This is on Fedoras 11, 12, and 13 with a Mobility X1400. I've tried both radeon and radeonhd. I tried dozens of options and no options.
Crashes. Freezes. Panics. Unpredictable behavior (woah, garbage screen, hit CTRL-ALT-BKSP to restart server, hey, now it works, but two hours later, woah, garbage again!).
I gave up on the 3D support but even had trouble and unpredictable behavior with the 2D support, especially with Xrandr and dual monitors.
Thought for a moment that it might be worth it to try the closed-source drivers but of course the X1400 isn't supported in the current version and the older version that supports the X1400 would require that I step half a dozen Fedora versions back. Not gonna happen.
I've been a Linux user since 1993, when I retired an old Sparc+SunOS system. But I find that the older I get, the less patience I have for the ideological morass that is the Linux community.
- Just because a driver exists does not mean that it works - Just because a project exists does not mean that it works - Submitting a bug report no longer helps it to work - Submitting a patch is generally the same as submitting to/dev/null - Generally, submitting a either generates (1) ridicule, (2) lectures, or (3) work
Seriously, before simply docking the laptop and running Nvidia, I was crawling through bugzilla applying patches to the source RPM for the Xorg nvidia driver to fix things as basic as icon corruption.
Of course, many of the patches were submitted months or even years ago, so they no longer cleanly apply and have to be adapted. You can choose (if you want to avoid 2D corruption with the X1400) either to re-patch and re-compile by hand each time an Xorg update comes down the pike, or you can exclude Xorg updates in yum. Neither is acceptable, but it must be done if you want to avoid screen corruption with a Thinkpad T60 2007-xxx model. Why haven't the patches been included in subsequent releases, given that they fix the issues in question?
I'm sure there's some perfectly good ideological reason having to do with some form of code (or even development process) perfection. Of course, such reasons have nothing at all to do with making code that actually _works for users_.
This mirrors my experience of bug reporting with KDE and GNOME projects. Take the time to install the symbols binaries and generate nice bug reports and what you get are nontechnical explanations of why you're doing something wrong (wrong hardware, wrong preferences, wrong use cases, whatever) rather than any interest in actually making software work for users.
Meanwhile, Snow Leopard as a hack runs better and more stably than Fedora 13, even with the binary Nvidia drivers.
After years of being a die-hard Nvidia-on-Linux user, I took a risk and went with a laptop that had integrated ATI graphics when I made my most recent upgrade.
Nothing but instability, incompatibility, artifacting, underperformance, a mess. I regret it. I finally got an IBM Advanced Mini-Dock and put an Nvidia PCI-Express 8600GT in it (needed something low power enough to draw from the slot alone, small enough to fit in the tiny mini-dock space).
Installed the Nvidia drivers and away I went, stable and fast.
Meanwhile, on Windows nobody (neither IBM nor Lenovo nor ATI) have managed to release updated, much less Windows 7-compatible, drivers for the integrated ATI graphics in my Thinkpad. The machine is only two years old but it's all EOL as far as ATI is concerned.
This is a good move by ATI, I suppose, but it's woefully late, and it doesn't do anything about existing hardware on any platform. ATI's hardware might be okay, I have no idea, but their driver support on every platform sucks ass.
The differences between Macs and PCs are NOT superficial. Macs run Mac OS out of the box. PCs do not. Mac OS is substantially dissimilar to Windows or Linux, which is why every time I try to use Mac OS I find that I'm totally unproductive due to radically different keyboard layouts, filesystem organization, window controls, and so on. These are not "superficial" differences unless you also consider the differences between a wrench, a CD-ROM drive, a spatula, and terrestrial seasons to be "superficial." After all, each of these is all about "turning."
And I can tell you in two words what makes Apple products highly regarded by their users: USER INTERFACE.
On Slashdot, nobody believes that user interfaces matter. Outside of Slashdot, where real people have real lives and real problems, user interfaces are the KEYS to technological competence. Good user interface = conservation of time thanks to shallow learning curve. Poor user interface = waste of time for inverse reasons. And time is money, ergo, Apple makes many people richer.
You and many other Slashdotters will now proceed to assume that I mean this facetiously or that I'm an Apple fanboi, and this explains precisely why (1) Mac OS has taken the niche that would have belonged to Linux, and (2) Slashdotters never get laid or venerated.
Still sucked, at least on Fedora. I'll try again once 4.5 comes down the updates pipe. As someone that was a die-hard KDE user from KDE 1.0 pre3 through KDE 3.x, I keep KDE installed to keep tabs on it, in hopes that it'll start to work again.
So far, though, it hasn't. Unstable, incompatible, inconsistent, lacking features, kludgy, hacky, sloppy (can't even remember settings half the time, missing half of its plasmoid icons), etc.
Maybe it's Fedora's fault, maybe it's KDE's fault. Don't know, and GNOME 2.x is good enough that I don't care.
statistics, but Ubuntu statistics. I've been using Red Hat / Fedora for about a decade and a half now and have personally handed Red Hat / Fedora CDs to at least 100 people during that time, dozens of which I know led to people becoming active Red Hat / Fedora users (i.e. when I come into contact with these people they are still using Fedora today and at times have a couple questions for me about their installations).
This is not to engage in a Ubuntu vs. Fedora discussion but to point out that Linux is more than just Ubuntu; aside from Fedora there are also CentOS, Slackware, OpenSUSE, Debian, Mandriva, Gentoo, etc., each of these with a following of some size, even if said followings are much smaller than the Ubuntu following. At the very least, each of the 8 distributions I just listed would have to be included in data in order to get an idea about Linux usage.
This is aside from thinking about Kindle, Android, etc.
Lots of us comment that, but it gets modded down ruthlessly.
People just plain hate Apple.
No doubt that their products are highly usable and suffer from far fewer QC and design flaws than most other companies (very few electronics devices I've ever used, and I've been in tech and online since the early '80s, have ever actually worked well, while all of the Apple products I've used have worked well), but many geeks just hate, hate, hate, hate, hate them because Apple is the antithesis of the hacker ethic. Geeks love tweaking. They love wire-wrapped, hand-optimized, kludged together in six languages with illegal API tricks, souped up with spare parts and a soldering iron, stuff. Apple doesn't do this stuff. Apple does hermetically sealed, minimal design highly structured maximal predictability devices.
