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Inside Apple's Anechoic Testing Chambers
As part of Apple's press conference on Friday, they mentioned their state-of-the-art testing facilities and released a brief video showing some of their anechoic chambers. They later invited journalists on a tour of the rooms and explained some of the experimentation process. Quoting:
"There are four stages. The first is a passive test to study the form factor of the device they want to create. The second stage is what Caballero calls the 'junk in the trunk' stage. Apple puts the wireless components inside of the form factor and puts them in these chambers. The third part involves studying the device in one of these chambers but with human or dummy subjects. And the fourth part is a field test, done in vans that drive around various cities monitoring the device's signal the entire time (both with real people and with dummies). ... The most interesting of these rooms was one that Caballero called 'Stargate.' Why? Because, well, it looks like it belongs in the movie/TV series Stargate. Inside this room, there's a giant ring that a human sits on a raised chair in the center of. This chair slowly rotates around as signals are passed around the entire outer circle. This creates a 360 degree test area. I was told this room is completely safe for humans. And people typically spend 40 minutes in there at a time for testing. By comparison, devices can stay in the other anechoic chambers for up to 24 hours at a time. ... We then went into a room that contained fake heads."
And nowhere do I read a description of the simulated conductive hands covering the antenna gap. Might they have failed to consider one key variable to test for?
"The most interesting of these rooms was one that Caballero called 'Stargate.' Why? Because, well, it looks like it belongs in the movie/TV series Stargate."
Stargate? More like Cerebro: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebro
That doesn't even look like it is real, it looks like the guy in the chair is sitting in the senate from Star Wars. Of course that post had to be written by MG Siegler.
I don't think it's a matter of saying "We're better than they are" as it is a matter of saying "before you accuse us of not testing, take a good look at our investment in testing facilities". Sure, the testing procedures may have been (probably were) flawed, but that's a separate issue from the rampant accusations of them not giving a shit.
Those fake heads may be for cellphone radiation tests http://nyti.ms/b0vioZ
A lot of oscilloscopes run Windows.
The iPhone 4 doesn't have any bug, it has a symbiote!
This reminds me of the Embedded Journalists traveling with the armed forces in Iraq.
The linked techcrunch article sure does have some pretty pictures, but it just makes it that much more sad that Apple missed something with their million-dollar test chambers that any left-handed person will notice in a day or two.
the iPhone 5
All for spin control. The real question is how good is this facility compared to other manufacturers. I'll bet Motorola has similar if not better facilities.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
If you believe there's an iPhone 6 in that testing chamber under a black cloak, then Gizmodo has a phone they want to sell you.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
I'd say a lot of instrumentation runs on Windows only.
Sad but true.
A little known feature of iphone 4 is that if you sit in the 'stargate' and have a finger bridging the 'gap' of the antennae, you are able to cross into an alternate dimension that can only be described as 'insanely great'. Take my word for it.
Nearly everything about how Apple has handled this has been wrong. From their disingenuous attempt to rebrand the problem "Antennagate" to stop the media from calling it the "Death Grip", to their feigned surprise that the iPhone signal bar calculation was heavily weighted to make the iPhone look like a strong performer.
Now they're showing off how much testing the phone went through, which seems indicate they knew it was glitchy from the start. Or did they? I mean after all, in one of the first reviews of the iPhone 4 before it was even released, Walt Mossberg said:
So the very first review picked up on it, but they didn't have an explanation? They said they waited to have a press conference because they wanted to do testing to determine the problem, but doesn't that undermine the point that you've done adequate testing? Why after their press conference, is it still so unclear if they knew whether skin connecting the antennas was a problem or not?
The really bizarre thing is I've had an iPhone 4 since day 1, I've seen the glitch and until I got a case it had been affecting my data connections, but I still really like this phone! Is Apple turning us all into battered wives?
Except it doesn't.
*sigh* The way the press has scented blood on this - there's nothing they like better than to tear down what they've built up. iPhones. Good machines, over-priced, sometimes innovative with a somewhat irritating and closed development model attached to them. Apple wasn't producing immaculate products from Heaven before, and they're not producing bricks from Satan's arse all of a sudden. Something got fucked up along the way this time, it'll get fixed. The hype and the derision in both directions is irritating to me. Maybe we can stop the rollercoaster and start treating Apple like any other company soon, please? I don't see constant stories about Nokia's phones (which are pretty nice, imho), for example.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
... no-one can hear you scream
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
many people do this!
