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Apple Hires Antenna Engineers. Really.
kangsterizer writes "Sometimes, news items are just about a good laugh. You may or may not like Apple, but the way it has been handling its antenna issue has been like a small tech soap opera — Steve Jobs, the CEO, saying 'not to hold the phone that way,' rumors of software issues, and the latest but most crunchy part, since the antenna issue has been widely discovered, on 23 June, several 'antenna engineer' positions opened up at Apple. Seems someone got fired:
Antenna engineer job position 1,
Antenna engineer job position 2,
Antenna engineer job position 3."
I just figure they did all their testing in California, where AT&T dropping calls is as common as $4 coffees.
"Just avoid holding it this way." -Steve Jobs
Living With a Nerd
The worst part of this is that I can't tell if this is a troll or just a fanboi. It gets so hard to tell sometimes. I'm guessing troll, because a fanboi would probably suggest sucking Steve Jobs' dick as a solution.
The second and third links both point to the same URL as the first.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
I just figure they did all their testing in california where AT&T dropping calls is as common as $4 coffees.
Shouldn't they cost more than $4 in Cali?
...Putting the horse behind the cart?
From a memo to AppleCare reps:
Exact procedures AppleCare reps must follow when dealing with any reception complaints regarding the iPhone 4.:
1. Keep all of the positioning statements in the BN handy – your tone when delivering this information is important.
a. The iPhone 4’s wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped. Our testing shows that iPhone 4’s overall antenna performance is better than iPhone 3GS.
b. Gripping almost any mobile phone in certain places will reduce its reception. This is true of the iPhone 4, the iPhone 3GS, and many other phones we have tested. It is a fact of life in the wireless world.
c. If you are experiencing this on your iPhone 3GS, avoid covering the bottom-right side with your hand.
d. If you are experiencing this on your iPhone 4, avoid covering the black strip in the lower-left corner of the metal band.
e. The use of a case or Bumper that is made out of rubber or plastic may improve wireless performance by keeping your hand from directly covering these areas.
2. Do not perform warranty service. Use the positioning above for any customer questions or concerns.
3. Don’t forget YOU STILL NEED to probe and troubleshoot. If a customer calls about their reception while the phone is sitting on a table (not being held) it is not the metal band.
4. ONLY escalate if the issue exists when the phone is not held AND you cannot resolve it.
5. We ARE NOT appeasing customers with free bumpers – DON’T promise a free bumper to customers.
This space for rent.
That must have been a really, really, really awkward conversation.
Although to be honest, I wonder if this is Apple's secrecy coming to bite them in the ass. If you are uber careful about how many phones you have out in the field, you're a lot less likely to run into scenarios where your product fails in real world situations.
beta testing, google does it for a reason.
yep, it has the apps and the gbs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL7yD-0pqZg
Who the hell did Mr. Jobs have before to design his antennas, a plumber? Glad they're fired. Hopefully the new engineers will re-design the iPhone to have the best reception of any cell phone on the market and Stevie puts out a recall.
He's got me by the balls cause I'm stuck with the iPhone 4 and was so quick to sell my 3GS. Steve better hurry!
Apple's next product announcement will be for special color-matching paperclips ($9.99) and tin cans ($49.99) as antenna boosters.
Specifics? Last time I checked, there is nothing that the iPhone OS can do that Android can't do (and, aside from Android being "open", the reverse is more or less true as well.)
Living With a Nerd
...must be left-handed
OP have you ever used an Android phone? The platform is maturing extremely fast. I just switched from an iPhone 3g to an Evo 4g and I don't have regrets. The features of the iPhone 4 just didn't impress me enough. Plus, once I got an android I realized how much the iPhone was stifling my inner geek. I've loaded custom roms, overclocked, rooted, everything...It has been a lot of fun and I recommend android to any geek I know. And if you're not a geek, I still recommend it.
Ok, I do have ONE regret about my switch: a unified mailbox. There's probably one in the android market...hmmm brb!
Someone got fired, or they just realised that you can't expect it to work properly if you don't hire experts. Reminds me of all the issues with noise in the G5 towers getting onto the supply rails and then into the audio I/O and Firewire power that lead to them hiring analog electronics experts to fix it. When I first read that the stainless steel surround was an antenna, I predicted these kinds of problems - you can't expect an antenna to maintain tuning while allowing a meatbag to touch it, especially when you need to be able to tune several microwave bands from hundreds of MHz to GHz. The laws of physics are against you, and any engineer should be able to point that out. Other handsets have issues where your hand can obstruct the signal, but the iPhone 4 is unique in allowing you to place things in galvanic contact with the antenna, which has a far bigger effect on its RF performance.
Somehow I doubt it was the idea of an antenna designer to put it on the outside where one would hold it. Anyone with any antenna theory knowledge at all knows that your gain would then be changed easily based on how it was held by a conductor (eg, you)
The only think you could blame the antenna engineer for is not properly stating what a bad idea it is.
Heck, it's entirely possible they didn't have any antenna engineers and now realize that's probably idea for a product masquerading as a phone.
Hands-on is a must.
I thought that's exactly what everyone is supposed to avoid?!
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
So candidate "X": how would you deal with RF absorbtion and detuning of a microwave antenna when brought into close proximity of a human body?
< candidate answers, based on practical experience >
Interviewer writes down answer, says "That's very interesting, next candidate please"
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Hands on experience is required
Depends which phone you've got. The Nexus One has a great interface and an ever growing list of available software. Plus since Google doesn't banish software from the market for duplicating functionality or allowing people to see naughty things, you can customize things quite a bit more if the interface isn't to your liking.
