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Chip Guru Papermaster Loses Signal At Apple
ColdWetDog writes "Computerworld reports that Mark Papermaster has left his job as Apple's Senior Vice President of Devices Hardware Engineering. He was the senior executive in charge of engineering for the iPhone 4 and thus responsible in some unknown fashion for 'antennagate.' His name may ring bells from previous coverage of his jump from IBM to Apple. From a brief blurb on Daring Fireball: 'From what I've heard, it's clear he was canned. Papermaster was a conspicuous absence at the Antennagate press conference. Inside Apple, he's "the guy responsible for the antenna" — that's a quote from a source back on July 23. (Another quote from the same source: "Apparently the antenna guys used to have a big chip on their shoulder. No more.")'" Update: 08/08 03:01 GMT by KD : Swapped out a registration-required NY Times link for a Computerworld one; corrected the direction of Papermaster's career move.
The fanbois haven't gotten the word yet because their antennas don't work.
They know it was an antenna problem, but the fanboys will believe whatever they claim.
Amusing side note, when I went to post the captcha was crucify
on the bright side, papermaster is a whiz at getting his resume looking good
"At one company, quality kind of matters when you drop something off at the consumer's front door"
Obviously not Apple or MS? What company are you talking about.
Why does every "scandal" now have -gate appended onto the end of it? It wasn't called "Watergate" because it was a scandal about water...
Except they did say it was software.
In fact, they said that the number of bars that were being displayed was wrong, and that was the cause of the death grip signal loss.
They've fired off so many excuses that it's perfectly understandable if people mix and match them a bit. They did at one point claim that the big signal drop was only an illusion caused by the software displaying too many bars in the first place. I think they mixed that with the "well everyone else has a problem too" gambit, at least for a while.
I just have to wonder what was in the conversation between Jobs and Papermaster.
If Papermaster is the true mastermind of antennagate, may the heavens have mercy on his soul... Jobs would be pissed .
Anyone?
Anyone?
didn't Apple go on the offensive to illustrate that ALL smart phones had an attenuation problem if held the right (wrong?) way? Then they fire someone for it. Basically their saying "yeah, we knew there was someone to blame for the design all along but we couldn't admit that publicly and force a recall...that would cost too much money. Lets lie instead, that costs less. We'll quietly shove him out the door when all the hoopla dies down." It can't both be everyone's and one persons problem at the same time. I call bullshit through deductive reasoning.
Make no mistake about it. The antenna was put where it is, on the outside because Jony Ive was in love with the design. Sure, Papermaster had to sign off on the design, but I assure you it's very difficult to say no to Jobs or Ive within Apple.
If Papermaster was indeed held responsible for a problem that stemmed from Jony (backed by Steve Jobs), then it's probably to his benefit that he is gone.
I would however agree with the idea that the antenna people have big chips on their shoulders. I'm not saying they never did anything right, but they think every one of them is better than nearly any person outside Reuben's group.
So I don't know where Gruber gets his info, but going by what I've seen he's only right about half the time so I wouldn't get too wrapped up in what he says.
Finally, I'll say this about the situation. I wouldn't read too much into this antenna stuff. There have been signs of trouble for a while. When the iPhone 4 was announced (before antennagate), you saw Bob Mansfield in the announcement but not Mark Papermaster. And no matter how much people outside the company may talk about the P.A. Semi group (which reported to Papermaster), virtually all the internal chip work was really stemming from Mansfield's group. I think it's likely Papermaster found his responsibilities had already been stripped away before the iPhone 4 launch, perhaps even before he showed up for his first day.
Are you claiming that the firing of a sacrificial lamb is somehow evidence of Apple's competence?
Actually they never said it was a software issue. They said it was a attenuation problem that all modern smart phones have.
Then they lied about that as well. Does the iPhone 4 and every other phone have attenuated signal to it when the hand blocks the signal yes.
The ADDITIONAL problem with the iPhone 4 is it detunes the antenna when you hold in in a certain spot. No other phone has that problem.
That's the real problem. Apple has tried to distract folks by both claiming at one point that it was a software problem, and then later by saying it's the same problem all other phones have.
Both are lies.
The publicity stunt of trying to equate their antenna problem with another (common) unrelated problem is clearly not working. And they know it.
The RDF signal losing strength? Something about grip of death and stars pehaps?
Most right handed people I know hold the phone with their left hand. It's so you can do something useful with your dominant hand while the other hand gets the easy task...
I just don't understand all these left handled jokes about the iPhone 4, and this was my last straw.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
That's kind of funny, and I realize you're joking.
But the truth is it wouldn't have made a difference. All of the field testing was done with the phones inside cases made to disguise the prototypes as 3G iPhones. Left or right handed wouldn't have mattered because the flaw wouldn't manifest inside the case. Apple's obsession with secrecy with the objective of generating hype is what bit them in the ass this time.
I think he's trying to. He also seems naive enough to think that upper management have anything to do with things like design details. I bet he got a gigantic payout as a recompense for taking the fall for Apple.
The guy who should be taking the fall is Jobs, for putting aethetics before technical considerations in the team's mindset, and then insulting the intelligence of his customers by claiming that a) it's their fault for holding it wrong and b) that all other smartphones suffer the same problem when their own previous iPhones didn't.
I hate printers.
Correction: he left IBM to work for Apple.
Actually they never said it was a software issue.
Apple has tried to distract folks by both claiming at one point that it was a software problem,
Make up your mind yo. PS they did say it was a software issue.
I hate to shuffle out that the Slashdot story writes in a sorta/kinda confirmation that it was indeed a firing based on a blogger's opinion on what happened. The opinion is extrapolated from observation (Papermaster wasn't at the press conference a few weeks back) and a dosage of common sense and logic about the firing.
Nothing states any observations that the termination might be linked to how Papermaster handled supervision of his engineers and the methods of field testing that lead to this loss of one of their prototypes to a third party (and eventually Gizmodo). I can't recall how Daring Fireball was linked to that debacle (or why Gruber didn't acknowledge that maybe Papermaster was held liable by Steve Jobs as well as his subordinate).