Geeks hate Apple because Apple makes it hard for Geeks to bust open their products and do pointless things with them (you know, like water-cool a 486 chip on a mobo with a piggybacked crystal just to get to 37 MHz instead of 33 MHz, or install Linux on a vending machine to get a console shell on a 12x1 character 10" tall LED display in which to write "Hello, world," or built a robot out of Legos designed specifically to flip the power switch on the wall when the sun goes down) and this hermetic enclosure makes Geeks feel as though their god-given rights have been senselessly violated.
Fact is, the iPhone 4 is a damned good phone. Better in every way than the 3GS, which was several orders of magnitude better in every way (possibly even n^10^10 better) than the Palm Centro it replaced -- and at the time, I was a die-hard "Zen of Palm" user shocked rudely into the knowledge that the "smartphone" I had been using was crap and the "iPhone fanbois" that I had avoided emulating for two years were probably actually better at choosing phones than I was.
It's called massive bias, and it's reverberating inside the geek echo chamber that is Slashdot.
I get more complaints from family and friends about "slow computers" than anything else, and usually these are all about silent background updates in the end. It's damned near impossible to explain to someone that's not computer literate what and update is, how it's affecting their computer, why it's necessary that the update gets installed, etc. They don't even know what Firefox is ("You mean my Internet?") much less any of the other things. Even my wife struggles to comprehend why there's always an update running; she tends to think I'm lying or dismissing her concerns. Every single application running on her computer does silent background updates:
Windows Office AntiVirus/Firewall Software Adobe Flash Player Adobe Reader Sun JRE Nero Skype etc.
Even tiny little apps from the vendor do this... Volume control, display control, trackpad control, blah, blah...
Another background process running automatic updates each and every icon in the tray and for each and every folder and application in the Start menu, as well as for browser plugins, third party configuration tools/extensions, drivers, etc.
At the very least they should try to display a notification somewhere on the screen saying "Updating XYZ, may slow your computer..." each time they do this, rather than silently saturating an internet connection (as 10 different updaters are in competition with one another), a CPU, and/or a hard drive's activity.
I teach at the university level, and would suffer sanctions or at least be spoken to if I just used:
- Blogs - Websites - Online tools
In class willy-nilly. I can't even create a discussion forum for us somewhere or email the students directly using their preferred email address (instead, I am stuck using school addresses that many rarely check). Instead, I am usually bound to a pre-determined, certified list of internal tools of which the most infernal is Blackboard, which seems to be the "technology tool" of choice at every campus at which I've taught. Too bad because its user interface is so absolutely poor that students who spend their days entirely online still can't figure it out; its compatibility is so bad that trying to use it in a course is a sure way to spend at least half of a class if not an entire class talking about required browsers and how to install them; and its stability is so bad that you'd better not rely on it for evaluated exercises, because half the students will say "it was down, I couldn't do the assignment" and a quick exchange with IT will reveal this to have been the case.
From the other technology tools that seem to make their way onto campuses, the electronic blackboard/whiteboard tools are cute but are so expensive that they tend to be locked away / disabled and require that you file in advance for access on the days that you're "planning" to use them, necessitating a visit from an IT tech before and after class. And predictably, half the time when they get there with the key and switch you on, you find out that the system is damaged in some way and doesn't actually operate, but nobody has reported it or performed maintenance / swap-outs in that room for ages and despite your need and reporting, their ETA for repair, once scheduled is sometime after the semester is over.
The one university I taught at as an adjunct that issued new ThinkPads to its students and had campus WiFi also locked them down completely with just IE and Office and not even Flash, meaning that many online applications and tools of various kinds couldn't be used.
Basically, I could just bring MY laptop and students could just bring THEIR laptop and we could use the WiFi and OUR OWN accounts and whatever software we wished, my classrooms would be FAR more technologically enabled. With all of the requirements, it becomes far more practical and easy to simply do a better job doing what good instructors have always done: stand at the front of the classroom, talk a lot and ask a lot of Socratic questions, and write on the blackboard with chalk or on the whiteboard with a marker. That, at least, tends to be accessible everywhere and very fail-safe.
DO care about things like "desktop works" and "can find a fast, professional theme that makes taskbar look like window title bars," neither of which is available with KDE since KDE 4 was released.
Yes, I have recently tried KDE, up to and including KDE 4.4.5 on Fedora. It continues to suck eggs. KDE 3 was professional and powerful. KDE 4 seems to have all the options I don't want, none of the options I actually used, no way to get a unified KDE/GNOME/Plasma theme (hell, you can't even get a unified kwin/plasma theme), ugly artifacting with 3D compositing off, craptacular stability and a distinct inability to remember many settings, dog-slow previews compared to Nautilus, no "compact" mode in Dolphin, either, poor dual-display support that fails to automatically handle them elegantly, and a distinct lack of KDE4-specific, complete alternate icon themes at kde-look.org to do away with the bright colors (I don't want red icons and blue icons both on my desktop at the same time; my desktop PC is not an Icee machine, it's totally unprofessional).
In short, I find KDE 4 totally considerably less usable than GNOME or KDE 3.5 and I'm fairly sure that pouring more development hours into 3D compositing is not going to make it moreso. How about just fixing the artifacting with 2D rendering? That I could actually give a damn about, though it would be one problem solved amongst many, many problems that didn't exist until KDE 4.
they don't understand enough about technology / computing to figure it out. I've helped several people with Windows reinstalls (just did it again this weekend, in fact, on a really nice, new Dell laptop that this person was ready to trash and replace after just a year) who fell for this sort of thing and fully thought that through the magic of internets and computers, their "purchase" had done SOMETHING for their computer, but it just wasn't enough to outweigh the terrible destruction already wrought by Teh V1rus!
In this particular case, the person got a fakeAV popup that installed malware that generated popups. This caused him to start searching his email for "antivirus," remembering a SPAM he'd seen, and he ended up with AV fakeware Cc: charges. He didn't actually realize this, assuming that the AV fakeware had silently, invisibly done its best but the original virus was "too strong" (two pieces of malware now spitting popups at an alarming rate and disabling various things) and he went out into Googleland looking for fixes, all of which were no doubt too technical for him and all of which he attempted to follow to a 'T' deleting a bunch of random files from C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM and C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 in the process and borking his system entirely.