What's with all the three links having same URL? Maybe it's the new government program for decreasing unemployment. Look, we've tripled the amount of open positions!
iPhone noTouch
http://www.antennasys.com/antennasys-blog/2010/6/24/apple-iphone-4-antennas.html Who would they have fired?
Most companies have a hard time recruiting any good RF engineering. It's not a 'digital' domain and the Educational System just plain isn't putting out many (any?) good RF engineers anymore. It isn't even something you can passably fake with 'SPICE' like some of the lower-frequency analog.
I doubt if Apple can afford that kind of engineering. They can't even afford mechanical engineers with the skill-set to design a robust replaceable-battery-compartment into their products. (the most recent attempt I can remember is the battery compartment in the Newton, and almost every Newton I have ever seen has a broken battery compartment)
It sounds like they didn't have this problem while they were testing them in cases that look like iPhone 3s. Maybe apple will start shipping them with iPhone 3 cases?
What a coincidence, McDonald's just hired three former antenna engineers.
Have you even actually used an HTC Android phone? Android + Sense pretty much blows iOS4 out of the water.
This exotenna idea seemed so good to Steve Jobs since he always beats himself off with his left hand. He always held his iPhone with his right hand since his left hand was either in motion or cum-covered.
And, now, us consumers pay the consequences. Those of us who already sold our 3GS's are in a really sticky situation!
oh, wait a moment!
...they're all different URLs, different job postings, and different requisition numbers.
However, it's probably not likely that these positions are in any way related to the iPhone 4 launch, considering the time that these positions have probably been in the pipeline.
Sure, you only get 4 colors in hires on an Apple, but what can you draw with a 40x40 grid anyway (except, maybe, a Mark Spitz retrospective).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
If it was me, I'd have said "We put a pair of headphones with an integrated microphone in that box, yet you insist on holding the phone up to your ear! How are you going to operate your iPad with one hand near your head? Do like I do, and use the headphones for total freedom when using your giant iPod Tou... err iPad."
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Or they did all their testing with bumpers on the phones. If you have a piece of rubber between your hand, and the antenna, you don't complete the circuit.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Quoted from jobs description:
"* Detail oriented - taking data, using Excel, and making meaningful tables/graphs/averages."
I guess "i"Numbers is not being used internally in Apple ;-)
What the fuck has to do Android with what we are reading/talking here? go to some Andriod news, god i hate this stupid jerks with their "my choices are better than yours" mental problem
"There's no reason to become alarmed, and we hope you'll enjoy your new 4G iPhone. By the way, is there anyone out there who knows how to design an antenna?"
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
surely, the evidence is against that...
(Especially since Apple received a taxpayer bailout - they stole that money IMHO.)
Huh?
OP have you ever used an Android phone? The platform is maturing extremely fast. I just switched from an iPhone 3g to an Evo 4g and I don't have regrets.
Evo 4g? I don't care. I want the one with the bigger geebees.
My work here is dung.
The iTenna. Suction cup adhesion to your forehead for a hardwired auxiliary antenna. Only $69.99. Guaranteed to improve reception (if your forehead is not too greasy) and announce to the world that you are one of the iConnected!
What the fuck has to do Android with what we are reading/talking here? go to some Andriod news, god i hate this stupid jerks with their "my choices are better than yours" mental problem
This nested discussion stems from an Apple fanboy bringing up how much better the OS is than Android, actually. Kind of silly to say what you said, isn't it?
The only reason the old antenna engineers did what they did was because they were forced to by Apple marketing and industrial design groups. And the only reason the next ones won't make the same mistake is because of hindsight, not because the new ones will be somehow more competent than the old ones.
Apple sounds like a horrible place to work. Every decision you make has to put aesthetics ahead of every other practical consideration. I bet you'd get fired for complaining too much about a problem early in the design cycle, and of course, if something goes wrong, you'll get fired for lacking the forethought. Rock and a hard place.
Clearly the marketing department is the end-all, be-all decision makers in a product design at Apple. As an RF engineer (I am) I would not be jumping up and down to work for Apple. Antenna designs are always a compromise between aesthetics and performance.
I bet that the Apple phone worked just great in their corporate offices with an AT&T cell site right next door. The signal levels would be very high and you probably could have wrapped the phone in a 10 pound ham and the signal would have looked just great. I doubt that they did any real-world testing in a weak signal environment.
Much of the weak-signal specifications for any RF device are usually determined on a test bench or in an anechoic chamber where conditions are controlled. The ugly reality of someone's sweaty, meaty hand seldom makes it into the engineers lexicon.
The job titles for these folks should be "Fall Guy #1, Fall Guy #2 and Fall Guy #3.
Tisha Hayes
Well boys and girls having problems with reception on you shiiiiinnny new iPhone 4 . . . Wellllll . . . Have we got a product for you, for just $29. YES ONLY $29, you can purchase our Apple Bumper cover. Guaranteed! Yes I said GUARAAAANTEEEED!! To improve your ability to make AND receive calls! Yes this product has been thoroughly tested and proven to improve your ability to make AND receive calls! Why this product has been tested more than the original iPhone 4 was before it was shipped out . . .
To begin learning why the statement you just got up-modded for is total bullshit, start here:
The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is (Part 1)
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
a fanboi would probably suggest sucking Steve Jobs' dick as a solution.
I tried that when my new phone starting dropping calls, but he kept telling me "not to hold it that way."
...
Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week. Tip your waitress, try the veal.
Specifics? Last time I checked, there is nothing that the iPhone OS can do that Android can't do (and, aside from Android being "open", the reverse is more or less true as well.)
Does it have [extremely specific game X]? Does it have [extremely specific game Y]? Does it have [extremely specific game Z]? Does it sync with [designed-for-vendor lockin media player A]? No? That sounds pretty useless to me! What do you EXPECT me to do on these phones, anyway?
