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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.
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
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.
...Putting the horse behind the cart?
It's a perfectly good solution if you're headed downhill.
So how likely was it that someone in marketing thought it would be "cool design" to have a visible antenna on the outside of the unit?
From the Customer Handbook:
1. So you say there is a problem if I hold the phone the wrong way? (wait for response). Please show me the correct way.
2. That seems very impractical and uncomfortable. I'm liable to get hand cramps. Is it true you have a rubber bumper that will fix the problem?
3. Well since we've established the phone is defective, and this rubber bumper fixes the problem, then it should be free. So I'll give you a choice: Either give me a full refund for my phone, or fix the problem at no charge. Pick one. Or else I and a million other customers will drag you into court, and make your life a living hell.
4. Remember:
There's no excuse for corporations to Steal money from customers with inferior or defective products. The customer is not always right, but in most cases the Consumer Protection Laws are on your side. Previous corporations that challenged the U.S. Government typically lost, and the customers received refunds or free fixes.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I doubt if Apple can afford that kind of engineering.
Tens of billions of dollars of cash-on-hand and they can't afford a few engineers with six-figure salaries. Sure.
Uh, isn't this credit card fraud?
I suppose, if you had to pick *any* industry or group of companies larger than Apple to piss off, that would be a good one. However, I don't think it will end well for you if you give it a try.
You mean like Steve Jobs? Very likely.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Yes, because committing fraud is a reasonable response. How about you just return the damn phone.
.
Because that piece of metal is only useful as an antenna when someone's not grabbing hold of it. Even close counts when it comes to RF (try walking around an FM radio with marginal reception), but grabbing the thing with your hand is going to *wreck* it. Apparently Steve wanted too much for it to look like a Leica camera (whose stainless steel bodies were, surprisingly, *not* doubling as antennas) and too little for it to work in every possible situation (like being held by a sweaty person.)
This is only reasonable engineering if function follows form. I try not to bash apple, I really do, but in this case it's painfully obvious what they are after when they "engineered" this thing.
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
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
>>>Your fault for not keeping copies of your timecards.
No not my fault. A woman does not deserve to be raped just because she wore a skimpy black dress, and neither did I deserve to be unpaid just because I didn't print my timecard. Don't blame the victim when it is the criminal/corporation that is at fault.
Besides I couldn't print the cards since no such function existed. (Even the prnt scrn button did nothing.)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Jobs said let there be the iPhone 4 and there was the iPhone 4 and Jobs saw the iPhone 4 and said it was good. Then he sent them forth to multiply.
But he never actually held it and made a call with it. That was the problem.
You have metal around the case to bring the front and back pieces together. Why not make that piece of metal useful?
Sounds like reasonable engineering to me, except for the fact that it ended up introducing a new problem.
You don't design a billion dollar product based on what "seems reasonable". You design it based on the ideas of the best goddamn engineers you can find, and do exhaustive testing.
The problem at Apple is that the higher-ups get so entranced in design work that they might push too hard to make their engineers "deal with it". If an engineer told steve jobs "no, you can't do that", Jobs would probably fire him and find and engineer that said he could do it, even if that engineer was either just covering his ass, or was too optimistic.
And then they required all the testers to have covers on their phones to make it look like an iphone 3G, which masked the meat-to-antenna issue.
gizmodo posted a good article on the issue yesterday: http://gizmodo.com/5575412/apple-design-vs-apple-engineering
It is systematic, not accidental.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?