I use my right hand for dialing, etc
but honestly, even right-handers hold the damn phone in their left hand most of the time...
In the anechoic chamber there is going to be one source of RF and there will be no reflections or other paths, only line of sight from antenna to antenna.
In the real world you are exposed to far more RF. From your cell phone, from the cell phone of everyone else in the neighborhood, from the microwave oven, from every monitor, cpu and everything else.
The real danger in an anechoic chamber is sanity. The non-reflective cones also absorb acoustics, which make the space a very strange aural experience, which can do funny things to your brain. For one you feel really, really alone, you can't even hear the echo of your own voice.
I'd be ironic if it did. But it doesn't.
> I don't think it's a matter of saying "We're better than they are" as it is a matter of saying "before you accuse us of not
> testing, take a good look at our investment in testing facilities".
I agree. They're trying to show what goes into this kind of testing. Engineers and technology people aren't going to be surprised by Apple's facilities (though it's cool to see the photos of the anechoic chambers), since other major mobile phone manufacturers will have similar facilities.
Apple's trying to show some of the ways that they control conditions while they're testing. Sitting in a Starbucks holding the phone in weird ways and watching the bars change isn't a good way to measure a problem since there is zero control of the fading conditions. The fact that they had a bug in their signal strength algorithm is bad, but one can't complain the problem happened because they weren't testing.
I think there's been a huge overreaction to the issue. However, what did Apple expect? One could argue there was a huge overreaction when the iPhone/iPad was announced (albeit, positive in those cases). This antenna thing just reminds Apple that the knife cuts both ways.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
'junk in the trunk'
I think they have just coined a new porn phrase.
the fourth part is a field test, done in vans...
... down by the river.
Now, as much as Apple annoys me, and they do enough that I stopped using my iPhone and got an HTC desire, I do feel compelled to point something out to you folks, most of whom are not in the wireless industry.
Apple, and to that extent, all wireless manufactures must perform TRP and TIS testing as laid out in the CTIA Test Plan for Mobile Station Over the Air Performance, which I think are currently at 2.2.2.
The thing is, OTA testing takes a long time and is actually a lot of money.
Please note, that for certification, a company can NOT perform this testing on their own. They must use a PTCRB test house, which is independent for what should be obvious reasons.
As I mentioned, the CTIA test plan looks at both TRP (Total radiated power) and TIS (total isotropic sensitivity) under a few conditions, which are head adjacent(left and right cheek) and free space. This is done in all bands and all modes. That's to say you test the 850 band in GSM. GPRS, EGPRS and UMTS(3g). Each band is tested in full on three channels, the low, mid and highest of the band. Then a single point offset method is applied to all intermediate channels relative to the 3 primary channels in both position and power level to save time.
This still takes a LONG time.
A GSM 850 L/M/H TRP in free space takes about 1 hour in a non stargate system (note almost no labs use this system since it uses power meters which have trouble to properly trigger a EGPRS pulse)
about the same for the same conditions in TIS.
UMTS though takes about 4 hours for the TIS.
Now, you take a phone like the iPhone and account for charge times and the like and you are looking at about 3 - 4 weeks of lab time since you can only use 1 phone!
I also assume that would be lots of cash in lab time. Granted, that's crackers to Apple.
The point is, all phones on a PTCRB network, to witch ATT is, MUST pass these requirements. This means that Apple had to have passes ALL requirements.
They did was they were required to do. It just goes to show what you can't catch everything with this testing, but given that it's a rare problem..you can catch most.
How the fuck could it be for show? Were they not having a PR problem regarding antennas right now, the inside of this facility would have remained secret. They haven't managed to build this testing facility in Cupertino in the last two weeks.
It wouldn't be much of a certification process if companies did the certification testing for their own phones themselves.