When he came to me saying "So-and-so tells me you can fix computers, so I thought I'd bring mine to you before I throw it out, it's been completely destroyed by a virus..." he was sure that it was all down to the horrible virus he'd "caught" and that he'd been valiantly battling it for a week, rather than single handedly destroying his own Windows install at a record pace.
It was too f'ed up for system rescue, so I just wiped and reinstalled. He was AMAZED that I brought it back to life, and in just an hour or so. He was sure that I was the absolute best virus fighter in the universe. Told me I should go work for the Best Buy Geek Squad (uhh, thanks...) because they need people like me.
It's not that he's a total idiot, but computing in anything but buzzwords and marketing soundbytes remains a specialized set of skills that take time and study (and an awareness of where the right resources can be found) to develop. Most non-geeks just assume it's all due to Teh V1rus!, and the press and their coverage do little to add nuance to this notion, not to mention manufacturers and retailers that are only happy to sell the same person the same system every six months for a fresh $1k after they "got got by Teh V1rus!"
I don't know if this was from the Yankee group both times or not, but about 9 months after each iPhone purchase, AT&T has sent me an e-mail survey asking in some detail my opinions of the phone, apps, network, customer service, etc.
And yes, I've always given high marks. Perfect more or less for the iPhone, it's been a revelation after years with Palm. Only slightly less than perfect for the AT&T marks. I've always been very happy with AT&T's service and coverage. That's more than I can say for Verizon.
Yes, the last time I was with them for wireless was in the mid '90s, but that was a nightmare. And I still have to rely on Verizon for the wires coming into my home, and I HATE (H A T E) them for that. They can't get anything right, none of their CS people know anything, billing mistakes on odd months, service interruptions, and etc. etc.
No way I want that bureaucracy anywhere near my primary mode of communication (mobile phone). I'll stick to AT&T, thanks, who has always had fast, accurate, and knowledgeable customer service people when I've needed them, and which has on several occasions offered me early upgrades in-store simply for asking if I could have an early upgrade.
I live in Queens and work in the Village. I don't have dropped calls OR data trouble. On the other hand, I've been an AT&T mobile customer since the '90s and have a fairly large bill (multiple lines, lots of features).
Is it possible that there is some sort of tiered access to towers, with me getting priority?
I always hear Slashdotters talking about piss-poor AT&T service in NYC, yet I never seem to experience it. Maybe I'm just lucky and my home and workplaces are right underneath towers or something. I have no idea, but it's beginning to dawn on me that I'm having different experiences from many NYC AT&T customers.
Some of us would say "you're paying almost as much and being saddled with physical objects when you could pay just a few pennies more, save yourself the trouble, and get virtual objects!"
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.
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.
Apple sucks and the iPhone 4 is defective because people don't talk with their phones sitting on tables, they hold them in their hands, and they shouldn't be forced to do it with a case.
Meanwhile, other phones that drop signal when held in hands with no case don't suck, because the evil iPhone 4 from the evil Steve Jobs is the only one that does it... sitting on a table.
Is there any better example of the hypocritical, whatever-argument-is-worse-for-Apple-right-now Apple hate on this site?
Nonstop heavy data use. The killer feature of the iPhone 4 for me is that it does everything the 3GS did without being any slower, but the battery now lasts me two days of heavy use. I make on the order of one call a week, if that. So if I call it a "data device" rather than a "cell phone" will that help you to understand?
with Nokia phones (6190, 6310, 8190) and they certainly did have some reception problems. The 6310i was a worldphone, but it had buggy radio code. If you lost a signal you might go the next hour without finding it again unless you powered off, then powered back on, and then you'd get a full signal in the same spot. The 8190 was very susceptible to interference from nearby hands or objects; put it in your shirt pocket and it was off network. In fact the best phone I ever owned signal-wise was an LG 4011 flip, a totally basic phone that could get a signal and hold a call anywhere, it seemed.
The iPhone 3GS and 4 are about average as phones (having owned both) but as data devices are the most useful technology items I've ever owned, with the iPhone 4 being an incremental, but still measurable, improvement over the 3GS and able to hold a call in places where the 3GS wasn't.
and at one or two other tech sites. Read through the posts here. Constant denigrating references to gay people, invective, four-letter words, endless hyperbole.
If you post anything moderate, you are immediately labeled a "fanboi" (again, a veiled homosexuality/gender joke in the misspelling of "fanboy").
It's all so sophomoric.
Absolutely I would have returned the phone. I almost didn't even bother to buy it because of all the buzz surrounding this issue, and was considering Android phones. But to avoid the hassle of a carrier switch, etc., I decided I'd at least give it a shot, and I was frankly stunned to find that while I had the "issue" it didn't actually affect my use of the phone at all, so far as I could tell.
My experience makes me that much more wary of stories like this at Slashdot. The iPhone 4 is the best phone I've ever owned and in the last two weeks I've been thrilled with it. If I had simply paid attention to what's floating around the geek sites right now, I'd have assumed it was an EPIC FAIL[tm] and completely incapable of functioning at all, a total swindle.
And now, to post on any of the geek sites with an experience like that is to invite a screenful of ad hominem replies that have little, if anything, to do with the device itself.
That's what gets me here: the collapse of the usefulness of the tech community as a collective reviewer of tech devices, and the general uncivility (beyond all justification -- they're just phones, which one can choose or not choose to buy, and which are almost all still within the warranty/exchange period) of everything going on here.
The device is simply amazing. So are the 3Gs, 3G, and 2G. So are the Android phones. These are brilliant, f'in amazing devices. That's why I suspect it's a lot of teenagers making these posts. If you've been around for any length of time at all, and certainly if you've been around since 110 baud accoustic coupler paper-roll (no screen) terminals the size of a suitcase being the apex of "portability" like I have, it's hard to argue that any of these devices is "broken," or that anyone who likes any one of them is irrational in any way.
That's really just not the case. There is a signal degredation problem. This will cause many people to experience worse reception or dropped calls when the spot is touched.
When I bought the device, this was already clearly a discussion, so the first thing I did is test this out by putting my finger on the spot, without first putting a case on it. I went from five bars to two. Oh noez! I made calls to several different friends and family members with my finger on the spot and asked if they could hear me okay, explaining that I'd just picked up an iPhone 4 on upgrade. All of the calls were fine. I then went into the center of my apartment where a Treo 680, a Centro, and an iPhone 3Gs have all dropped calls. They didn't drop on the iPhone 4 there, with my finger on the spot.