The first deduction of reasoning I saw when the story first broke was that his expertise is in chip design therefore he had nothing to do with the antenna... then it was reasoned that since he is the head of the mobile division, he has a responsibility to the design of the phone (makes more sense). I've never known Apple to really put forward their designs based solely on functionality. Johnny Ives wasn't at the Apple Antennagate news conference a few weeks ago... but no one blames him or expects a letter of resignation from him on Steve Job's desk the next morning. It was likely that he drew up the design for the product and told engineering that they were constrained to what was on his design papers down to the every angle and curve regardless of how functional it actually was.
When you get to the top and get that obscene salary, part of the job should be that you take a bullet when things screw up. In American, it is rare for any executive to suffer in the sightest fashion for big problems, even when it is their fault.Just look at Wall St. and the crash. No one got dinged.
You can bitch about Apple about a lot of things, but at least someone got the axe. There needs to be a lot more of that at the top level if American business is ever going to be honest or meaningful again.
Why is Snark Required?
There was a bug in the signal strength indicator, which made the attenuation look pretty dramatic if you were in a low-signal location.
If only there were some sort of optional operating mode, something that you could call a "field test" mode, or something like that. Such a mode could replace the worthless "bar" graph with a quantitative RSSI value in dBm, displayed at 1-dB precision, so iPhone owners could tell exactly how much loss Steve's magical new antenna was causing, and under what conditions.
Oh, wait. There is such a mode, capable of being enabled on virtually any GSM phone... and Apple disabled it for the very first time when the iPhone 4 shipped.
Move along, these aren't the excuses we're looking for...
What's the point of surrounding yourself with toadies, flunkies and yes-men if you can't throw them under the bus when you need to?
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
While I've got a fair bit of disdain for Apple, the iPhone 4 antenna seems novel and effective, albeit critically flawed. IMHO, the designers should be praised for generating a new and potentially useful idea, while the testers should be fired for not finding this flaw before release. Given Apple's strange punitive actions, I predict the next iPhone will have a very conventional antenna design, which keeps it from pulling ahead of the competition, while the same poor quality control allows some other issue to creep in.
What is wrong with the quality of Windows 7?
This all seems logical to me:
For me, this covers the whole issue and all of the information that has come out. Seems pretty straightforward and not all that sinister, but again, maybe I'm naive.
When taken as a whole it's not underhanded or inconsistent or anything like that. Then you look at the calendar of events in regards to their statements and you realize they're a bunch of elitist pricks trying to take everyone for a ride.
First they said there was nothing wrong with it and you were holding it wrong and if you had a problem stfu and go buy a bumper.
Then they said it was similar to other phones (it's not even close to the same but RDF Activate!)
Then they said it was a software error.
Then people started proving there was a problem and Apple had to have a press conference where Jobs lied his ass off or made completely misleading of fallacious comparisons and they said they would give people a free bumper.
Then they fired this guy.
(Note: I think the way Apple handled this issue is a much much bigger problem than the actual antenna design, which is honestly pretty minor in the grand scope of phone problems.)
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
"He was the senior executive in charge of engineering for the iPhone 4..."
And yet "and thus responsible in some unknown fashion for 'antennagate.'"
Umm, he was the senior executive in charge of engineering for the iPhone 4, that means it was his goddamned responsibility to ship something that worked and if it didn't*, its his ass.
That is the way it used to be in companies and at work, but for some reason when the "senior executive in charge of X" isn't responsible in the minds of many these days.
Look at Deepwater Horizon, no one at Halliburton, BP or Transocean was publicly canned for that mess. The CEO of BP was demoted and sent off the Russia, but that wasn't a firing or a forced resignation.
* - I'm not convinced antennagate is that big of an issue, I know six people with iPhone 4s and they are all happy with them, good PR nightmare and generates alot of pageviews though.
Papermaster left IBM for Apple. In fact, IBM sued to keep him, saying he had trade secrets that shouldn't be shared. Apple had to wait a few months to get him because of this suit. Ironic that after fighting to get him they're dumping him so soon. If he's the head honcho responsible for the antenna problem (assuming it exists) you have to applaud Apple for holding people responsible for their failures. Are you paying attention Microsoft?
The actual mistake was made by Jobs; trying to play down if not ridicule the customers' concerns.
Agree that was a mistake. And I haven't heard anybody claim that the stupidest "hold the phone differently" jobs email was not the real deal.
Instead of apologising, offer refunds,
I think you're confused? There WAS an offer of a full refund for anybody who wasn't happy (including all cell phone company fees)... Do you know of somebody who wasn't able to return an iPhone4 for a full refund?
Isn't that true? I don't have an iPhone4, but the Anandtech reviews certainly seemed to back up Apple's claims of what the bars meant and how they were affected by a dropping signal.
(Note: I think the way Apple handled this issue is a much much bigger problem than the actual antenna design, which is honestly pretty minor in the grand scope of phone problems.)
I have to disagree with the idea that the antenna of a telephone having issues is a minor problem.
It should be imperative that the antenna be absolutely as strong as possible, because it's a goddamned cell phone. The whole point of the thing is to make phone calls.
I'll grant you that the antenna issue was not as big as it appeared to be at first, but when you're spending $500+ for a phone, you expect to get the best reception possible. The antenna is not an area that should be skimped, and I do believe that it was Jobs' fault for pushing aesthetics over functionality, and leaving his engineering team stuck with having to make everything work given the aesthetics dreamt up by the art department.
The rest of your post I agree with. Not that any of this ever affected my decision to not buy an iPhone - Jobs turned me off of Apple a long, long time ago.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
I notice that you didn't show any evidence that my statement was incorrect, you merely bitched that Apple decided not to include the field test mode in the customer OS. Can you refute Anandtech's findings?
>Move along, these aren't the excuses we're looking for...
How very clever. Try again.
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Swapped out a registration-required NY Times link for a Computerworld one.
So one Steve has joined the other Steve, the one who - and that makes a difference - never shone with competence.