I can't watch the video because it's in quicktime and I'm on a linux machine, but it is true that a lot of instrumentation runs windows only. I had the opportunity a few years back to visit the manufacturer of some scientific microscopes. I asked them why in the world they were using such an unstable and complicated platform as windows XP to run their software when what you really wanted was something that was dedicated to running a microscope. E.g., we used to comment on how back in the days of dos, the software for these microscopes was actually better, because dos had few (no?) abstraction layers to the hardware and the software had direct control over the vesa bus cards that controlled the microscope and running that software was the ONLY thing that computer was doing. In the days of NT and XP, software glitches and lag time (e.g. screen updates, etc.) have gotten worse and I think some of that is due to the fact that a modern operating system has a lot of things going on in the background that interrupt the microscope software.
Anyhow, I brought up this problem with the manufacturer and told him that something like linux might be better since it's easier to have a more fined-grained control over which processes are running under what conditions. Their response was sort of typical, the engineers knew about this already and even had an alpha quality version of the software that ran on linux. The managers, on the other hand, couldn't even pronounce linux correctly and didn't even understand the problem. They said that if enough users ask for it, they'll do it. I guess the users don't ask.
I have noticed that on some of the non-production machines, such as the software controlling instrumentation at synchotrons, the software is running on some form of unix. So there's hope, but I think we're stuck with windows until the general user actually sees the benefit of a dedicated instrumentation OS over a perhaps ill-fitting, but familiar, OS. For those of us forced to use mission critical windows software, we still have a lot of computers that are forbidden to be plugged into the internet since obviously if just the OS is getting in the way, AV software would get in the way as well. It makes the validating the MS Genuine Advantage a fun experience when you don't have cell reception in a basement lab (nor land line) and no internet connection.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
As has been shown endless times while testing software, testing in controlled facilities often belies real life experiences.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Keeps getting beat cmon
I don't think it's a matter of saying "We're better than they are" as it is a matter of saying "before you accuse us of not testing, take a good look at our investment in testing facilities". Sure, the testing procedures may have been (probably were) flawed, but that's a separate issue from the rampant accusations of them not giving a shit.
Is it separate? If they have all these testing facilities and the testing procedure were in fact not flawed, then this problem is not caused by negligence but rather deliberate prioritization (i.e. time to market and/or development costs were more important). It other words, it would mean they really did not "give a shit".
I'm not certain boasting about their testing abilities is the rhetorically smartest thing to do at this moment.
“This lab used to be secret. Most people don’t know it exists,” Caballero told us. Dubbed the “Black Labs,” when I asked about the black cloaks, Caballero said that “we have a lot of other projects going on.”
Other secret projects? Alien research!!! That's how they stay ahead of the curve. I knew it!
It sounds like a newer version of the testing facilities we were using at HP 15 years ago.
But somehow, the real life testing using automated systems and real people both observing the data didn't catch the phones "signal strength software miscalculation" problem.
good job on the photography but these are pretty standard anechoic RF testing chambers. The only news worthy thing is that Apple is main-steam enough that people actually looked at these photos.
Any company doing serious RF development will either have their own and rent time in a dedicated testing facility.
Search google for "anechoic chamber" and you'll find hundreds of photos of such facilities.
The US Air Force has one big enough to park a C-130 in :)
The fact that they had a bug in their signal strength algorithm is bad, but one can't complain the problem happened because they weren't testing.
For the last time.. it was not a bug. A bug has unintentional consequences. What they were doing was intentional.
"His name was James Damore."
iPhone 4 is out. Some people have signal issues due to a design decision. Many people think it's the best phone they've had. Many people think it's the spawn of Satan. Apple held a press conference to give away a fix to the problem. Some people think the fix is ugly and doesn't do anything about the Satan problem. The End.
This flamewar has been pounding Slashdot for a long time, but since the lost/recovered prototype iPhone 4, it's been ridiculous. Every . Single . Day on Slashdot there has to be an Apple flamewar, and the Anti-Apple jokes now begin to bleed into other stories. Too much coverage, Slashdot. More physics, less phones. Leave the intensive, by-the-minute coverage of mobile phones to Gizmodo and Engadget.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
It's not my only choice at all. I can buy a Nokia which is what I did. I don't like the iPhone myself. I think it has a pretty good UI which is great for people who need that. But I'm currently writing software based on Postgres and I a simple UI isn't such a big selling point to me, I want value for money and a so long as the basic features I require are there (old Nokia 5800 in this case), then I'm happy.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Agreed, and its not the first time they royally fucked up.