I put on the case and put my hand over that side of the phone. No signal loss shown. I covered as much of its back and sides as I could with two hands, walking to the center of my apartment. With the case on, still a full set of bars.
That's when I decided that the signal issue wasn't going to affect me, in my home/neighborhood, and when I decided to keep the phone.
YMMV, but a group of raging, testosterone-laden teenage Apple haters on Slashdot seems to have worked themselves into such a frenzy that iPhone 4 users have gone from "People who may experience signal issues in some locales and usage patterns" to "People so stupid they paid hundreds and hundreds of dollars for what is claimed to be a phone that is not capable, in fact, of making phone calls or connecting to the Internet under any circumstances!"
In fact, this latter statement is untrue and utterly ridiculous. I am a heavy voice and data user and am on my iPhone 4 for a significant portion of every day using both voice and data. At least here in Queens, NYC, my upgrade from a 3Gs to a 4 went smoothly and transparently. Judging by what we know of sales numbers and returns, it appears that most purchasers are having a similar experience, and I am seeing a significant number of iPhone 4 devices on the streets and subway here in NYC.
Massive amounts of invective and foul language here, along with some serious (and seriously demeaning) generalizations about iPhone users. Very few discussions on the merits or level-headed opinions. I don't recall ever seeing anything like these posts about Microsoft or even SCO. People are taking this much more personally.
I own only one Apple product (my phone) and am an iPhone late arriver (last year) having been a multiple Palm user before that, and primarily LG/Nokia before that. I feel that the iPhone 4 (and the 3Gs before it) have been the most useful and most productive phones I've ever owned and when asked I express to friends that they seriously increased my ability to work and connect on a mobile basis by orders of magnitude. I use my phone in a full-body silicon case (that cost all of $5 with free shipping from eBay) as I have done with all my other phones, and I have experienced absolutely no signal issues in NYC, indoors or outdoors.
To read the comments here, I and many others with a similar experience am now a @#$(*^ douchebag and ^$%#^#$*ing Apple "fanboi" who's completely $^(*#ing got my head up my @$$ or up Steve Jobs @$$ or something, and the anti-gay (or anti-"fag") jokes, which are quite offensive actually and ought to be modded down like the endless rush of GNAA posts, are flowing freely. "Linux is for gay niggers" gets modded down over and over, but "Apple is for cocksucking fags" style posts can get modded right up.
WTF?
Slashdot's demographics have clearly shifted since the '90s; it appears that there are a lot of teens and pre-teens here now whos entire egos are tied up in the products that they buy and their ability to denigrate members of another "tribe" (read: people who make other purchasing choices). It's not just sad, it's embarrassing, and I think rather than stopping telling people that the iPhone 4 is the best phone I've ever owned, I'm going to stop telling people that Slashdot is a good place for non-techies to survey what's going on in the science and technology world.
Seriously people, it's a phone and a computer company, neither of which has a majority share of the market. Your hate isn't justified. Just don't buy the products and if you're asked, don't recommend them. I guarantee you that people will think less of you if when asked you tell them, "iPhone 4? No @#$(*^@*(^ way, what are you a total $#^(*#$%*ing fag, a Steve Jobs @#$(@*^sucker, or a brainless @#$(*^*#$@ing moron? Get your head out of your @$$ you total @#$(*^ing prick, and (*@#$* the @#$ @#$(*(%ing iPhone!"
Much more effective and friendly to say, "iPhone 4? No, I don't recommend it, it has been demonstrated that many people will experience signal issues, and in combination with the closed nature of the platform, I think the negatives outweigh the positives. If you do buy it, test it well and be sure to return it within the 30-day window if you experience dropped calls or find that you dislike the closed platform."
I guess that would just hurt Slashdotters' images of themselves far too much.
The iPhone 4 signal is slightly better than the 3GS; I can keep talking in the deeper, more isolated parts of my house where people previously said "what was that, you're breaking up a little."
I'm using it with a case, but I have used every mobile I've ever owned with a case and I'm not about to stop now that mobile phones cost many hundreds of dollars.
despite your intense personal feelings about all things Apple, the iPhone and iPad devices happen to best fit the workflows and needs of many users that have in fact also tried competitors' products? Why is it so hard for people to imagine that some people actually use their iPhones rather a lot?
Mine is the central data manager in my personal and work lives, I don't just wear it on a necklace like Flava Flav. Frankly it's a bit insulting to hear this kind of bullshit all the time. I'm not a member of any Apple club, I don't own a Mac or an iPad or an iPod or any other apple device. In fact, I'm a Linux user with Thinkpads. But I'm a Linux user with Thinkpads and an iPhone, and this immediately requires fifty percent of posters on this and other technology boards to speak to my critical thinking skills.
Perhaps confront your own before you shatter glass with flying debris.
For all the bitching, moaning, hand wringing, and naval gazing, this is not nearly the problem it's being made out to be.
The signal issues don't matter in strong coverage areas (most metropolitan areas, where most of the population lives).
iPhone cases are a massive business (prior to iPhone 4) for a reason: nearly every iPhone user immediately buys an iPhone case.
Most iPhone 4 devices are still within the return period. Don't like it? Return and/or cancel out and go get yourself something else. Don't wait!
As for me, I had full-body cases *and* a Zagg InvisibleShield at the ready *before* my iPhone 4 arrived. This is no different from what I did years ago when I was upgrading between Palm versions. Who spends $$$ on a phone only to use it naked? Certainly not me. What it comes down to, people: if you don't like it, vote with your feet. Stop the tribal back-and-forth and just get what suits you.
As for me, I'm sticking with the 4. Its battery life is years ahead of the 3Gs, and its screen resolution is massively improved. I haven't yet had a single dropped call despite living in NYC, which many here suggest is a horrible coverage area. I just don't see why everyone is so agitated over this; it seems sophomoric and ridiculous.
I'll repeat in case anybody missed it: if you don't like your iPhone 4, hurry and return it before the return period is up and get an Android device! And those of you who are super mad at Apple, so mad that you've never owned any of their products and never will: be very careful not to buy this one either, since you likely won't like it!
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This is on Fedoras 11, 12, and 13 with a Mobility X1400. I've tried both radeon and radeonhd. I tried dozens of options and no options.
Crashes. Freezes. Panics. Unpredictable behavior (woah, garbage screen, hit CTRL-ALT-BKSP to restart server, hey, now it works, but two hours later, woah, garbage again!).