If you're referring to Wozniak, I'm going to take exception to your remark. I've never liked Jobs, not from day one. Anyone who "adores" Steve Jobs wasn't around back in the beginning, isn't aware of the arrogance and bungling the man exhibited early on. Once an asshole, always an asshole, and running Apple has NOT improved his demeanor nor his attitude, not one iota. Wozniak, on the other hand, was a rare spark of true genius. As someone who was very big in the Apple ][ development scene at one point, I must say Wozniak's work impressed me far more than anything Jobs did. Was the Woz a a businessman, a corporate leader? No, of course not: unlike Jobs though, he never pretended to be. But he was a hell of an engineer.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
>the Anandtech reviews certainly seemed to back up Apple's claims
Yes, they did, and so did these guys in Australia.
Speaking from my own anecdotal experience, I have a spot in my house, right in front of my fridge, where all of my previous phones (iPhone 3GS, original iPhone, and two Sony-Ericsson phones before that) would always drop the call if I walked into it. The iPhone 4G has no problem with it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I don't know what to believe and I don't have an iPhone to test. I just know that they did blame software at some point. I've lost track of whether that's part of the current explanation/excuse or if it's been superseded.
It does seem that whatever it is, the problem is substantially worse than for other phones.
"There isn't an antenna problem, there's an echo-chamber problem: lots of people in the press and the blogosphere are trolling for page hits, and they're much more likely to get them with a negative story than a "it works like it should" story."
That would be a plausible explanation except that the tech press has been promoting Apple products for years. Even when the problem was discovered the press felt compelled to include positive comments on the iPhone as part of their coverage of the problem. Perhaps if the press had treated the launch of this phone with the same level of coverage they use for other smartphones, Jobs' antenna bragging would have gone unnoticed.
"At one company, quality kind of matters when you drop something off at the consumer's front door" Obviously not Apple or MS? What company are you talking about.
State quality to back up your comment and lack of quality to back up your comment from Apple. Microsoft I can see. However, they sure as hell know how to make Mice.
Yep. But look at the subject. Wozniak was a genius.
Look at the subject. Mine is the other Steve.
What is wrong with the quality of Windows 7?
I haven't checked out Windows 7, but that Powershell crap they call terminal processes and shell scripting after having spent 20 years with various Ksh, Csh, Bash, Zsh, etc., I wanted to throw up when the most basic crap was like pulling teeth to mimic what I take for granted on UNIX systems.
So one Steve has joined the other Steve, the one who - and that makes a difference - never shone with competence.
If you're referring to Wozniak, I'm going to take exception to your remark. I've never liked Jobs, not from day one. Anyone who "adores" Steve Jobs wasn't around back in the beginning, isn't aware of the arrogance and bungling the man exhibited early on. Once an asshole, always an asshole, and running Apple has NOT improved his demeanor nor his attitude, not one iota. Wozniak, on the other hand, was a rare spark of true genius. As someone who was very big in the Apple ][ development scene at one point, I must say Wozniak's work impressed me far more than anything Jobs did. Was the Woz a a businessman, a corporate leader? No, of course not: unlike Jobs though, he never pretended to be. But he was a hell of an engineer.
Where were you within all the chaos? I've worked for him twice. Yourself?
Besides you being an obvious Apple fanboy, I read your other comment above about reviews.
So-called "Reviews" are nothing but ads, and have been for many years now. The only trustworthy source of reviews, Consumer Reports, threw Apple under the bus just as Apple have thrown their fall-guy under the bus.
No, I wasn't confused.
Maybe you were, because I wrote my lines in the context of 'apology'; not in the context of 'US American consumer rights'. As someone not living in the States, that makes a huge difference. Plus the psychological effect on the consumer, when you say 'irrespective of legal issues, we will refund at any moment what turned out to be an engineering error'.
If that's true, wouldn't it be more of a case design problem than an antenna or signal strength display issue?
Doesn't matter to me, I'm happy with my Blackberry. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
How the heck do you know this is what happened? It's the job of the engineering team to report to the CEO and let him know if a particular design decision would cause problems, and there's no evidence at all that Jobs was alerted to a problem and forced the design anyway (the single anonymously sourced article that claimed this was called bullshit at Apple's press conference).
On that note, why is it so many Slashdotters are obsessed with Steve Jobs lately? Every Apple discussion ends up referencing him now.
Sir, for finishing that sentence with an ellipses, you deserve everything you have coming to you.
Partly because he and the company's PR department seems to hold him single handedly responsible for everything the company does?
Or is it only the good things?
Oh, and I like how you totally ignore points a) and b).
You're extrapolating a lot of things they never said and completely making up some things. They never said "stfu."
What Apple has said all along was two things--that the bar display was making the signal loss appear more drastic than it was, and that the signal attenuation itself is suffered by every smartphone. There are countless YouTube videos illustrating this with non-Apple phones. Nobody "lied."
This guy leaving probably has more to do with how Apple mentioned that the design mistake they made was how the horizontal line on the side of the frame was like a bullseye telling users where to place their fingers. But I realize saying this is pointless because Apple-haters have taken over the site. It's been non-stop Apple bashing in the comments for months now, usually directed at Steve Jobs, as if he can hear them or cares. For crying out loud, the iPhone 4 gets signal in locations that the 3GS doesn't at all, but people are going to ignore that so they can take out their tired, predictable hatred toward a successful company that has given them Clang/LLVM, WebKit, and more.
They said that the bar display algorithm was making the signal loss appear more drastic than it was. When media outlets continued with the story and acted as if only the iPhone 4 had signal attenuation when gripped, Apple had to hold a press conference to point out, "Hey, this happens to every smartphone," which is true and something that journalists seemed to be completely ignoring so they could have a phony controversy over an anticipated device. It really was an exagerrated non-story that most people have already forgotten about.
The hatred is a little worse on Slashdot because of the ideologues around here who hate popular, shiny things and hate Steve Jobs because he doesn't back down on his positions when a few entitled morons whine at him via email.
If you recall, Steve Jobs brought this up at the press conference, mentioning that a design mistake they made with the phone was that the line on the frame was like a bullseye, drawing users' fingers to it. In that context, it's not surprising this guy is leaving Apple.