Remember the Apple III?
After the Apple III disaster, Apple released *3* new Apple II models, each lone lasted longer in the market than the III did.
Sometimes you fuck up so bad that you cant go forward.
"His name was James Damore."
They choose to do it that way, and were very careful in the creation of that calculation. Even going as far as removing the utility to observe the actual signal strength.
Their calculation wasn't wrong. The error was in getting caught fudging their numbers.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
The tour was for show because it sidestepped the key points. That is,
I believe they knew about the issue early on. I further believe it's quite possible the engineers had intended to coat the antenna but Jobs didn't like the look of a coated antenna. When it came down to "what are we going to do about this?" the logic that prevailed was "It only affects a minority (left-handed customers) so we'll put the bumpers out there and charge extra. That'll address the problem and bump our ROI on the phone. Problem solved." They failed to anticipate how the decision would blow up in their face and since it's probably Jobs who made the call, it's taken this long for the rest of Apple to convince him he had to acknowledge the mistake.
It sounds like a newer version of the testing facilities we were using at HP 15 years ago.
Right. Those are common in the RF community. I used to work in a facility that made military RF gear, and they had some, including one big enough to hold a satellite.
The other alternative, incidentally, is to test outdoors in an RF-quiet area. Testing for FCC Part 15 RF noise output compliance is often done in a flat, open field, with the device sitting on a wooden turntable. The test gear is stationary, and the device is rotated to check if it's emitting something it shouldn't. For cell phone gear you have to test somewhere that doesn't have anything emitting on cell phnone frequencies, so you either have to test in an anechoic chamber or somewhere remote with no cell phone coverage.
Nice one...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
iPhone 4 is out. Some people have signal issues due to a design decision. Many people think it's the best phone they've had. Many people think it's the spawn of Satan. Apple held a press conference to give away a fix to the problem. Some people think the fix is ugly and doesn't do anything about the Satan problem. The End.
This flamewar has been pounding Slashdot for a long time, but since the lost/recovered prototype iPhone 4, it's been ridiculous. Every . Single . Day on Slashdot there has to be an Apple flamewar, and the Anti-Apple jokes now begin to bleed into other stories. Too much coverage, Slashdot. More physics, less phones. Leave the intensive, by-the-minute coverage of mobile phones to Gizmodo and Engadget.
Sorry, but your post really doesn't make it clear whether you are for or against the iPhone... How the hell are the Slashdot crowd supposed to mod that?
Just pick a side and start whining - you'll get the hang of it soon enough. They'll be another iPhone 4 submission tomorrow, so you can try again then.
"We then went into a room that contained fake heads."
Board meeting?
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
... industrial designers that did the iPhone case design and overruled the antenna/RF engineers, put them in the test chamber and turn the microwaves up to 'bake'.
It really doesn't matter how many fancy anechoic chambers you've got. If the art majors who spec the kewl stainless steel antenna have the last word, its a culture problem, not a technology problem.
Have gnu, will travel.
Steve Jobs said explicitly in his press conference that Apple's decision to use an external antenna was part of a design tradeoff to house the phone in a slim case while offering extended battery life. He even acknowledged that there are designs that would provide substantially improved reception, such as an antenna protruding from the case. So Apple tested the reception of the design, and found that no matter how you hold it, performance was similar or better to that of their previous phone, as independent testers have since found, and concluded that Apple's customers would be happy with the design. So far, the phone is selling quite well, and returns are lower than previous models in the line, suggesting that Apple's estimation of its customers' priorities is pretty accurate.
I'm not sure how that translates into not giving a shit.
Most right-handed people hold their phone in their left hand, because they use their right hand to dial. That requires more precision. After that you don't take it over to tour left hand because holding it to to your ear is easy, even with your left hand.
Apple wasn't producing immaculate products from Heaven before
Apple certainly isn't guilt free from raising expectations for their products. I mean, just look at the product page for the iPhone. "This changes everything. Again." After reading their marketing language, describing their products as "magical" and "revolutionary," when you realize the product is just another gizmo with associated gizmo flaws it's natural to be disenchanted and a little angry.