I gave up on the 3D support but even had trouble and unpredictable behavior with the 2D support, especially with Xrandr and dual monitors.
Thought for a moment that it might be worth it to try the closed-source drivers but of course the X1400 isn't supported in the current version and the older version that supports the X1400 would require that I step half a dozen Fedora versions back. Not gonna happen.
I've been a Linux user since 1993, when I retired an old Sparc+SunOS system. But I find that the older I get, the less patience I have for the ideological morass that is the Linux community.
- Just because a driver exists does not mean that it works /dev/null
- Just because a project exists does not mean that it works
- Submitting a bug report no longer helps it to work
- Submitting a patch is generally the same as submitting to
- Generally, submitting a either generates (1) ridicule, (2) lectures, or (3) work
Seriously, before simply docking the laptop and running Nvidia, I was crawling through bugzilla applying patches to the source RPM for the Xorg nvidia driver to fix things as basic as icon corruption.
Of course, many of the patches were submitted months or even years ago, so they no longer cleanly apply and have to be adapted. You can choose (if you want to avoid 2D corruption with the X1400) either to re-patch and re-compile by hand each time an Xorg update comes down the pike, or you can exclude Xorg updates in yum. Neither is acceptable, but it must be done if you want to avoid screen corruption with a Thinkpad T60 2007-xxx model. Why haven't the patches been included in subsequent releases, given that they fix the issues in question?
I'm sure there's some perfectly good ideological reason having to do with some form of code (or even development process) perfection. Of course, such reasons have nothing at all to do with making code that actually _works for users_.
This mirrors my experience of bug reporting with KDE and GNOME projects. Take the time to install the symbols binaries and generate nice bug reports and what you get are nontechnical explanations of why you're doing something wrong (wrong hardware, wrong preferences, wrong use cases, whatever) rather than any interest in actually making software work for users.
Meanwhile, Snow Leopard as a hack runs better and more stably than Fedora 13, even with the binary Nvidia drivers.
After years of being a die-hard Nvidia-on-Linux user, I took a risk and went with a laptop that had integrated ATI graphics when I made my most recent upgrade.
Nothing but instability, incompatibility, artifacting, underperformance, a mess. I regret it. I finally got an IBM Advanced Mini-Dock and put an Nvidia PCI-Express 8600GT in it (needed something low power enough to draw from the slot alone, small enough to fit in the tiny mini-dock space).
Installed the Nvidia drivers and away I went, stable and fast.
Meanwhile, on Windows nobody (neither IBM nor Lenovo nor ATI) have managed to release updated, much less Windows 7-compatible, drivers for the integrated ATI graphics in my Thinkpad. The machine is only two years old but it's all EOL as far as ATI is concerned.
This is a good move by ATI, I suppose, but it's woefully late, and it doesn't do anything about existing hardware on any platform. ATI's hardware might be okay, I have no idea, but their driver support on every platform sucks ass.
The differences between Macs and PCs are NOT superficial. Macs run Mac OS out of the box. PCs do not. Mac OS is substantially dissimilar to Windows or Linux, which is why every time I try to use Mac OS I find that I'm totally unproductive due to radically different keyboard layouts, filesystem organization, window controls, and so on. These are not "superficial" differences unless you also consider the differences between a wrench, a CD-ROM drive, a spatula, and terrestrial seasons to be "superficial." After all, each of these is all about "turning."
And I can tell you in two words what makes Apple products highly regarded by their users: USER INTERFACE.
On Slashdot, nobody believes that user interfaces matter. Outside of Slashdot, where real people have real lives and real problems, user interfaces are the KEYS to technological competence. Good user interface = conservation of time thanks to shallow learning curve. Poor user interface = waste of time for inverse reasons. And time is money, ergo, Apple makes many people richer.
You and many other Slashdotters will now proceed to assume that I mean this facetiously or that I'm an Apple fanboi, and this explains precisely why (1) Mac OS has taken the niche that would have belonged to Linux, and (2) Slashdotters never get laid or venerated.
Still sucked, at least on Fedora. I'll try again once 4.5 comes down the updates pipe. As someone that was a die-hard KDE user from KDE 1.0 pre3 through KDE 3.x, I keep KDE installed to keep tabs on it, in hopes that it'll start to work again.
So far, though, it hasn't. Unstable, incompatible, inconsistent, lacking features, kludgy, hacky, sloppy (can't even remember settings half the time, missing half of its plasmoid icons), etc.
Maybe it's Fedora's fault, maybe it's KDE's fault. Don't know, and GNOME 2.x is good enough that I don't care.
statistics, but Ubuntu statistics. I've been using Red Hat / Fedora for about a decade and a half now and have personally handed Red Hat / Fedora CDs to at least 100 people during that time, dozens of which I know led to people becoming active Red Hat / Fedora users (i.e. when I come into contact with these people they are still using Fedora today and at times have a couple questions for me about their installations).
This is not to engage in a Ubuntu vs. Fedora discussion but to point out that Linux is more than just Ubuntu; aside from Fedora there are also CentOS, Slackware, OpenSUSE, Debian, Mandriva, Gentoo, etc., each of these with a following of some size, even if said followings are much smaller than the Ubuntu following. At the very least, each of the 8 distributions I just listed would have to be included in data in order to get an idea about Linux usage.
This is aside from thinking about Kindle, Android, etc.
Lots of us comment that, but it gets modded down ruthlessly.
People just plain hate Apple.
No doubt that their products are highly usable and suffer from far fewer QC and design flaws than most other companies (very few electronics devices I've ever used, and I've been in tech and online since the early '80s, have ever actually worked well, while all of the Apple products I've used have worked well), but many geeks just hate, hate, hate, hate, hate them because Apple is the antithesis of the hacker ethic. Geeks love tweaking. They love wire-wrapped, hand-optimized, kludged together in six languages with illegal API tricks, souped up with spare parts and a soldering iron, stuff. Apple doesn't do this stuff. Apple does hermetically sealed, minimal design highly structured maximal predictability devices.
Geeks hate Apple because Apple makes it hard for Geeks to bust open their products and do pointless things with them (you know, like water-cool a 486 chip on a mobo with a piggybacked crystal just to get to 37 MHz instead of 33 MHz, or install Linux on a vending machine to get a console shell on a 12x1 character 10" tall LED display in which to write "Hello, world," or built a robot out of Legos designed specifically to flip the power switch on the wall when the sun goes down) and this hermetic enclosure makes Geeks feel as though their god-given rights have been senselessly violated.