"Looking for engineer to build next-gen antenna that can operate near reality distortion field. Send resume to steve(at)apple(dot)com."
there's no place like ~
Dont' know about the AC, but I have, and it most certainly does not blow iOS4 out of the water.
Android's ok, I guess, but the iPhone software is just much more polished and usable.
Now all Apple needs to do is make a commercial with MC Hammer.
"Can't touch this!"
Best part is, they could use the same video - it's already people dancing in front of a white background. Just crank up the contrast until the people turn into silhouettes, and add some headphones.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c4L4CPfQY8
Wooooow, i get it all wrong, now that i've realized know that i've re readed the comment, hahahaha, SORRY, my mistake, i got it all wrong. P.S.: I HATE Apple, nobody is allow to tell me what to do and what not to do with a product i bought.
Someday somebody has to explain to me this phenomenon of these alleged 'dropped calls'. Thing is, I'm in Europe (traveling all about it as part of my job) and I have never (read that again: never) had a dropped call. Not in busy metropolitan area's and not in the rural sticks either.
So what's the deal with GSM in the US? Not enough cell towers? Users walking in and out Faraday cages? What?
Years ago (a decade or more) it used to be that your calls got broken off when entering a tunnel or somesuch. That was annoying so it got fixed.
Maybe it's the healthy dose of competition between carriers overhere?
What do you EXPECT me to do on these phones, anyway?
I expect you to DIE, Mr. Bond.
Living With a Nerd
1. Tell the boss that the cool new industrial design won't work well and get fired.
2. Tell the boss that the cool new industrial design will work great and get fired.
The iPhone is just smoother. Just last Friday evening I got the chance to compare an iPhone 3GS to my Motorola Milestone (overclocked to 800MHz and tweaked for speed and stability) and an HTC Desire (more or less stock, as far as I could tell)... even with Launcher Pro and Sense UI on the Milestone and Desire, respectively, the iPhone just felt... nicer.
The scrolling, pinching, app-switching animations, hell, even the lockscreens... all smoother and more responsive on the iPhone.
Of course, that's not important to everyone (definitlely won't be swaying me any time soon), but many people will go with the iPhone on this basis alone, because they assume it signifies that everything else about the iPhone will be better as well...
I hold my iPhone upside down. Works like a champ.
Your problem is that you are comparing, pairwise, some list you've concocted of individual features.
At some point people actually have to use the features so it matters quite a lot how those features are implemented. The UI matters, the speed at which the features function, etc. There are checkmarks in both the Android and iphone columns of your spreadsheet for the row "email" but there are significant differences in their implementations. Prior to iOS 4 the iphone lacked severely. After the update it is better than Android. There are other areas where iOS continues to lack even after the latest update.
Same applies to every 'feature' you have. That people like you continue to willfully ignore this very important component of user acceptance is evidence of your fanboism.
Anyone check out the job requirements?
Detail oriented - taking data, using Excel, and making meaningful tables/graphs/averages.
Preferred Experience:
* Experience with simulation tools such as XFDTD, HFSS is a plus
It looks like the person will not be in front of a Mac while doing their work. Excel is likely on the PC (no iWorks here), while HFSS (from ANSOFT) only runs on Windows, Red Hat, SuSE and Solaris (SPARCS only). I guess there aren't professional-quality 3D Full-wave Electromagnetic Field Simulation in the Mac app store. (However, to be fair, XFDTD does run on the Mac. First EM simulation package in the industry to run natively on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux).
Plus, once I got an android I realized how much the iPhone was stifling my inner geek. I've loaded custom roms, overclocked, rooted, everything..
so you just did not even try this on the iPhone? You have been able to do ALL of these for longer than andriod phones have existed.
Dont make crap up like you cant do this on an Iphone, Jailbrake and root an iphone for some serious fun... Hell one dude has Linux running on the iphone. http://linuxoniphone.blogspot.com/
http://www.appletell.com/apple/comment/overclock-your-jailbroken-iphone-or-ipod-touch/
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Disclaimer: I am an engineer (electrical test, in fact) so I'm a bit biased. But from the brief insights that we can get about the Apple development process, Jobs loves to keep different parts of the organization completely oblivious from each other. My guess is that the actual antenna engineers never had knowledge of the final design of the phone. The process guys designing the machining to make the external antenna probably didn't know they were making antennas. The only people that probably knew the whole picture was Jobs, Ive, and the usual group that is in that iPhone 4 video shown during the keynote.
If statistically it is shown to be a huge problem as such to trigger a recall, the board should do its job and hold one someone in this high level team responsible. Obviously, it is a cultural thing with Jobs. He loves to get feedback of what is possible from the engineering staff and then ignore it. For example, the Mac Mini. He famously asked what was the smallest computer they could build at the time. He got feedback and then said make it 1" smaller in each dimension. Sometimes it works. I have done some of my best work for people who were similar, just unflinching in their demands. It is gratifying to complete such a project. However, this time taking industrial design over engineering backfired, and big time. Apple has been inching towards this day for a long time. For example, why no strain relief on the old Macbook MagSafe connectors? Aluminum backs on the original iPhone? I'm hopeful that this episode shakes up the culture and process a little bit. Enough to be cautious when necessary, but not to stifle their crazy industrial design creativity either.
There are checkmarks in both the Android and iphone columns of your spreadsheet for the row "email" but there are significant differences in their implementations.
What spreadsheet? Who were you replying to?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Why not just put a small piece of tape right over the antenna seam? That would hinder the skin conductivity, right?
Same applies to every 'feature' you have. That people like you continue to willfully ignore this very important component of user acceptance is evidence of your fanboism.