This is the inverse of the "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich" expression:
"They sell millions, so they must be great".
or...
"10,000,000 Elvis fans can't be wrong!"
You are welcome on my lawn.
Have you been living under a rock or something? That's what marketers do. When was the last time you saw an advertisement that wasn't 90% lies/misleading ? That said, these types of phones (not just the IPhone) really do feel like they've changed your life when you first get one.
The real danger in an anechoic chamber is sanity. The non-reflective cones also absorb acoustics, which make the space a very strange aural experience, which can do funny things to your brain. For one you feel really, really alone, you can't even hear the echo of your own voice.
Could this be the for-real Reality Distortion Field? I knew Microsoft was trying to get in on the process, but this just takes it all to new heights.
I can't watch the video because it's in quicktime and I'm on a linux machine...
Perhaps a case of PEBKAC? Install gecko-mediaplayer.
Cheers.
Yet Socrates himself is particularly missed.
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.
These things have been sold for over 10 years by the French company Satimo for the type of rapid antenna measurements that are needed when you're measuring in the presence of a human. Look at the website
http://www.satimo.com/content/products/sg-64
This is hardly a sign that Apple is modern, but rather they are following behind the antenna measurement industry,
D.
I can't watch the video because it's in quicktime and I'm on a linux machine
Why would that prevent you from watching a Quicktime video?
... and then they built the supercollider.
But somehow, the real life testing using automated systems and real people both observing the data didn't catch the phones "signal strength software miscalculation" problem.
Which bring us back to the fact that Engadget didn't see it on 2 out of 3 iPhone 4s either "P.P.S. Since some of you are asking, our review unit showed none of these issues.">
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
You are clearly making up a story that you'd really like to believe.
I'm glad you noticed the part where he said "I believe." His story is the most believable, considering what we know about Apple and their attitude toward design; not many companies have an executive design position. The alternative to his story is that no one at Apple, through all the design, engineering, and testing never encountered or fathomed the idea that touching an antenna would fuck with the signal. I personally find that hard to believe, but if it's true maybe I should send in my resume.
Many companies in many industries have a long term relationship with regulatory agencies (the FDA, the Underwriters Laboratory, etc.) and thus have accredited facilities to do their own certification testing. It always occurs with some amount of oversight by the outside agency. And it isn't something you can do as a newb to an industry, no matter how much $$$ you throw at it.
Apple is a newb to the RF design industry, BTW. Companies like Motorola have had FCC certified products for many decades.
This whole thing is a storm in a teacup as far as I see. Apparently in some situations iphone4 is marginally worse than 3 GS and in other situations it is better than 3 GS. And nobody has proven that overall it is any worse or better than Nokia or Blackberry or whoever at actually holding a call. Until someone shows that, there is no story here. None at all.
I tried mine with a piece of packing tape, and the phone still showed a 2-3 bar drop when cradled properly (or improperly). I'm going to re-try it with some (known non-conductive) kapton tape as soon as I figure out where I left it, but I'm not confident it will work any better.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
their bias monkeys.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
The "executive design position" has brought Apple from near bankruptcy to being the tech company with the largest market capitalisation in the world over the last 13 years. They design by far the best electronic consumer products on the market, the ones that ever competitor tries to emulate. That's because the top leadership believes good design is a top priority.
The hard core slashdot readership hates Apple because they see them as both successful and non-open - a combination they hate to see. The better Apple are the more it invalidates their open is best philosophy.
would agree. I'm one of them. I have absolutely no issues; in the naked "death grip" I lose a bar and still hold calls, even in the middle of my house where my iPhone 3GS and my wife's Centro show no signal. Not a single dropped call yet. Nearly 2GB of data use already for the month on 3G. Live in NYC, where AT&T is supposedly horrible. And what's more, after playing with the "death grip" for about 5 minutes on the first day and finding it to be unimportant to my usage patterns, I immediately put the phone in a case (as most smartphone owners do) to protect my investment and keep it like new for eventual resale.
What's more, the battery life on the iPhone 4 is mind-blowing for smartpones/supersmartphones, I don't think I've seen another that comes close. I get 2-3 days of heavy use out of it between charges.