Fact is, the iPhone 4 is a damned good phone. Better in every way than the 3GS, which was several orders of magnitude better in every way (possibly even n^10^10 better) than the Palm Centro it replaced -- and at the time, I was a die-hard "Zen of Palm" user shocked rudely into the knowledge that the "smartphone" I had been using was crap and the "iPhone fanbois" that I had avoided emulating for two years were probably actually better at choosing phones than I was.
It's called massive bias, and it's reverberating inside the geek echo chamber that is Slashdot.
I get more complaints from family and friends about "slow computers" than anything else, and usually these are all about silent background updates in the end. It's damned near impossible to explain to someone that's not computer literate what and update is, how it's affecting their computer, why it's necessary that the update gets installed, etc. They don't even know what Firefox is ("You mean my Internet?") much less any of the other things. Even my wife struggles to comprehend why there's always an update running; she tends to think I'm lying or dismissing her concerns. Every single application running on her computer does silent background updates:
Windows
Office
AntiVirus/Firewall Software
Adobe Flash Player
Adobe Reader
Sun JRE
Nero
Skype
etc.
Even tiny little apps from the vendor do this... Volume control, display control, trackpad control, blah, blah...
Another background process running automatic updates each and every icon in the tray and for each and every folder and application in the Start menu, as well as for browser plugins, third party configuration tools/extensions, drivers, etc.
At the very least they should try to display a notification somewhere on the screen saying "Updating XYZ, may slow your computer..." each time they do this, rather than silently saturating an internet connection (as 10 different updaters are in competition with one another), a CPU, and/or a hard drive's activity.
I teach at the university level, and would suffer sanctions or at least be spoken to if I just used:
- Blogs
- Websites
- Online tools
In class willy-nilly. I can't even create a discussion forum for us somewhere or email the students directly using their preferred email address (instead, I am stuck using school addresses that many rarely check). Instead, I am usually bound to a pre-determined, certified list of internal tools of which the most infernal is Blackboard, which seems to be the "technology tool" of choice at every campus at which I've taught. Too bad because its user interface is so absolutely poor that students who spend their days entirely online still can't figure it out; its compatibility is so bad that trying to use it in a course is a sure way to spend at least half of a class if not an entire class talking about required browsers and how to install them; and its stability is so bad that you'd better not rely on it for evaluated exercises, because half the students will say "it was down, I couldn't do the assignment" and a quick exchange with IT will reveal this to have been the case.
From the other technology tools that seem to make their way onto campuses, the electronic blackboard/whiteboard tools are cute but are so expensive that they tend to be locked away / disabled and require that you file in advance for access on the days that you're "planning" to use them, necessitating a visit from an IT tech before and after class. And predictably, half the time when they get there with the key and switch you on, you find out that the system is damaged in some way and doesn't actually operate, but nobody has reported it or performed maintenance / swap-outs in that room for ages and despite your need and reporting, their ETA for repair, once scheduled is sometime after the semester is over.
The one university I taught at as an adjunct that issued new ThinkPads to its students and had campus WiFi also locked them down completely with just IE and Office and not even Flash, meaning that many online applications and tools of various kinds couldn't be used.
Basically, I could just bring MY laptop and students could just bring THEIR laptop and we could use the WiFi and OUR OWN accounts and whatever software we wished, my classrooms would be FAR more technologically enabled. With all of the requirements, it becomes far more practical and easy to simply do a better job doing what good instructors have always done: stand at the front of the classroom, talk a lot and ask a lot of Socratic questions, and write on the blackboard with chalk or on the whiteboard with a marker. That, at least, tends to be accessible everywhere and very fail-safe.
about OpenGL decorating my windows.
DO care about things like "desktop works" and "can find a fast, professional theme that makes taskbar look like window title bars," neither of which is available with KDE since KDE 4 was released.
Yes, I have recently tried KDE, up to and including KDE 4.4.5 on Fedora. It continues to suck eggs. KDE 3 was professional and powerful. KDE 4 seems to have all the options I don't want, none of the options I actually used, no way to get a unified KDE/GNOME/Plasma theme (hell, you can't even get a unified kwin/plasma theme), ugly artifacting with 3D compositing off, craptacular stability and a distinct inability to remember many settings, dog-slow previews compared to Nautilus, no "compact" mode in Dolphin, either, poor dual-display support that fails to automatically handle them elegantly, and a distinct lack of KDE4-specific, complete alternate icon themes at kde-look.org to do away with the bright colors (I don't want red icons and blue icons both on my desktop at the same time; my desktop PC is not an Icee machine, it's totally unprofessional).
In short, I find KDE 4 totally considerably less usable than GNOME or KDE 3.5 and I'm fairly sure that pouring more development hours into 3D compositing is not going to make it moreso. How about just fixing the artifacting with 2D rendering? That I could actually give a damn about, though it would be one problem solved amongst many, many problems that didn't exist until KDE 4.
they don't understand enough about technology / computing to figure it out. I've helped several people with Windows reinstalls (just did it again this weekend, in fact, on a really nice, new Dell laptop that this person was ready to trash and replace after just a year) who fell for this sort of thing and fully thought that through the magic of internets and computers, their "purchase" had done SOMETHING for their computer, but it just wasn't enough to outweigh the terrible destruction already wrought by Teh V1rus!
In this particular case, the person got a fakeAV popup that installed malware that generated popups. This caused him to start searching his email for "antivirus," remembering a SPAM he'd seen, and he ended up with AV fakeware Cc: charges. He didn't actually realize this, assuming that the AV fakeware had silently, invisibly done its best but the original virus was "too strong" (two pieces of malware now spitting popups at an alarming rate and disabling various things) and he went out into Googleland looking for fixes, all of which were no doubt too technical for him and all of which he attempted to follow to a 'T' deleting a bunch of random files from C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM and C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 in the process and borking his system entirely.
When he came to me saying "So-and-so tells me you can fix computers, so I thought I'd bring mine to you before I throw it out, it's been completely destroyed by a virus..." he was sure that it was all down to the horrible virus he'd "caught" and that he'd been valiantly battling it for a week, rather than single handedly destroying his own Windows install at a record pace.