If you notice, in my post that you replied to, I specifically said there was nothing that either Android or iOS can do that the other can't do. Last time I checked, equal regard isn't the same thing as fanboyism.
For the record, I love the iPhone hardware and iOS is well-made...but I refuse to financially support Apple so long as they continue to use the walled garden. ::shrug:: sorry.
Living With a Nerd
real-time audio is the thing were the iphone kick android ass
Who asked?
You missed: 3. Get drunk at a bar and lose the 4G prototype and don't get fired.
The primary difference is that you don't have to give up your warranty to do it on Android.
We already had this discussion here, folks...don't use "just hack the device" as support for an iPhone when you can do the same thing with an unmodified Android device. I'm all for modifying my gadgets, but not when I can buy a gadget that does what I want right out of the box.
Living With a Nerd
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dXjQicyM3KcJ:piers.mit.edu/piersproceedings/download.php?file%3DcGllcnMyMDEweGlhbnwyUDZiXzA3MzMucGRmfDA5MDkyNjA3MzQyNg
a.k.a. "A Numerical Study of the Interaction betweeen Handset Antennas and Human Head/Hand in GSM 900, DCS, PCS and UMTS Frequency Bands".
A key sentence: "Experimental studies indicate that more than half of the antenna's radiated power is absorbed in the head or hand tissues."
BP is now hiring drilling engineers. There's never enough money to do it right the first time but there's always money to try to fix it the second time.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Triangulation FTW.
Notepad specialist & FAT administrator, group training available
Could this be making the iPhone 4 ready for Verizon's network?
less hooplah, more phone, and there' "an app" for everything on it too. plus it's not AT&T, I've tethered for some citrix meetings through verizon's 3g, because it was faster than the office internet
Ok, I do have ONE regret about my switch: a unified mailbox. There's probably one in the android market...hmmm brb!
If you find one, let me know. I am a long time BlackBerry user, and would love an Android phone but it's just not as tightly wound as the BB platform is, especially with the messaging boxes as you said. I love the ability to click "messages" and see anything that's gone on from IM to calls to emails, in one list. A phone needs to save me time first, and be a cool gadget second.
[[Citation Needed]]
An example of highlighting design over function.
Apple seems to get it right more often than not: the polish of their typical UI leads to better and/or more usable
software. Here the fancy case design proves to be a real Achille's heel and its hard to imagine how the decision
to adopt it passed muster.
The context that makes it more than another minor incident is Apple's attitude "we acknowledge no mistake".
I am reminded of the reports that there are 100's of irate 3G and 3GS owners who lost their wifi when they
installed one of Apple's system upgrades but have seen neither mea culpa's nor fixes from the company.
Think about it Steve.
I bet Apple would have seen this if all the beta testers did not have their phones in 3GS costumes.
The biggest problem with any Android phone is the terrible software it's saddled with. Some of the HTC devices look pretty nice, spec wise, but the OS on them is utter shit. And, no, openness doesn't make up for being shit.
Neither is prettiness but Apple seems to get away with it.
I can see a good class-action suit here (and I'm not a lawyer) to require that Apple send all iPhone 4 owners a bumper or case for their new phone that prevents the attenuation of the signal caused by holding the phone incorrectly. That is really the fix for this issue and, were the phone sold with one or packaged with one, this would be a non-issue.
Complete disclosure here: I own the original iPhone (limited to Edge Network) and am planning to upgrade as soon as I know if there will (or definitely won't) be any competition between telcos.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
They probably didn't bother with any engineers for it. I would guess that in their phones they normally use off-the-shelf antenna designs. So I could see that they have no need for an engineering department. Also, when it comes to antennas for cell signals, there are some pretty well established designs/rules to use.
So my bet is that the marketers started going wild. They figured it'd look at really cool if the phone was all glass, thin, with the antenna as a metal band running around it. That layout for antenna was generally ok, so a prototype was built. It was tested sitting on a desk, and worked fine. Things moved forward. However all testing was done in non-real circumstances, either sitting on a bench in a lab or using disguised prototypes, that didn't have the same structure as the final thing. Everything looked good, product launched, shit hit the fan.
At no time was an actual engineer in this area consulted.
I would say this is the most likely scenario. Not that there was some dumbass engineer that didn't know or whatever, but that there was NO engineer, that nobody with antenna design expertise was ever consulted. It was done because it looked cool, without proper thought given to all the functional constraints. A marketing decision, not an engineering one. Now, given the problems, they are hiring engineers to try and keep it from happening again.
Considering with subscription your iPhone costs like 7-800$ and that you can buy a rubber "bumper" case on ebay from china for like 1$ or 2$ bucks, you would think they would be just throwing those things at customers!
Of course they probably would view this as conceding that a problem actually exists...
This little quirk should go up and down the chain if it really did get out unnoticed. RF guys that designed this antenna config might have job security issues, but how about QA? Didn't they use the device at all? How about the PM? Or was everyone instructed to hold their iPhone a certain way as Apple mantra?
Brings several interesting thought scenarios, such as "We brought it to QA, they found the problem, but it was too late to modify the design so they had to go with what they had, but Apple won't add a free or discounted bumper becuase accessories are a lucrative business too". Doubt we'll ever know outside of seeing positions open and people leave (by their own will or otherwise)
Just curious.
That's one thing that is so cool about Apple they always get the resources in place to fix an issue. That's good management by Apple. Steve Jobs likes to keep the customers happy.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
As it happens we have a really good antenna engineer that works for the engineering department that I do tech support for. That's all he does, research wise, is play with antennas. He's got bigass systems that crunch through HFSS simulations 24/7.
