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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
"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.
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.
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.
maybe this conversation never happened. The design flaw is so blatant that it's very unlikely the engineers responsible for the RF section (including the antenna) would be so stupid. The whole fiasco smells of someone very high-up who brushed aside technical concerns for aesthetics. All we have to do is to wait for an insider to spill the beans...
You mean they aren't selling millions of them and that their return rate isn't low? Yea it's clearly been a huge failure that's bringing in tones of profits.
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.
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.
(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."
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.
a dosage of common sense and logic about the firing.
We don't know that he was fired. Gruber said he was, but he cites an anonymous source. Until and unless Papermaster or Apple releases a statement about it, this is just speculation.
-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.
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.
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.
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 .
...and...so what? Jobs would have a hissy fit and stamp his feet and cry? He'd throw a bamboo latte at him?
A five-year-old girl could beat up Steve Jobs.
Advice: on VPS providers
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
If you're referring to Wozniak, I'm going to take exception to your remark.
I just assumed he meant Ballmer.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Steve Jobs: Ahhh, Mark, thank you for coming.
Mark Papermaster: (gulps) you wanted to see me Steve.
SJ: You know about this Antenna issue.
MP: I hear they've dubbed it "Antennagate".
SJ: (Clenches, Grits teeth) Well we've been working on a solution.
MP: If we just put a tiny bit of plastic around it, we'd eliminate the majority of the problem.
MP: We'd still have excellent reception and eliminate this whole "death grip" thing
SJ: (kicks small kitten) No Mark, I've got a better solution.
MP: (backs away slowly) Umm... Sure Steve.
SJ: You see Mark, I'll fix the problem by ELIMINATING YOU.
MP: You know this wont actually fix the problem.
SJ: SILENCE, minions, take him away.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.