It was too f'ed up for system rescue, so I just wiped and reinstalled. He was AMAZED that I brought it back to life, and in just an hour or so. He was sure that I was the absolute best virus fighter in the universe. Told me I should go work for the Best Buy Geek Squad (uhh, thanks...) because they need people like me.
It's not that he's a total idiot, but computing in anything but buzzwords and marketing soundbytes remains a specialized set of skills that take time and study (and an awareness of where the right resources can be found) to develop. Most non-geeks just assume it's all due to Teh V1rus!, and the press and their coverage do little to add nuance to this notion, not to mention manufacturers and retailers that are only happy to sell the same person the same system every six months for a fresh $1k after they "got got by Teh V1rus!"
I don't know if this was from the Yankee group both times or not, but about 9 months after each iPhone purchase, AT&T has sent me an e-mail survey asking in some detail my opinions of the phone, apps, network, customer service, etc.
And yes, I've always given high marks. Perfect more or less for the iPhone, it's been a revelation after years with Palm. Only slightly less than perfect for the AT&T marks. I've always been very happy with AT&T's service and coverage. That's more than I can say for Verizon.
Yes, the last time I was with them for wireless was in the mid '90s, but that was a nightmare. And I still have to rely on Verizon for the wires coming into my home, and I HATE (H A T E) them for that. They can't get anything right, none of their CS people know anything, billing mistakes on odd months, service interruptions, and etc. etc.
No way I want that bureaucracy anywhere near my primary mode of communication (mobile phone). I'll stick to AT&T, thanks, who has always had fast, accurate, and knowledgeable customer service people when I've needed them, and which has on several occasions offered me early upgrades in-store simply for asking if I could have an early upgrade.
I live in Queens and work in the Village. I don't have dropped calls OR data trouble. On the other hand, I've been an AT&T mobile customer since the '90s and have a fairly large bill (multiple lines, lots of features).
Is it possible that there is some sort of tiered access to towers, with me getting priority?
I always hear Slashdotters talking about piss-poor AT&T service in NYC, yet I never seem to experience it. Maybe I'm just lucky and my home and workplaces are right underneath towers or something. I have no idea, but it's beginning to dawn on me that I'm having different experiences from many NYC AT&T customers.
Some of us would say "you're paying almost as much and being saddled with physical objects when you could pay just a few pennies more, save yourself the trouble, and get virtual objects!"
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.
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.
Apple sucks and the iPhone 4 is defective because people don't talk with their phones sitting on tables, they hold them in their hands, and they shouldn't be forced to do it with a case.
Meanwhile, other phones that drop signal when held in hands with no case don't suck, because the evil iPhone 4 from the evil Steve Jobs is the only one that does it... sitting on a table.
Is there any better example of the hypocritical, whatever-argument-is-worse-for-Apple-right-now Apple hate on this site?
that's what some of us DO with our SMARTphones.
Nonstop heavy data use. The killer feature of the iPhone 4 for me is that it does everything the 3GS did without being any slower, but the battery now lasts me two days of heavy use. I make on the order of one call a week, if that. So if I call it a "data device" rather than a "cell phone" will that help you to understand?
with Nokia phones (6190, 6310, 8190) and they certainly did have some reception problems. The 6310i was a worldphone, but it had buggy radio code. If you lost a signal you might go the next hour without finding it again unless you powered off, then powered back on, and then you'd get a full signal in the same spot. The 8190 was very susceptible to interference from nearby hands or objects; put it in your shirt pocket and it was off network. In fact the best phone I ever owned signal-wise was an LG 4011 flip, a totally basic phone that could get a signal and hold a call anywhere, it seemed.
The iPhone 3GS and 4 are about average as phones (having owned both) but as data devices are the most useful technology items I've ever owned, with the iPhone 4 being an incremental, but still measurable, improvement over the 3GS and able to hold a call in places where the 3GS wasn't.
and at one or two other tech sites. Read through the posts here. Constant denigrating references to gay people, invective, four-letter words, endless hyperbole.
If you post anything moderate, you are immediately labeled a "fanboi" (again, a veiled homosexuality/gender joke in the misspelling of "fanboy").
It's all so sophomoric.
Absolutely I would have returned the phone. I almost didn't even bother to buy it because of all the buzz surrounding this issue, and was considering Android phones. But to avoid the hassle of a carrier switch, etc., I decided I'd at least give it a shot, and I was frankly stunned to find that while I had the "issue" it didn't actually affect my use of the phone at all, so far as I could tell.
My experience makes me that much more wary of stories like this at Slashdot. The iPhone 4 is the best phone I've ever owned and in the last two weeks I've been thrilled with it. If I had simply paid attention to what's floating around the geek sites right now, I'd have assumed it was an EPIC FAIL[tm] and completely incapable of functioning at all, a total swindle.
And now, to post on any of the geek sites with an experience like that is to invite a screenful of ad hominem replies that have little, if anything, to do with the device itself.
That's what gets me here: the collapse of the usefulness of the tech community as a collective reviewer of tech devices, and the general uncivility (beyond all justification -- they're just phones, which one can choose or not choose to buy, and which are almost all still within the warranty/exchange period) of everything going on here.
The device is simply amazing. So are the 3Gs, 3G, and 2G. So are the Android phones. These are brilliant, f'in amazing devices. That's why I suspect it's a lot of teenagers making these posts. If you've been around for any length of time at all, and certainly if you've been around since 110 baud accoustic coupler paper-roll (no screen) terminals the size of a suitcase being the apex of "portability" like I have, it's hard to argue that any of these devices is "broken," or that anyone who likes any one of them is irrational in any way.
They're all f'in great!
"The phone doesn't work."
That's really just not the case. There is a signal degredation problem. This will cause many people to experience worse reception or dropped calls when the spot is touched.
When I bought the device, this was already clearly a discussion, so the first thing I did is test this out by putting my finger on the spot, without first putting a case on it. I went from five bars to two. Oh noez! I made calls to several different friends and family members with my finger on the spot and asked if they could hear me okay, explaining that I'd just picked up an iPhone 4 on upgrade. All of the calls were fine. I then went into the center of my apartment where a Treo 680, a Centro, and an iPhone 3Gs have all dropped calls. They didn't drop on the iPhone 4 there, with my finger on the spot.
I put on the case and put my hand over that side of the phone. No signal loss shown. I covered as much of its back and sides as I could with two hands, walking to the center of my apartment. With the case on, still a full set of bars.