Yes, I grant that if you touch the bare frame in one spot, you'll lose some amount of signal. But for me at least, it's the best smartphone (or phone) I've owned, and even with that spot touched generally outperforms them signal-wise.
But if you say any of this anywhere or to anyone right now, people ridicule you as being mindless. The anti-Apple storm has created the impression that the device doesn't work at all. People say things like "what good is a phone if you can't make a call" and suggest that iPhone 4 users are so stupid they've actually paid for a device that simply doesn't work so that they can be seen holding it. It's mind-numbingly silly. And yet that's the level of discourse going on here and elsewhere.
And it's a shame because it's a damn good phone. I think most people (even Android enthusiasts) that actually used one for an hour would come away thinking it was right up there at the top of the heap, competitive with the best from any manufacturer and probably ahead of the game in general.
But again, say that and you're immediately a mindless fanboi whose mind has been vaporized by Steve's reality distortion field.
Too bad because there will be people that won't seriously consider it that it would serve very well, and that would enjoy it very much, and they may select alternate and less-well-suited products as a result simply because they didn't even consider the 4 after the national press about this design choice/supposed issue.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The linked techcrunch article sure does have some pretty pictures
Exactly, which is rather ironic given that the article states:
Basically, they’re rooms where no waves (sound or electromagnetic) can reflect off of anything
Clearly EM waves with a wavelength ~475nm seem to have no trouble being reflected.
...to their feigned surprise [apple.com] that the iPhone signal bar calculation was heavily weighted to make the iPhone look like a strong performer.
Why would they do this deliberately - it makes no sense. The iPhone has been getting grief as a phone because it kept having reception issues. Far better to calculate the bars properly and then have customers blame the mobile provider instead of the phone manufacturer....at least if you are that phone manufacturer!
It might have helped if they had not tried to sell bumpers for $30 as a fix.
Apple products are now mainstream, and not just for rabid fanboys anymore.
Strange that no press has been given to the updating to iOS4 resulting in many 3g, 3gs and touch owners losing functionality of the apple supplied head set and it's controls. It's happened on my 3gs and a friends, not to mention 2 others I know with iPod touches.
WOW! I'd say if you have to go back THIRTY YEARS to find another example, then they OBVIOUSLY are doing pretty damn good!
Huh? I gave a single example which I am most familiar with. Did you want others? The iPhone was not apples first cell phone. The first one was a tremendous failure, due to design issues it did not "just work."
BTW, the problems with the /// were NOT engineering-related. The problem was the state-of-the-art of PC board manufacturing, which couldn't deal with the density of the Apple ///'s PCB.
umm.. that IS an engineering issue. There will come a time when phone reception will not be significantly adversely effected from a humans grip, at which time that does not change the iPhones current issue as being an engineering one.
"His name was James Damore."
Ok, but despite aesthetically impressive testing facilities...what good did any of this do? No offense to apple but my iPhone is about as good as any other wireless device I've used. I have literally never been in a scenario where it's wireless worked and everything else didn't. There are a few low signal and outright dead areas on my train ride home. You can pretty much watch Blackberry users and iPhone users like groan as their access gets killed. So yes, Apple I'm glad you spent $X on testing equipment and I'll even give you the benefit of the doubt that you used it in the new iPhone but doesn't it seem like you could have achieved a better result by simply increasing the number of field test units/areas? Assuming the problems people are reporting are real, it sure didn't take long to show up. I even understand that you can't cover every usage case but at least I'd like to hear what it is you missed and how you are addressing it.
Also if this is a PR move I'm not so sure it's a good one. Sure the surrealistic test labs will have the fanboys drooling but if the idea is we do awesome testing if the implication isn't "Other people don't" - and considering that nobody else is having quite this problem it casts some doubts of the utility of replicating movie sets for test labs.
Nice way to draw a conclusion that doesn't follow from the facts as you present them. Just because they are successful doesn't mean they are good (which happens to be quite ill defined as far as technology goes).
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
.... In theory, practice is the same as theory... in practice its not?
"This is my Sig. there are many like it but this one is mine."
So the iPhone antenna is goa'uld technology, but the dissappearing signal would be the Nox.