They're neither distractions nor lies. The bar display algorithm was making signal loss appear more dramatic than it was, and other smartphones do have this same attentuation problem, as countless YouTube videos can demonstrate for you if you do a simple search. Some phones even have stickers on the back indicating the areas you should not hold the phone so you don't experience signal loss.
That's probably the source of frustration at Apple and why they decide to hold the press conference. Journalists were acting as if this was a unique issue to the iPhone 4 and no other phone. Frankly, if this was such a huge issue, there would have been lines of people returning their iPhone 4s. That didn't happen. In fact, the iPhone saw a record usage increase in July, over twice that of Android and nullifying the recent story about the Android outselling the iPhone in the last six months, which didn't include iPhone 4 sales or take into account that customers were waiting for the new model.
Personally, I can't detune the iPhone 4 antenna with my hands. I suspect that, for most customers, this controversy only existed on tech blogs.
Jony puts the antenna on the outside. Then product design gets to try to make the best of it.
The problem with the antenna is you can easily touch it. And Jony's aesthetic was that the antenna would be on the outside.
You can say he should own even the antenna being on the outside, but if you do, you must never have tried to change the Jobs/Ive bloc's mind before. VP's don't get vetoes over Jobs' wishes. If he wants an antenna design that has inherent flaws in design (not just implementation) then he gets it. He is the boss.
Overheating laptops.
Less than usable mice (several times! the puck was just the beginning!)
Power supplies with cords so thin they break.
iPod shuffles that can't be used with 3rd party headphones because the design doesn't have any buttons on it.
iPhones with recessed headphone jacks that can't work with 3rd party headphones.
Mac Minis (and laptops, the first titaniums) with impaired wireless reception.
These problems are not the products of a company that lets those who have practical concerns alter an industrial design selected by Ive/Jobs in the ways necessary to correct their flaws. And you can't blame it all on Papermaster.
Note that I didn't make any claims to the validity (or not) of the blame, just noted that they DID blame a software problem.
It is noteworthy though that they are issuing a fix in the form of a retrofitted bumper.
How do you know he's taking the fall for anything? The article is 100% speculation with no facts backing it. Maybe he just wasn't a fit at Apple and decided to leave. But watch as the comments here automatically assume that correlation equals causation.
Why would he be fired over the antenna? Papermaster was supposedly brought in for chip design. IBM's lawsuit wasn't over Papermaster's knowledge of mobile phone antenna design. In fact, the iPhone 4 antenna design might have been in the pipeline before he even arrived at Apple. If he was responsible for the antenna, he wasn't in any of the iPhone 4 promotional videos to talk about it like the other engineers were.
I smell bullshit.
Re to your door
http://guides.macrumors.com/Twentieth_Anniversary_Macintosh
~"The $10,000 price tag also included delivery by a limousine and installation by a man wearing a tuxedo."
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Apple has been trying to spin this every which way possible.
Their first phase was just flat out denial. The iPhone didn't have any problems, they had no idea what you were whining about. Users were just being dumb about shit. Shut up and buy it. The second phase was claiming that this problem was well known, and applied to all phones. This was the one that accompanied a bunch of media blitz and their videos of other products, and drew ire from their competitors. Their third, quite phase, was to not admit they had a problem, but acknowledge they would try to make people happy by giving out bumpers for free. Now their fourth, mostly internal, phase seems to be blaming it on an individual, rather than a culture of arrogance or the individual at the top who might be responsible.
Basically this has just been a massive problem for them because they very much have a culture of not admitting wrong doing. They are always brilliant, everything they do is brilliant, and so on. They probably even believe that internally to a degree (companies often drink their own marketing coolaid pretty heavy). So they wanted to pass this off as not a problem, but people wouldn't let them, they kept hammering on it and presenting proof, as well as threatening lawsuits. Then they tried to spin it as something that was just a general problem, their design had nothing to do with it. Well their competitors weren't letting them get away with that. RIM in particular was extremely angry and might have filed suit. So now they've had to choice of if not to admit at least acknowledge they fucked up.
As happens in many organizations not used to admitting fault, there has to be a fall guy. The guy at the top can never be wrong, and clearly the whole organization can't be wrong. So one (or sometimes a few) person who was high enough to be important has to be blamed for the problems and get punished for it.
You see this happen in other places. Militaries it is pretty common. There's a major fuckup and the person at the top doesn't get punished, a mid level general does. There's no overall change of the organization and the top commanders take no responsibility, a fall guy is chosen and they internally pat themselves on the back for fixing the problem.
You apparently didn't watch the keynote where blow himself gushed about the clever integrated antenna/case design. It's one of those instances where they just couldn't get over how clever their 'design' was.
All dictatorial individuals can shape things on their own based on their irrepressible charisma.
Why you think that is a complement is a mystery to me, I thought most people have studied a bit of history in primary school.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
He has made himself the face of Apple, and actually he is the CEO, so for good or evil, any discussion about Apple will at the end gravitate towards what Jobs may be thinking or doing.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Are you implying that assholes can't be geniuses? I'm pretty sure the two things are not mutually exclusive. Jobs may be an asshole, but he's definitely also a genius. Your personal feelings of the guy (a guy you presumably don't even personally know, btw) have no bearing on the matter.
Woz is a hell of a smart guy, and it seems he's also a hell of a nice guy. But without Jobs, there would be no Apple. Without him returning to Apple in the 90s, there would be no iPod, no iPhone, and probably no Apple anymore, either.
In Windows 7 you STILL can't open a folder in the trash. Drag folder to trash. Realize you need one file out of that folder. In Windows 7 double clicking on the folder only brings up useless information such as "when you deleted this" and "where was this folder originally". OPEN THE ()@# FOLDER.
Apple OSes have done this since at least System 7 when I started using them. Pretty sure Gnome does it too.
Not sure how you got any of that from the multitude of Apple stories that have been going on everywhere.
Apple first said their customers where holding it wrong. People posted montage videos of Apple ads/commercials of people holding it in exactly the way that makes the phone drop calls.