Now I suspect he likes being a professor, he probably could make more money elsewhere. PhDs from his lab have been offered jobs at Intel and so on. However, like any researcher at our university, he's very interested in getting more grant money. Thus I'm quite sure if Apple called him up and said "Hey we are designing a new phone and need someone to do some antenna work for us," an agreement could be reached. Private industry funds work at the university all the time.
So even if it were impossible to hire engineers for this (it isn't, but let's just say) to work for you, the work could be contracted out.
Well, one thing that is missing from both android and iPhone : RSAP support...
Before anything else, they are PHONES... so, the most important part is what is PHONE-related :
- contact list
- good reception (big minus for iPhone 4)
- Bluetooth handless support : headset and car handless systems...
And RSAP is the protocols which is used in high quality handless car systems : the telephony system of the phone is shut down and the car uses RSAP to access the SIM card and has it's own (optimized for car use) phone system.
But RSAP support is quite unlikely on iPhone. Firstly it's a Nokia technology (remind, Apple didn't pay for some telephony-related nokia patents and sued Nokia over some (over-borad and software) patents. Then, Apple is trying to have it's own way of doing things... which rules out RSAP...
There has been a Google summer code project for RSAP on Android... Too bad it didn't get anything running... But this shows that there is some interrest to RSAP for android...
They had an engineer out in the field testing the antenna in real world situations... but he lost it in a German brew pub and it got sold to Gizmodo. I think you guys might have heard about that story. It made all the papers.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
This is a known problem, and there are known solutions. There are simulators which can simulate the RF properties of a cell phone in a hand: "Since the human hand has a significant effect on mobile phone antenna radiation or OTA performance, the study on the impact of a hand on the antenna performance is quickly growing in importance. SEMCAD-X provides a unique set of different hand phantoms (right and left) which are fully posable. The user can import the CAD file consisting of the fully-posable human hand, including skin, muscle and bones and then to change its grip to fit a mobile phone using powerful poser engine."
Deciding what hand poses to use, though, is up to the user of the program.
INTERVIEWER: "So you want the Antenna Engineer position?"
GUY: "Yes."
INTERVIEWER: "And you've heard what Stave jobs had to day on the subject?"
GUY: "That people with problems shouldn't hold their phone that way?"
INTERVIEWER: [winces] "Yeah, that. He didn't put it exactly that way. What -- what do you think about Mr. Jobs' response?"
GUY: "I don't agree."
INTERVIEWER: "What?"
GUY: "...with the, um, consumers who think that idea isn't correct." [smiles]
INTERVIEWER: "And what do you think would fix the problem?"
GUY: "I would show people the correct way to hold the phone?"
INTERVIEWER: [scribbles note on clipboard] "Thank you. You'll be hearing from us."
GUY LEAVES
INTERVIEWER: [picks up iPhone and dials] "Damn it" [adjusts grip] "This is Steve. We've interviewed one hundred engineers and ninety of them agree with Steve. Print the ad."
My iPhone 3G had little or no reception in lots of places (in supermarkets, in the middle nowhere, etc). I thought it was because of the crappy network, but then my iPhone got stolen and I bought a Milestone, which I use with the exact same subscription, and suddenly I do have excellent reception in all those places where I didn't have it before.
The network is still crappy (dropped calls or calls not arriving at all), but at least I now have a phone that works.
Pft, you're not checking hard enough! :)
Against the iPhone, my HTC Desire cannot:
The browsing is also pretty lousy on the Desire, which I'm surprised given that it is Google we are talking about. For example, the page sometimes scrolls down after loading, entering text into a text field can often give you two input boxes (a new one just randomly appears above the original one), sometimes the text field is selected but the keyboard doesn't appear until you tap it again.
I have plenty more :(
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Android has a superior notification system. On the other hand, Before Android 2.1, the iPhone had more home screens.
I also like the standard Android email clients more. And in fact, if I didn't, there'd be a good chance I could install a better email app from the marketplace. No such chance with the iPhone.
This "hold the phone this way" crap reminds me of the battle about 35 years ago when IBM was trying to compete against Brand X(erox) in the office copier market. IBM's first attempt looked like a lot of Selectric typewriter parts, but didn't work as well. The second attempt produced a copier which could do about two pages/minute, whereas Brand X was then doing about ten pages/minute. IBM salesmen were given a solution: Tell the customer "Our studies have shown that too many unnecessary copies are made on copiers that run faster that two pages/minute". IBM no longer makes copiers.
Life is tough. Life is even tougher when you're stupid.
Curious, why do you think rooting an iPhone voids the warranty, and rooting an Android device doesn't? While I'm sure there are some things you can do on Android without having to hack it, it seems like hacking is really popular so people must be dissatisfied with some of the restrictions.
I think that the "jailbreaking voids your warranty" stuff is Internet folklore for the most part. Unless you actually brick the device you can always do a restore anyway, and then how would they know it was once rooted?
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
My mom's Android phone came with one by default (Motorola Cliq) so I know they exist. Problem is, trying to guide her through finding the package would be impossible, and I'm not likely to see her for a couple of weeks.
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
There's a lot more at the anandtech.com article on this subject, and it's quite interesting. The iPhone 4 antenna design is, like many other designs, a question of trade-offs. It's not clear that a novice, or an idiot, designed this antenna system. In fact, actual testing seems to have indicated that it's an improvement in most ways over the previous iPhone.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
sheesh, i build loop antennas out of #12 stranded copper wire with mine that are resonant from 1.8 to 7.3 MHz, and another from 10 to 30 Mhz and talk all over the world on them,
after using loop antennas i wont use any other, clean and quiet (low noise on the Signal to Noise ratio) yet high enough gain that i can hear even S3 on the meter like it was a S20 on a dipole or inverted V.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I went back and read your OP again, and it still came off as iOS > Android, it was about the third look over when I went to copy/paste it here that I noticed what was in parens was meant to apply to the initial statement, and not as a reversal to openness applying to the quality.