That's when I decided that the signal issue wasn't going to affect me, in my home/neighborhood, and when I decided to keep the phone.
YMMV, but a group of raging, testosterone-laden teenage Apple haters on Slashdot seems to have worked themselves into such a frenzy that iPhone 4 users have gone from "People who may experience signal issues in some locales and usage patterns" to "People so stupid they paid hundreds and hundreds of dollars for what is claimed to be a phone that is not capable, in fact, of making phone calls or connecting to the Internet under any circumstances!"
In fact, this latter statement is untrue and utterly ridiculous. I am a heavy voice and data user and am on my iPhone 4 for a significant portion of every day using both voice and data. At least here in Queens, NYC, my upgrade from a 3Gs to a 4 went smoothly and transparently. Judging by what we know of sales numbers and returns, it appears that most purchasers are having a similar experience, and I am seeing a significant number of iPhone 4 devices on the streets and subway here in NYC.
Massive amounts of invective and foul language here, along with some serious (and seriously demeaning) generalizations about iPhone users. Very few discussions on the merits or level-headed opinions. I don't recall ever seeing anything like these posts about Microsoft or even SCO. People are taking this much more personally.
I own only one Apple product (my phone) and am an iPhone late arriver (last year) having been a multiple Palm user before that, and primarily LG/Nokia before that. I feel that the iPhone 4 (and the 3Gs before it) have been the most useful and most productive phones I've ever owned and when asked I express to friends that they seriously increased my ability to work and connect on a mobile basis by orders of magnitude. I use my phone in a full-body silicon case (that cost all of $5 with free shipping from eBay) as I have done with all my other phones, and I have experienced absolutely no signal issues in NYC, indoors or outdoors.
To read the comments here, I and many others with a similar experience am now a @#$(*^ douchebag and ^$%#^#$*ing Apple "fanboi" who's completely $^(*#ing got my head up my @$$ or up Steve Jobs @$$ or something, and the anti-gay (or anti-"fag") jokes, which are quite offensive actually and ought to be modded down like the endless rush of GNAA posts, are flowing freely. "Linux is for gay niggers" gets modded down over and over, but "Apple is for cocksucking fags" style posts can get modded right up.
WTF?
Slashdot's demographics have clearly shifted since the '90s; it appears that there are a lot of teens and pre-teens here now whos entire egos are tied up in the products that they buy and their ability to denigrate members of another "tribe" (read: people who make other purchasing choices). It's not just sad, it's embarrassing, and I think rather than stopping telling people that the iPhone 4 is the best phone I've ever owned, I'm going to stop telling people that Slashdot is a good place for non-techies to survey what's going on in the science and technology world.
Seriously people, it's a phone and a computer company, neither of which has a majority share of the market. Your hate isn't justified. Just don't buy the products and if you're asked, don't recommend them. I guarantee you that people will think less of you if when asked you tell them, "iPhone 4? No @#$(*^@*(^ way, what are you a total $#^(*#$%*ing fag, a Steve Jobs @#$(@*^sucker, or a brainless @#$(*^*#$@ing moron? Get your head out of your @$$ you total @#$(*^ing prick, and (*@#$* the @#$ @#$(*(%ing iPhone!"
Much more effective and friendly to say, "iPhone 4? No, I don't recommend it, it has been demonstrated that many people will experience signal issues, and in combination with the closed nature of the platform, I think the negatives outweigh the positives. If you do buy it, test it well and be sure to return it within the 30-day window if you experience dropped calls or find that you dislike the closed platform."
I guess that would just hurt Slashdotters' images of themselves far too much.
The iPhone 4 signal is slightly better than the 3GS; I can keep talking in the deeper, more isolated parts of my house where people previously said "what was that, you're breaking up a little."
I'm using it with a case, but I have used every mobile I've ever owned with a case and I'm not about to stop now that mobile phones cost many hundreds of dollars.
Why, pray, is it "broken" if it fits the user's needs?
"But it doesn't fit the user's needs, that's why they have to buy a case," you say.
Your home doesn't wash dishes or laundry by itself, you have to add accessories for that. Your home is broken.
Your PC doesn't power itself, you have to add electrical service for that. Your PC is broken.
Your printer doesn't print on its own, you have to add paper and ink for that. Your printer is broken.
Why the hell are you buying all of these broken things?!
despite your intense personal feelings about all things Apple, the iPhone and iPad devices happen to best fit the workflows and needs of many users that have in fact also tried competitors' products? Why is it so hard for people to imagine that some people actually use their iPhones rather a lot?
Mine is the central data manager in my personal and work lives, I don't just wear it on a necklace like Flava Flav. Frankly it's a bit insulting to hear this kind of bullshit all the time. I'm not a member of any Apple club, I don't own a Mac or an iPad or an iPod or any other apple device. In fact, I'm a Linux user with Thinkpads. But I'm a Linux user with Thinkpads and an iPhone, and this immediately requires fifty percent of posters on this and other technology boards to speak to my critical thinking skills.
Perhaps confront your own before you shatter glass with flying debris.
For all the bitching, moaning, hand wringing, and naval gazing, this is not nearly the problem it's being made out to be.
The signal issues don't matter in strong coverage areas (most metropolitan areas, where most of the population lives).
iPhone cases are a massive business (prior to iPhone 4) for a reason: nearly every iPhone user immediately buys an iPhone case.
Most iPhone 4 devices are still within the return period. Don't like it? Return and/or cancel out and go get yourself something else. Don't wait!
As for me, I had full-body cases *and* a Zagg InvisibleShield at the ready *before* my iPhone 4 arrived. This is no different from what I did years ago when I was upgrading between Palm versions. Who spends $$$ on a phone only to use it naked? Certainly not me. What it comes down to, people: if you don't like it, vote with your feet. Stop the tribal back-and-forth and just get what suits you.
As for me, I'm sticking with the 4. Its battery life is years ahead of the 3Gs, and its screen resolution is massively improved. I haven't yet had a single dropped call despite living in NYC, which many here suggest is a horrible coverage area. I just don't see why everyone is so agitated over this; it seems sophomoric and ridiculous.
I'll repeat in case anybody missed it: if you don't like your iPhone 4, hurry and return it before the return period is up and get an Android device! And those of you who are super mad at Apple, so mad that you've never owned any of their products and never will: be very careful not to buy this one either, since you likely won't like it!