Then Apple said that *an additional problem with the phone* was the cause of a perceived problem with the phone. Somehow these two problems were to cancel out and owners of the phone were supposed to feel better about this. All iphones have been misreporting their ability to perform their (arguably) primary function and this is being spun as a *solution* to the problem of dropped calls. Nice job, this problem just got swept under the rug, but people were still unable to make calls. The attenuation problem that they claimed all phones had was linked with this supposedly because the user was looking at a call barely connected and when the grip changed the position of the phone, the reception changed and a call was dropped. This was called normal.
It wasn't really until Consumer Reports came out with a real easy to follow video where they have the phone on and touch it in the corner and signal strength drops dramatically. No movement of the phone, very simple. Apple finally says, "Here is a free bumper to cover up the design factor we had told you to obsess over, we'd now like you to obsess over our generosity. We're still not going to really admit a problem."
Some guy gets fired, apparently getting to be the first guy to take credit for something while Jobs is in charge.
t
a libertarian govt will also leave me alone when BP is planning on drilling near my home.
How do you feel about the way your federal government interfered with local efforts to cope with the spill?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I doubt we'll ever find out the truth here about Papermaster... But FWIW, I have absolutely no reception issues with my iPhone 4. If I hold it the "wrong" way, without a case which I never do naturally, I loose one bar a most. It gets much better reception than my iPhone 3g ever did! ...That, coupled with iPhone 4s still being sold out.. everywhere.. means Apple really came out of this whole mess just fine!
appleguru.org
It still sucks on win 7 too. You can't do simple things such as piping output and tabbing a file name is horrible compared to mac and linux. Looks like they're making efforts to rip off unix though. User accounts are now in C:\users\ and they're trying to separate data from the programs running with it.
If you're referring to Wozniak, I'm going to take exception to your remark.
I just assumed he meant Ballmer.
You can't make decent folder thumbnails like in XP. If you choose an image Windows puts it inside an open folder icon, at an angle, destroying the purpose (fast visual recognition of the folder's content).
Purely a case of form over function.
Dilbert RSS feed
"I used to adore (fill in name of individual or company)"
Hmmm. I'm glad you're over that. And, I hope you don't catch it again. Remember, every dumb sumbitch you MIGHT adore or idolize gets warts and pimples, farts, belches, and generally screws things up from time to time. Not only that, but the DUMBEST sumbitch you've ever wished that you hadn't met could have taught you SOMETHING, if you had only listened to him.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Alright, Bob - please elucidate. What exactly is an attenuation problem, if it's not related to the antenna? Where to all the dB come from? How are they "attenuated"? I'm not a real genius when it comes to radio propagation - but I've messed with a few radios. Some powerful, some not so powerful. Everything ALWAYS comes back to the antenna. I can hook up a 1000 watt kicker to a radio, and do nothing more than get some wires hot if I have a shitty antenna. With an exceptionally good antenna, I can take a cheap, nearly worthless citizen's band radio, and talk halfway across the country.
Let's remember that your cell phone relies on radio waves, after all. I can put a variety of portable radio sets on a coffee table in an empty room, and have you walk around the radio. There will be points where the signal is "attenuated" as you walk past, and other points where the signal seems to be blocked as you walk by. It seems to me that Apple put THIS antenna exactly where the proximity of human flesh would damage reception the most.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Wait a minute, wasn't Steve Jobs the guy who's alway testing it and sending it back and forth until he thinks it is OK?
So if the antenna sucks, then why did Steve Jobs approve it then?
I guess Steve was a bit angry and just took it out on the guy who designed the antenna. Good for him, though; now he can get a real Job.
Here be signatures
What you say?
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
I should point out that most GSM phone manufacturers now make it very difficult to enable Field Test mode -- to the point of even removing the functionality from phones. Nokia is one example of a GSM phone manufacturer that has done so. So your claim that field test is "enabled on virtually any GSM phone" is false. I should know as I used to be a field testing geek until I could not longer purchase a suitable GSM/UMTS phone to do field testing with.
While he does still receive a paycheck from Apple, Wozniak hasn't actually worked for Apple since 1987.
Except that's not true. Every smartphone loses signal if you cover the antenna portion significantly. However, the iPhone4 problem is of a totally different nature: it loses signal considerably if you simply touch a specific portion of the outer edge, creating a galvanic connection between the GSM antenna and what likely is the ground side of the WiFi antenna. No other smartphone on the planet loses reception considerably when you touch a specific spot of the case with a finger.
C'mon, seriously guys... They hired additional "antenna engineers" at Apple shortly after the incident. Having the lead engineer leave, is as the article states, not very likely related. But it's good PR for Apple, not so much for Papermaster if they play it out as the stroman.
In a large organisation like that it's not just "one's" responsability intermediate processes and prioritylitst. For such a slipup you wont likely "point at someone and fire them" unless if it's a PR-stunt to clear the brands name in public.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
a) They released Vista first (should never have been released)
b) LOADs of minor niggles and things that are now *worse* than XP, especially in Windows Explorer - the front end to the files, the most important thing in the machine and the only thing an OS should do really well.
I'd make a list but I can't be bothered and there's probably hundreds of web pages dedicated to it.
c) What exactly makes it better then XP? Where exactly is the "wow!"? The only things I can think of are a slightly better taskbar with previews and the ability to type in the 'start' menu. Everything else seems like a pointless renaming and reshuffling. Is that it? Billions of dollars and eight years spent for that...? I'm looking around at all my collection of now-useless hardware and wondering if it was really worth it.
The only reason I upgraded was I needed 64-bits to work with some big files. Apart from that I'm not the slightest bit more productive with Windows 7 then I was with XP.
No sig today...
This is your big problem with Windows 7? Really? I actually like the ability to customize how much goes in the recycle bin before it deletes things (Or how long things stay in the recycle bin before they get purged). I think Microsoft did a better job than apple on that. But that's just me (I'm typing this from my macbook by the way).
This is an interesting discussion, but I just realized something:
You know how you can tell there's an Apple fanboy in the house? When an article about some trouble at Apple suddenly sprouts a discussion of Windows 7.
I'm not saying you're a fanboy, but I bet you can find this kind of topic switcheroo in every single comment section of any article about Apple that has even the slightest negative tone.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Hahaha, nobody buys an iPhone for the phone. Are you stuck in the mid 90s?
