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An Unprecedented Look At Apple's "Black Labs"

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the where-the-magic/evil-happens dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Apple recently granted ABC Nightline unprecedented access to its secretive 'black labs' where it puts upcoming products through exhaustive testing."

8 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. This is going to be posted quite a bit. by Adaeniel · · Score: 5, Funny

    Apparently, their exhaustive testing doesn't actually include using the product.

  2. Apple's Black Labs: by not+already+in+use · · Score: 5, Funny

    Where Apple tests for flaws in other phones to justify the flaws in their own phones.

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    Similes are like metaphors
  3. For those of us not in the US and Hulu'd up.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq6sjH1W7hA

  4. ABC.. Disney.. Jobs.. by Dynamoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ABC is owned by Disney. Steve Jobs owns 138 million Disney shares or about $4.7bn worth of stock. Anyone else think it odd that Disney is running a puff piece for one of its major shareholders?

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    Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
  5. Re:Considering the stink about iPhone4 by Philip+K+Dickhead · · Score: 5, Funny

    Have you EVER tried to exhaust a Black Lab? I mean, your Golden Retriever may be something to talk about.

    But the Lab? They're indefatigable!

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    "Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
  6. Hey look, damage reduction! by kyz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wonder how much it costs to get your damage-limiting press release videos on to national television?

    Apple are the brand that never make any mistakes. EXCEPT WHEN THEY DO. But that's because everybody makes mistakes, not just Apple.

    It's important to know: all phones are susceptible to the "death grip"... it's just a tiny minor detail, not really worth mentioning, that the iPhone 4 "death grip" is "holding it normally in your left hand".

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    Does my bum look big in this?
    1. Re:Hey look, damage reduction! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's more than that: All antennae in the frequency bands used by cellphones will suffer some attenuation if your meaty hands are wrapped around them. You are absorbing a chunk of the radiation. This applies to all brands, and is why many cellphones have an area, or areas, they encourage you not to touch during use. Typically, phones are designed so that you won't tend to hold this part during routine use.

      On the iPhone 4, the antenna is external and does not have a dielectric coating. In addition to attenuating the signal with their meaty consumer-hands, the user can actually modify the performance characteristics of the antenna(for the worse); by being conductive enough to count as part of it, or by bridging the two sections.

      Apple has, naturally, been doing their best to conflate these two distinct antenna issues. All phones suffer from finger-meat signal attenuation. The iPhone is pretty much the only phone in the industry that has an exposed, externally conductive, antenna. Even the old-school designs with external pull-up antennas generally had those coated with plastic, and the user was hardly encouraged to hold the phone by a flexible extending antenna, rather than by the body.

    2. Re:Hey look, damage reduction! by kaiser423 · · Score: 5, Informative

      +1. Mod parent up. I think that the iPhone is a great phone, but as an RF engineer I'm tired of two people conflating the issue. The issue with the iPhone is that some RF engineer lost a fight and there's no conductive coating, so you effectively bridge two antennas if you happen to touch a specific spot. That's a totally different problem from the "my hand is absorbing the radiation and weakly coupling to the antenna" that all phones have.