Okay, this is where I look dumb - what on earth is the draw of the unified inbox? I have multiple mailboxes to keep things separate. What's the point of then jumbling them together?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
The primary difference is that you don't have to give up your warranty to do it on Android.
If you root it, then, yes, you do give up warranty (even for Nexus One). The upside is that you're legally in the clear, and the process itself is officially documented and won't suddenly go away.
On my Nexus One (running Eclaire right now), I can:
- Copy and paste within the mail app by pressing the menu button, and using the "Select Text" feature.
- Copy text messages with a long press onto the message, then "Copy Message Text"
- Browse anything I've tried so far. If you'll get me a link to your crashy MSDN page, I'll try it.
The whole smoothness aspect has made a lot of progress from 2.1 to 2.2. Before, animations and all did feel slightly sluggier than on an iPhone 3GS; running eclair everything is as smooth as it gets. Applications launch in what amounts to no wait time. Absolutely marvelous.
We all know about the option of Jailbreaking, but it's a really miserable experience on the iPhone. Apple keep bringing updates which you have to avoid, until you sure it's safe, iTunes compatibility keeps breaking, much of the software is neither reliable or even any good, and every useful jailbroken app seems to switch to trial and shareware models the second it gets popular.
Don't get me wrong, the iPhone is a really nice phone and you can do really neat things with it. But working around a manufacturer intent on stopping you results in a sytem that's far too kludgy and is nowhere near are flexible and as clean as the alternatives.
My phone's an HTC Hero, and I really wish it had foreign language text input to match what the iPhone has. I'm studying Japanese, and the text input methods and dictionary apps on my iPod Touch are lifesavers....that being said, I don't think the iPhone would be worth it (between AT&T's network, the cost of the plans, and the cloud of smug hanging around Apple products)
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
My guess is that:
Since they had COVERS on any beta phones outside the building (see old gizmodo coverage) and that one may cautiously put a case on the beta phones just in case they go somewhere THEN the testers were not touching the metal!
Also, CA has good coverage.
They didn't have an expert involved who would freak out over this issue is my theory.
Assumptions such as "everybody buys a cover for their phone" - if there was a person with the job, they likely were using their non-expert opinion to trump their own expertise; or their boss was... in which case, there should have been more issues over the years.
The engineering design decisions make sense; it is a lot like software - new features make new problems. New problems in new areas of expertise can create new job openings; they didn't have huge problems in the past and they have messed with WiFi problems in the past...
The simple fix is to put a case on the phone; or to spray some plastic coating over the outside of the metal. (which may wear off, but most people will buy a case or get a new phone before the plastic wears off enough to be a problem.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I've been accused of many things here on Slashdot but accused of being an Apple fanboy is certainly a first.
Living With a Nerd
Yes, I have jailbroken my iPhone 3g. Even when using a jailbroken iPhone, the android platform is STILL better. I was most impressed with the ability to install an app by scanning a barcode. How do you install custom apps on the iphone WITHOUT cydia?
What impressed me even more (and its sad that this is even an issue) is that I can sync my android phone with MULTIPLE computers.
iPhone synced with laptop and then plugging into desktop causes it to wipe clean? FUCK YOU APPLE!
Does it have an open market where you can obtain most things - or a similar version - for free, or publish your own software to its market without the draconian overview of Fuhrer Jobs and his minions?
No.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Quite clearly, the Android DIDN'T do what the GP want right out of the box, as evidenced by the overclocking, rooting, loading custom roms, etc. This is neither a hit against Android nor iPhone - practically every device needs some degree of customization to make it fit a particular user's needs.
I'm not sure where you're coming from on the jailbreaking-terminates-your-warranty thing either. The sequence of events goes like this: 1) jailbreak 2) discover problems 3) restore to factory settings 4) get warranty service 5) jailbreak again.
I agree that Apple's control freakery over the iPhone is a bad thing. But you certainly can achieve all the same geeky stuff on an iPhone that you can on Android, which requires only a jailbreak, and that's really not that hard.
What exactly do you mean by real-time audio?
I have a Moto Droid, and when I make a call, it's real-time. When I take voice recordings, it's real-time. When I listen to music, it's real-time. When I use programs with audio, it's real-time.
From your post it seems you think that Android somehow buffers your phone's audio and plays it late.
WTF? Are you the Apple police? What makes some comments funny and others "trolls"? How are you making that determination? So, the guy who quoted the "engineer interview" a few posts up is funny but this comment is bad?
You must have woken up on the right side of your iPhone this morning! sheesh.
I'm sure antenna engineers must have suggested something practical, but Jobs demanded that it be pretty and shiny. Probably engineers got fired because they were right!
Looks to me like they tested all of their phones with iphone 3 'covers' which prevent the user from touching the antenna.
Maybe Apple should ship these 'identity' masking 3g covers to all 4 users, which would make me happy as most upgraded to have folks see their shiny bit of unobtanium.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
The last requirement: * Detail oriented - taking data, using Excel, and making meaningful tables/graphs/averages. Wow, I'm glad you have to do in-depth analysis there.
Ok, I do have ONE regret about my switch: a unified mailbox. There's probably one in the android market..
Try K-9 mail. It's in the Android Market, and is open source.
Bonus: it supports IMAP IDLE, so you get push email rather than having to poll all the time. And multiple identities. And folder classes. And...
Welcome to the Apple Fanboy club!
Your mock turtleneck should be arriving soon. In the meantime, why not check out our newest iPhone, iPod and iPad accessories at the Apple Store?