And I resent having to buy Apple hardware if I want to run OSX.
Oh, and if you do buy some "PC except Apple's" I bet a few people here on Slashdot could recommend operating systems besides Win7 you could run on it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This is one typical example: Coast Guard halts Jindal's DIY Gulf of Mexico oil spill cleanup crew.
There was also Obama's refusal to waive the Jones act due to union pressure, and many other examples of federal idiocy getting in the way of the cleanup. Not to mention, the blatantly illegal attempts to keep the press from getting photos and video of the damage and the cleanup efforts.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I know people like to hate (and love Apple) on here but I have yet to read a comment pointing out that the iPhone 4 has fewer dropped calls than previous iPhones. It holds onto low signals better than previous iPhones (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3821/iphone-4-redux-analyzing-apples-ios-41-signal-fix/2). There is the bridging effect that can kill the signal if it is low but if you look at the early reports, very few people are complaining about this. It only happens in certain situations and with a specific hold.
Ceteris paribus (all things being equal), the iPhone 4 antenna is better than any previous iPhone's (and better than more other smartphones if you look at the comparisons).
Hate to burst your bubble, but the Samsung Galaxy S has exactly the same problem: a single touch to the bottom right of the handset will reduce the reported signal from five bars to one. Shame really, as that's the only problem I've had with this excellent smartphone.
cat:
Or maybe the difference between Apple and IBM products...
how long until
The proper response if you don't know is "We don't know if this is an issue, we are investigating if there are any truth to the claims."
As for the videos, well they were an attempt at disinformation. See there are two issues that affect the iPhone 4:
1) Signal attenuation due to hands being near it. This is the case with ALL phones. You interfere with the signal a bit by holding it. However, even in the very worst case, if you wrap two hands around it, you get maybe 10dB of attenuation. Over all it isn't a real problem.
2) Signal attenuation due to detuning the antenna. When you hold the iPhone such as to bridge the gap between the two parts of the antenna, that changes its characteristics and detunes it. This causes fairly large signal attenuation, as much as 20dB (and remember dB is logarithmic). This does not affect other phones as they don't have their antennas where you can make physical, and thus electrical, contact.
They deliberately attempted to conflate the issues and make it look like everyone had the same problem, which they didn't and hence the strong response from RIM.
Also trying to pretend like nobody would know this might happen is stupid. One of our professors at work had me grab a video of the problem to use at a presentation. Why? Because she's been researching the problem of detuning of antennas like this for 4 years and this is a good demonstration of it happening. However, as often happens with Apple, form took precedence over function and marketing won the day. It just came back to bite them. Same general thing as all the 18 month timecapsule failures. They demanded the PSU go inside which left too much heat in the unit, causing it to fail early. However marketing wanted it slick and that's what happened.
Apple made a mistake, and they've been scrabbling around with it ever since. You are correct that I don't know his firing is related, but it seems likely.
Papermaster wasn't a chip-freak, he was an executive over chip-freaks. His responsibilities in both worlds were probably sufficiently abstract so as not to matter much.
He may not have personally designed the antenna, but it doesn't mean he had no responsibility (or that the grunt-level engineer didn't get fired long ago without a lot of coverage). It could have very well been the case that Apple's test organization noted this problem, and making the call as to do something or not went to Papermaster. I don't know if other Apple execs would have made the same call and he just happened to be in the wrong place, or if he brought some sort of mentality where development gets the benefit of the doubt when they downplay the importance of a problem and/or describe a 'reasonable' workaround.
It's all speculation, but there are plenty of scenarios where Papermaster has a hand in the problem. Of course, I would say Steve Jobs himself did things that exacerbated a relatively minor issue into the debacle it became. The problem was minor, but Jobs denial and outright ridicule were what caused this to be a big problem. If Jobs had gotten quality, honest data, he could have immediately came out and said they recognized the issue, you can avoid it by holding it a different way for now, but we will soon have Apple stores ready to apply a fix to your phones, it would've been no problem. The fix could've been a cheap decal that essentially preserved the look and feel when applied correctly. Of course in a company like Apple, where the CEO's image/personality are central to their health, they throw other guys under the bus if they can preserve that CEO. It's an interesting relationship, Apple is nothing without Jobs, and Jobs is nothing without Apple (the days of NeXT demonstrated that fairly clearly).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
It's important to note that they didn't fire the guy that designed the antenna... they fired the guy that managed the guy that designed the antenna.
When a sacrificial person or people are fired, that doesn't accomplish shit. Rarely is a big screwup the result of one person doing something wrong. Usually it is because the whole system has a problem. So the correct answer is not to find a guy and go "Ahhh! It's all your fault or are so fired!" and them say "Ok see everything is good now, we are fixed!" That does nothing other than maybe for public image. The correct answer is to fix what is wrong with your corporate culture.
In the case of BP, it is a lax system to be sure. Good comparisons have been drawn to Exxon, who now has one of the very best safety records. Why is that? Because their corporate culture demands it. They have extensive requirements internally to keep everything safe and that don't give individuals the ability to sign off on being lax. Probably not surprisingly, this resulted from the Valdez disaster. They realized they were fucking up, looked at what needed to be fixed, and fixed the system.
In Apple's case firing some guy isn't what is needed, they need to change two things about their culture:
1) Letting marketing run the show. Form comes first at Apple. That is going to lead to problems, as it did here. Engineering has to have the final say if you are going to make sure your designs are solid. Form is always a consideration in consumer devices but it cannot trump functional requirements.
2) Believing everything they do is brilliant. This might be harder because they market themselves as such and as I stated in another post, companies often drink their own coolaid. However they need to change that culture so that they can look with a critical eye at their own designs and see what is and is not good. When you start to think everything you do is awesome, it gets easier and easier for mistakes to slip by.
Ultimately I don't think they'll change anything since for now, consumers are voting with their wallets to say they don't care. Apple's sales remain strong despite their high price premium, and their high premium means great margins which means great profits. At this time their strategy is working. However those are what they'd have ot change ot try and prevent more iPhone 4s from happening, not just firing some random guy and saying they are changed.