For crying out loud, this is a giant exercise in hand waving. Did you even read the article, test labs do not look like that, they look like normal labs with specific cellular testing equipment, the tester is normally watching the output of the equipment, not sitting in some giant foam room with a big ring in it. The whole thing looked like Charlie and the Phone Testing Lab.
Apple outsource their entire testing and QA, probably to the same people who manufacture these devices. Even FCC approval was done by someone else.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
In you long winded and utterly useless rant you seemed to have missed something an apprentice electrician could spot.
The problem is Electrical Length. Electrical length dictates what frequencies an antenna can receive and transmit. When you touch a naked antenna you become part of that antenna and change the electrical length. This causes the antenna to pick up the correct frequency as noise or at least very noisy. This is the Iphones problem. As for dealing with noise and EM interference, that is so far beyond electrical length it's not funny. Apple failed basic electrical engineering and you are trying to convince us that other manufactures are having the same problem as Apple, Apple is nowhere near the likes of RIM, Nokia and HTC in dealing with EM interference because they couldn't even manage to grasp that the human hand changes the electrical length of the aerial.
This is very simple science, please stop trying obfuscate it. The problem is with the antenna being external, not with the human hand. Most phones deal with the human hand and lose less then 10% of the signal strength but due to the fact that the hand is not in contact with the aerial (I.E. the aerial is insulated) it does not change the frequencies the aerial receives and transmits. Further more if you even bothered to read some of the links you posted, you'll notice that the closer you get to a tower, the less a hand interferes with a signal (% wise), this is not true with an Iphone.
So please as you so eloquently put it, stop the bullshit.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Yeah, granted. Apple certainly do their darnest to promote themselves. And although the other respondent above is correct to say everyone else does too, it's hard not to concede that Apple do a better job of it than anyone else.
But I guess I just don't buy into the hype and I wonder why other people do, too. If you check out my post, you'll see that it's not directed against Apple for hyping themselves up, but against the press. It's the press that run endless stories about Apple's highs and then, with great relish, start running stories about its lows. My point is that it is hype both ways and papers, IT sites and everyone else should just stop buying into it. Nokia still have far more of the phone market than Apple. Blackberry's still have more of the phone market than Apple. Do we see three weeks of stories about Blackberry upgrading their O/S or releasing a new model? I suspect Apple have one of the most developed marketing machines we've yet seen - sort of the Paris Hilton of the electronics world. We've no idea what actually makes them so special, but they seem to be discussed merely because they're discussed. (No offense to Paris if she reads
Good phones, over-priced, some innovations, some dubious limitations. What irritates is the hype and the media share blame for that, it's not just because Apple say: "Hey - our phone is great!"
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
You mean the article that says this in the second sentence: If Apple really wanted to silence critics, they have a place to do so. I've now seen it with my own eyes. Inside Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, CA, there are a collection of rooms that house 17 giant anechoic chambers.
So we have the word of multiple tech journalists who have taken a tour of Apple's test facilities at Cupertino, versus the opinion pulled out of your ass. The opinion that mobile phone testing facilities don't include anechoic chambers that look like that from someone who's never seen a mobile phone testing facility before.
Meanwhile not a single engineer who works in a competitors mobile phone testing facility is casting any doubts.
You may well be the most ignorant poster on slashdot.
No doubt in photography you mistake the model for the photographer too.
Nice way to draw a conclusion that doesn't follow from the facts as you present them. Just because they are successful doesn't mean they are good (which happens to be quite ill defined as far as technology goes).
Nice way to derail his frantic fanboi wank with a logic lesson, you cock-blocking hater you. ;)
Perhaps the signal manages to maintain its strength, if an RDF is also enveloping the user?
I'll remember that argument next time people are criticising Microsoft.
(For comparison, I believe Nokia sell on average over a million phones every single day.)
Confimed my arse. A blackberry perhaps can maybe sometimes drop signal when you wrap your entire hand around it.
Look at the picture - hardly "wrapped your entire hand around it".
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
You aren't kidding about that. I used to have to test WiFi gear in a chamber like this for hours at a time. I wouldn't say that being in there was anything that would drive you nuts unless you were in there for weeks or months, but it was creepy.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.