Your friend,
Steve
I liked where it said "The candidate will be expected to performance radiation performance measurements". If the spell checker doesn't flag it, it must be OK!
Just junk food for thought...
Has anybody tried putting scotch tape around the edge of the device? Does it make a difference?
I use Simeji (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9cmA70cSiA) on Android for Japanese input, it works decently but I don't know how it compares to the iOS input methods.
-JP
So if Verizon truly does get a CDMA iPhone, and these antenna engineers do their job, Verizon gets the iPhone 4 that works and at&t customers will be up in arms touting faulty hardware and all hell breaks loose.
wonder what the referal fee is :-0
heh heh heh , 'the funny part is', I agree with you about separate mailboxes, I like having separate email which inherently sorts messages by context without me having to label it among the thousands of business related messages.
or their HR dept is rewording something (wouldn't be the first time). These guys are actually called RF engineers. At least they are in Telecom circles. It's like calling a software engineer a "Cobol" engineer.
Specifics? Last time I checked, there is nothing that the iPhone OS can do that Android can't do
It can't drop calls as often!
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
I do have ONE regret about my switch: a unified mailbox. There's probably one in the android market...hmmm brb!
Unified mailbox? The email on my Nexus One is my gmail account. Came that way out of the box. I can get to it from my phone or my computer seamlessly. I presume POP3 clients are available for any flavor of Android.
Or do you mean a combined email and voicemail box?
(from job description)
Hah!
Why are you even browsing an MSDN page on such a phone anyway?
Hell one dude has Linux running on the iphone. http://linuxoniphone.blogspot.com/
Bah, that's nothing! I got Linux running on my N900 ;-)
"I wonder if this is Apple's secrecy coming to bite them in the ass."
No, bars don't mix with secrecy!
Gizmodo bought a brand new _prototype_ from someone who found it in a bar's bathroom next to some rolled dollar bills and pocket mirrors.
Here was the Gizmodo scoop from some months ago http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HAXXs4bZuk
Apple need to kick quite a lot of asses. Who's up next?
Does it have an open market where you can obtain most things - or a similar version - for free, or publish your own software to its market without the draconian overview of Fuhrer Jobs and his minions?
No.
My point was a sarcastic, though true, oversimplification of the problem, talking from the perspective of Joe PlainGuy who wants his shiny plastic iDevice. He's not going to ask if there's an open market. He's not going to care that Apple sent SWAT teams after a guy who stumbled across an iPhone 4 prototype. He's not going to care about programmers or programming. He just wants this magic technodoohickey to make him look better and more stylish than his neighbors. That's the sort of person you're dealing with.
He's not going to ask for a similar shiny app. He's been conditioned to use the thing he's been using. He doesn't want "some sort of game like X". He wants "this one, specific, exact game X". The same way that there are people people who could easily and comfortably survive on GIMP's features but don't want "some sort of image editing tool" as an abstract general term, they want "Photoshop" as a concrete instance, hard stop.
The problem is simple: You're marketing to your fellow Silicon Valley geeks. You're marketing to the enlightened, educated, intelligent, productive, and, if I may say so, actually quite correct people who care about technology and the freedoms therein. Apple was smart enough to market to everyone else. They were smart enough to market to the flyover country you wished didn't exist because it hurts you to think about it. They got a much, much larger audience of incredibly stubborn and stupid people who, once they learn one thing one way, will utterly, steadfastly refuse to learn or consider something else unless something big — and I'm talking on the level of "shattering their personal worldview" big — comes along.
You can talk about openness and publishing your own software and Mr. Jobs's iron-fisted control of the world. Except that the sad, terrible truth is, the vast majority of Apple's users aren't software publishers, and quite frankly, it is wholly unfeasible for them to care any less about your ranting and raving when they could be using their shiny new toy The Almighty Lord Jobs told them to buy right now.
/me goes back to Android coding and using GIMP/Inkscape to get art done
That would be a nice argument if any of it had been true. You jailbreak once and from then on use a special tool to apply future updates. The jailbreak community usually has the tool updated within a day or two of each major release. Updates from Apple are released at the rate of two or three per year, are not mandatory, and have never broken compatibility with iTunes, at least not since the 3G when I got mine.
The better apps, like MyWi and Winterboard will NEVER be Apple official no matter how popular they are, so it absolutely is worth it.
Once again, not so much as a mention of this over on DF. But of course the other Apple-related story, which reflects positively upon the iPad, gets noted.
When the antenna issues first surfaced shortly after the iPhone 4 went on sale, the only articles DF linked to were explicit (or at most thinly-veiled) expressions of support -- for example, the piece written by the antenna designer saying that any cell phone's reception pattern gets affected by contact with the user's body. Having designed quite a few antennas myself, I can state with some authority that this statement is absolutely correct when taken literally -- but Gruber's not-so-subtle spin was naturally designed to suggest that the iPhone's antenna is no worse than any other phone, which is bullshit.
In designing the new phone, Apple could have chosen a more robust antenna configuration whose radiating elements would not normally come in direct (electrical) contact with the user's hand -- but this would have almost certainly come at the expense of size and aesthetics. Instead, Apple made a rather obvious design choice here of form over function. But of course Gruber won't ever say that.
With each passing day, DF becomes less and less about critical thinking on tech issues (with an Apple focus), and more and more a disingenuous extension of Apple's marketing department.
-Z
But they came up with the goods anyway:
http://gizmodo.com/5571171/iphone-4-loses-reception-when-you-hold-it-by-the-antenna-band
Would a gold finger improve my reception?
SVG. Big gaping hole in Android
...there is nothing that the iPhone OS can do that Android can't do...
Multitouch.