The quotes from the "source" were directly taken from John Gruber's daringfireball.net.
Mod parent... um, well it's already at 5...
Hmmm... Is this like, a corrolary, on Godwin's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law) law ;-0
It looked good on paper.
My big annoyance with 7 is when deleting a folder with thumbs.db it always warns me and half of the time it can't delete the file due to it being locked. I like thumbnails otherwise I would disable them. Never had this with XP.
Sorry dude but you're just completely coming at these kind of comments from the wrong angle.
The reason I'm complaining about it in the first place is because I want it to be better so when I use power shell I don't have to put up with a shitty product.
undoing accidental mod
7 is good, I was referring to some of MS's smoldering heaps of crap that they have pushed out the door to customers.
Interesting, so what it really boils down to for you is the fact that you don't like Apple and you're upset that Jobs didn't personally apologize for something that most people don't seem to care about? That's kind of silly. I have yet to meet an iPhone4 owner who has returned their iPhone, who cares at all about not getting an apology, or who has had reception problems. Doesn't mean they don't exist (since it's clear there IS a design flaw) but come on, you're just being ludicrous.
ALL iPhone 4s come with a 30-day, no-questions-asked return policy for a full refund. Have for a long time. This is Apple's policy, not something required by U.S. consumer law. The antenna "issue" was discovered and widely reported within about 2 days of the product ship date.
What the fuck more do you want from a return policy? "Keep your iPhone with this issue for a year, and if you decide after that that you don't like it, will give you a full refund on the product you've used for A YEAR"? 30 days is ample time to test out the phone and see if the antenna "issue" bothers YOU in your ordinary use. Me, it doesn't. My reception is about identical to what I got with my iPhone 3G, haven't noticed any significant difference at all. Maybe you think Apple should have MADE me give up the phone and give me my money back, whether I was pleased with their product or not?
Hahaha, nobody buys an iPhone for the phone. Are you stuck in the mid 90s?
I disagree with those who seem to think that the phone is the iPhone's *sole* purpose. It's not- it's as much a PDA, or rather, what the PDA would probably have evolved into had that market not basically died a few years ago. The fact is that it evolved from the direction of being a phone because that's where the market- and technological development- was coming from.
Still, IMHO what you say is wrong. While the phone functionality isn't the *sole* point of the iPhone, it's certainly an important one, and I suspect the majority of owners would be very pissed off if they couldn't make any phone calls at all. I would assume that poor phone performance also correlates with poor data/Internet performance, but that's another issue.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I realize saying this is pointless because Apple-haters have taken over the site. It's been non-stop Apple bashing in the comments for months now
You're kidding. I just had a look at your comment history and- as I suspected- it's full of endless comments rushing to defend Apple, including five in this thread alone. Frankly, this suggests you're the type who brands anyone that is even remotely critical of Apple as a "hater".
Quite the opposite to what you'd like to claim, the slightest criticism of Apple brings out numerous fanboys rushing to flood the thread with defences of Apple.
usually directed at Steve Jobs, as if he can hear them or cares
Unfortunately, the shrill and rabid Apple fandom evidently *do* care about even the most minor slight.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I think it is. The phone works, we won't find out how it holds up long term for a while yet but if previous versions are any indicator it should do just find in the long term operations.
The design flaw if very minor in that it is easily correctable by external intervention and is probably negligible for Apple to correct in the production stream.
Many Many phones out there both smart and dumb suffer from much larger faults from bad software to buttons or screens that fail in weeks and are essentially unusable even new out of the box.
You can still use the iPhone and negate the issue very easily. I still won't ever own an apple product until the company has a major corporate overhaul though.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Chip Guru Papermaster Loses Signal At Apple
"You can't stop the signal, Mel."
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
What if the ideal antenna was 2 feet long - would you use it then?
It's a ridiculous assertion that any attribute be as perfect as possible at the expense of everything else.
If you're referring to Wozniak, I'm going to take exception to your remark.
I just assumed he meant Ballmer.
I try not to think of Steve Ballmer. Besides, he's hardly incompetent, he's just an even bigger asshole than Steve Jobs (hard to imagine, I know, but there it is.)
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Wozniak, on the other hand, was a rare spark of true genius.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Woz is still around, even on /. ...unless that car of his finally got to him.
Yes, I didn't mean to refer to him as if he were dead: I was discussing the design of the original Apple ][ series and that it was remarkable for its time.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I was playing with a friend's iPhone 4 with a signal meter app (available for jailbroken phones). And you can make the signal drop a ton just by hovering your finger over the line on the lower left (about 2mm away). You don't even have to touch it. So a diamond coating that prevents you from touching it wouldn't fix the problem.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I've worked for him twice.
Oh. I'm sorry.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Yep. But look at the subject. Wozniak was a genius. Look at the subject. Mine is the other Steve.
Yeah. Sorry about that. At least I said, "If ...".
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Talk about completely missing the point. The point is, Apple sells physical goods. They know that when you deliver a physical product to somebody and it doesn't work right, nobody is going to put up with that the same way they'll put up with Windows 7 crashing or being buggy. So nobody gets fired over Windows 7 bugs unless they're really horrid, but at Apple you don't want to be That Guy who's responsible for The Antenna Problem.
And I resent having to buy Apple hardware if I want to run OSX.
And you're not in the majority.
Oh, and if you do buy some "PC except Apple's" I bet a few people here on Slashdot could recommend operating systems besides Win7 you could run on it.
He wants a quality, modern, general purpose OS, one that was designed from the bottom up to be great, usable, and well supported, not a convoluted hacked up pile of half-ass integrated crap that works well out of the box for a certain percentage of use cases and nothing else.
Signed,
Ubuntu user
And if you're an Apple user, neither are you "in the majority".
You are welcome on my lawn.
And that's related to the firing of a guy at Apple because of a scandal surrounding an iPhone defect HOW exactly?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yeah! I knew there had to be a simple solution to the antenna problem: No more signal dropping for me since Papermaster was fired!
Just don't hold your iPhone the way Apple held to Papermaster and you'll be fine.
I was in a dilemma: Should I download more signal or an iBumper? No need now, Steve Jobs fixed it again!
Why is it so hard for people on /. these days to provide specifics?
Once an asshole, always an asshole,
I agree with most of your post, but this point annoys me. People change, give them a chance. Victor Hugo wrote 400 pages (Les Miserables) devoted to making that point. Not saying it is the case here, but many people who are assholes do change.
Qxe4
It was a reply to Tyrione's post, stop trolling.
Blah blah. I remember running the chsh command on OS X 10.3.9, to switch from the tcsh(?) that had been the default shell in 10.2 to bash, which Apple's brilliant engineers had made such a wreck of that it actually rendered the terminal.app unusable. That's a release critical bug in a central system utility, in the ninth installment of that OS version. And still, Apple fanboys will say "OS X is a real unix", as if they ever used one. Quality control simply isn't Apple's strong side, outside the UI elements that are obvious to the eye.
Huh? John Sculley is the ex-Pepsi-Cola exec who nearly ran Apple into the ground, not Steve Jobs.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Oh, I see ... you have to be a technical person to understand the changes?
As a simpleton I guess I didn't notice the enhanced support for Non-Uniform Memory Access and the fact that each process can now have multiple thread pools. I guess that really is a "wow!", how could I be so stupid?
No sig today...
Anyone who "adores" Steve Jobs wasn't around back in the beginning, isn't aware of the arrogance and bungling the man exhibits to this day.
Not much has changed in the intervening 25 odd years.
It's pretty clear that Papermaster was thrown under a bus to save face for Apple. More and more parallels between the demise of Apple Computers in the 80's and the current actions of Apple Inc, sacking of engineers, form becoming more important then function, litigation over competition. The HTC suit over spurious patents is the new "look and feel" suit and the Ipad may soon turn out to be the new Lisa.
I dont have many kind things to say about everyone's favourite monopoly but Microsoft has done two things that relate to this situation. When MS's makes a mistake, they fix it and show people that it's been fixed (Vista to 7) rather than sake people and ignore the problem and they've weathered the boom/bust cycle that the IT industry seems to go through quite well. Apple is currently in the middle of a boom, as always this is leading up to a bust of the same magnitude, I just hope we aren't dependent on Apple when the iBust happens.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
If a phone doesn't have an external, extendable antennas like my Motorola v325 does, it doesn't have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to antenna performance.
Every smart phone I'm aware of has an internal antenna, which compromises performance. Manufacturers do this because consumers care about aesthetics when they pick out a phone, and if they have problems with coverage or calls, they always blame the network operator, not the phone.
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.
Not exactly. They said the software made the antenna problem look worse than it is. They didn't claim the only problem was the software, they said the software was responsible for telling you that you have a good signal when you really don't.
But then, admitting to lying about signal bars in software sounds just as bad or worse than having a badly designed antenna.
I guess they went that route because you can push out a software fix a lot more easily than you can redesign and re-release your hardware.
You don't think it's possible they fired him because he was antenna-man, and they were out there giving his answers about the antennas?
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
Consumer Reports is hardly trustworthy. They treated this iPhone thing as a hit generating media blitz. First their review crowned it the king of cell phones, then they came out a couple weeks later with the not recommended rating (unless Apple provides cases for free), then Apple provided cases and CR still said they didn't recommend it even though Apple did what they asked. It was a media campaign that week designed to get tons of free advertising off Apple's back. Every day that week CR released some new (conflicting) statement that got them in the news.
Sorry, but if you think CR is the only trustworthy source of reviews then you're living under a rock.
Hey, congrats on the only cogent analysis on this thread.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It should be imperative that the antenna be absolutely as strong as possible, because it's a goddamned cell phone. The whole point of the thing is to make phone calls.
Oh, for Pete's sake, we've got people buying iPhones around here when the AT&T signal is terrible. A few carry a second phone on Verizon.
"A mobile phone that never made any calls - fascinating." (apologies to Grig)
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Actually he did, he referenced the press conference.
And that's the difference between Apple and other companies
At Apple you just can't hide and throw someone under the bus. The buck stops at you (or better, at him)
Yes, Mr. Powell made a mistake, but in the antennagate issue, it's EVERYBODY's fault. And hence, Mr. Pappelmeister is to blame.
I'd say that putting out a product before it was tested is the fault of the CEO. Which would be Jobs. Jobs threw Papermaster under the bus. Jobs called the launch date. The phone was not ready. There should have been more testing. Apple put more effort into showing that other phones have the dropped calls when help this way or that way. That effort should have been put on their product, not other companies.
Saying other phone have this issue, caning this guy who hasn't even worked their that long (not long enough to have designed the antenna anyway), and blaming the customers (your holding it wrong) all point out that Apple does not want to admit that their phone is anything less then perfect.
Please point me to the bit where I missed jcr referencing a press couference, because I cannot see it. Evidence and pointing to "Anandtech's findings" are not one and the same.
cat:
He references the press conference in his earlier post. You said he provided no references and he did. Look back and find it yourself.
And is it really worth this exercise. Your last sentence clearly shows you are already predisposed to discounting any evidence or reference that conflicts with what you believe.
Care to provide a link to this post? I've just looked through the entire comment stream, and all I can find is this review: New iPhone 4..., which I have already seen and read.
cat:
IBM: 26 years, highly esteemed executive.
Apple: 2 years and he leaves in disgrace.
I wonder if Mark P is the real problem... He probably shouldn't have burned his bridges at IBM due to promises made by someone who's obviously insane.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
Could've sworn there were adverts on the telly saying "The Wow Starts Now!" with lots of non-technical people going "Wow!".
Still, ACs always know best.
No sig today...
And how is _THAT_ going to help anyone except the guy who is going to replace the manager?
Here be signatures
Companies in the valley know how Apple is, and they will be more than willing to hire an ex-Apple executive even if he was made into the company scapegoat.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Just goes to show you, no matter how fancy and nice your job title is, most people still don't know what the hell they're doing.
Only could be better if his first name was Thor or Deathbringer.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.