You know, I have not purchased or obtained one single app for my phone. It's not an iPhone. I use it as a phone and a text message here and there. And I sure if I got an iPhone I would still use it as a phone and only the features it came with. BFD whether or not I can only get the apps that I'm not going to get from Apple.
This same position was available 3 years ago, I was one of the candidates...So I doubt that Apple doesn't have antenna enginner's....
I really don't think that an exposed antenna that the user can touch is a poor choice.... this can be done, is only harder to design... and the antenna is already one of the most difficult parts to be desinged in a cellphone... everething in the phone, and a mean everything (battery, lcd, etc) is take in account in the design... so there is no isolated design
Probably the problem isn't the "touch" it self, the proximity of the finger should be sufficient to trigger the problem... this metal bend around the phone is anodized, so it is isolated..
As for what a have read, not all phones present this problem... maybe every one is pointing to the antenna engineer but the real problem is in the quality control.....
I've used lots of mobile phones, and they all have this problem. If you put your hand in the wrong place, signal quality is degraded. So, this isn't Apple's fault, or ATT's; it happens with other carriers, as well.
Next, we ask, "Does it really matter?" Personally, I vote no. Adjust your grip a little, use a case, whatever. If it's really that big of a problem for you, I'd recommend returning the phone.
In short: What's all the fuss about?
Welcome to the Apple Fanboy club! Your mock turtleneck should be arriving soon. In the meantime, why not check out our newest iPhone, iPod and iPad accessories at the Apple Store? Your friend, Steve
Your Lord and Master, Steve Fixed it for you
Yay me!
This is just a bump in the road for a very successful product. I don't see the iPhone loosing it's lead position any time soon. All you people going for schadenfreude are way off the mark. Apple will fix the problem in a reasonable fashion and move on. It is more of a PR screw up then anything else. Either they will come up with a firmware fix or they will give up and make the rubber bumpers available. Not a huge deal. (By the way I have a 2G dumb phone that I will use as long as possible, so I don't have a horse in this race.)
Why is Snark Required?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ObvgP4C-0Q
Run tool, put phone on cradle, click.
Holy Cow! they expect me to CLICK!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Just wondering what Apple was thinking? Or has been thinking? Or? Apple is today the owner of our building where (not far from Apple HQ) we used to have full environment to test these things, actually all kinds of radio "things" - I just hope they haven't taken it down, it was expensive as hell to build!
Heh - maybe they had some engineer from MS hired to design the antenna configuration. Not that MS doesn't have very bright people, they do - they just are trained not to think until told by some manager, something good might even come out and that would be bad! KIN, Pink, Red, Purple, whatever - both Apple and MS are going the way Motorola?
By advertising these jobs at a time when there is widespread media coverage of this issue they get these jobs advertised for free by the press and increase the chances of hiring the best engineer for the job.
/me wonders how many engineers reading Slashdot sent in their resume.
Some of us still have them. Grabbing them does not cause the TV image to drop out. Same with the antenna on my FM radio, which is also bare metal.
If the problem was really clear cut, every iPhone 4 would be experiencing the problem. They're not. This implies there is more to the issue than simply touching the antenna.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
When the Iphone loses signal when you hold it. That is something Android phones cant do.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
In Sweden there are many unemployed engineers with experience in mobile phone development, they have either been working for Ericsson, Nokia or both, as consultants or employees. They cost a fraction of US engineers and there is a lot of consulting firms in Sweden that has been working with mobile phone systems since the 70's. There is also a lot of mobile phone research going on at Swedish universities.
The iPhone is just a cheap imitation of neonode anyway, except you don't get greasy fingerprints on a neonode and it works without you having to pull off your gloves (the Swedish winters are cold). ;^)
First of all, let me state that I live in California. That said, years ago when I came to the state, I obtained a cell phone serviced by Pacific Bell Mobile. The service was good and the customer service was exceptional; no complaints from me. When it became Pacific Bell Wireless I didn't notice a change in service but the customer service was not as good as before. But then SBC got involved and called it Cingular. Now the customer service was awful, and the coverage was less than it was before. This is where I parted company with that outfit; one day I realized that I had no signal at my office and no signal at my home - there was a block or two along the way between home and office that had a usable signal but that was it.
When SBC renamed itself to AT&T, the transformation to suck was complete. They claim that the Iphone causes their dropped call problems; don't believe it. What's going on is that their system is not adequate to support the number of subscribers they have - when things get busy, calls get dropped. They're real good at making TV commercials, but they still haven't made any real effort to improve their infrastructure or their support - it's still guys in Dehli called "John" who take your support call and blow you off.
What I'd really like to see is for AT&T to be forced to prove their "covers 97% of America" claims. That claim is what is commonly called a "bald faced lie" and they know it. But that doesn't stop them from running those commercials as many times as they can afford.
Thanks for the information. I've tried pressing and holding in the GMail app when viewing a message and no pop-up window appears. Same with text messaging.
I don't have the MSDN page to hand but it sounds like some of HTC's "enhancements" to Android have been anything but :(
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
True. To every upside, there's probably a downside. HTC's keyboard is a great example: a lot better when it comes to entering numbers, worse when it comes to exotic umlauts or accents and it lacks the context-sensitive "Next"/"Done"/"Search"/":-)" key. The parts of Sense I'd really like to see on my Nexus One are the Phone App and mayhaps the calendar widget, the rest doesn't strike me as too useful.
On another note, Eclaire in GP should obviously be Eclair, and all instances of [Ee]clair should be FroYo. My bad.
Jailbreaking is the easy part. The hard part is finding high quality software.
And while it might be easy now, how do we know that Apple won't crack down on it big-time somewhere in the future and ruin all the years work for everyone who put time into jailbroken iPhones? Judging by heir history, we can't expect Apple to be too lenient here.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/07/02appleletter.html explanation