Maybe my estimate was a little high but the point still stands. It costs more than 3c for Apple to produce the Bumpers. Maybe more like $5 - and yes I agree they're making an obscene profit on them. If Giving them out free would quiet everyone and make this thing go away I'm sure they would. But with Class Action suits etc. I don't think they have that option.
I'm not an expert but I would not be surprised to find future production runs include a coating for the antenna
As I recall it, the relief sought in the first of the class action lawsuits was a "free" bumper...plus attorney's fees, of course, lest we forget the important part of the lawsuit.
I had seen a posting somewhere or other that there was supposedly a second batch of iPhones that had some sort of non-metallic coating over the metal frame/antenna, but I now believe that posting was either mistaken or simply wild speculation. I suspect that it would be a relatively quick and comparatively easy way to resolve the matter in the long run. Until then, bumpers or covers of some description would appear to be the way to go if there is a problem with an individual iPhone.
There is an interesting article which casts a little bit of light on the iPhone testing protocol used by Apple which suggests that washing hands before touching the device may have failed to duplicate real world conditions. Surely everyone washes their hand before touching the iPhone in the real world...not!
Who knows whether the substance of the article is accurate, but stranger things have been done "in the lab" which caused problems in the real world.
As I recall it, the relief sought in the first of the class action lawsuits was a "free" bumper...plus attorney's fees, of course, lest we forget the important part of the lawsuit.
I had seen a posting somewhere or other that there was supposedly a second batch of iPhones that had some sort of non-metallic coating over the metal frame/antenna, but I now believe that posting was either mistaken or simply wild speculation. I suspect that it would be a relatively quick and comparatively easy way to resolve the matter in the long run. Until then, bumpers or covers of some description would appear to be the way to go if there is a problem with an individual iPhone.
There is an interesting article which casts a little bit of light on the iPhone testing protocol used by Apple which suggests that washing hands before touching the device may have failed to duplicate real world conditions. Surely everyone washes their hand before touching the iPhone in the real world...not!
Who knows whether the substance of the article is accurate, but stranger things have been done "in the lab" which caused problems in the real world.
Cheers
Y'know I suspect that Engineers testing the iPhone in the wild had them hidden in protective covers or fake 3gs covers - yeah, it really could be that simple. Yeah right..... still
Ironically if it weren't for companies like gizmodo Apple may have discovered the problem in time to sort it.
That being said, given the supposed outcry. If Android phones aren't outselling the iPhone now, they're not going to for a long time.
Well, now there are at least two labs reporting serious, demonstrable issues with the iPhone 4's antenna. One of the lab reports is from Consumer Reports. They consider the issue serious enough to issue a don't buy recommendation until Apple fesses up and offers a fix.
This isn't a figment of someone's imagination or incorrect expectations based on a faulty strength reading. It's a technical/design problem that needs to be fixed.
It also seems to be owner related as to whether the issue is a major problem for a particular phone but there are a lot of customers who are reporting dropped calls when holding their phones in a normal manner.
Jobs/Apple need to be more reactive in a consumer-friendly way. Apple should be red-faced over this.
<snip>Ironically if it weren't for companies like gizmodo Apple may have discovered the problem in time to sort it. <snip>
Meaning no offense, I sincerely doubt that. There is no way that the loss of a single test unit held back the product testing. There should have been any number of units in actual testing for everything from user interface to ergonomics, reception and transmission, battery life, GPS and, yes, even drop testing.
I was told by "a reliable source" that the people provided an iPhone 4 for pre-release review (subject to NDA and so on) had to keep it in a secured room that had no windows and so on and so on which might have contributed to some of the early reviews being more like an Apple press release.
This is not the first time that Apple have been "guilty" of not adequately testing a product prior to commitment to volume production and probably will not be the last.
Maybe my estimate was a little high but the point still stands. It costs more than 3c for Apple to produce the Bumpers. Maybe more like $5 - and yes I agree they're making an obscene profit on them. If Giving them out free would quiet everyone and make this thing go away I'm sure they would. But with Class Action suits etc. I don't think they have that option.
I'm not an expert but I would not be surprised to find future production runs include a coating for the antenna
Here is a link an analyst's report dealing with the growing PR problem which cited a figure of $1 it would cost Apple (per unit) to provide a bumper along with the iPhone 4. His estimate of a full blown recall was a figure big enough to get anyone's attention.
On a separate matter, dealing with the conditions at the Foxconn plant, the author of the below article concludes "One can't help wondering how Steve Jobs, the billionaire Buddhist, manages to square Foxconn's activities with his belief in karma - that what you do in this life will be repaid in the next..."
Why is it only Apple being hammered on Foxconn? They make stuff for everybody.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RBR
Here is a link an analyst's report dealing with the growing PR problem which cited a figure of $1 it would cost Apple (per unit) to provide a bumper along with the iPhone 4. His estimate of a full blown recall was a figure big enough to get anyone's attention.
On a separate matter, dealing with the conditions at the Foxconn plant, the author of the below article concludes "One can't help wondering how Steve Jobs, the billionaire Buddhist, manages to square Foxconn's activities with his belief in karma - that what you do in this life will be repaid in the next..."
Why is it only Apple being hammered on Foxconn? They make stuff for everybody.
I don't know that Apple are alone on the Foxconn matter, but they are certainly "front and center" on the matter. I think the timing was such that the suicides, the wage increases, the working conditions and the iPhone 4 problems came together to get Apple more noticed than the others. It may also have something to do with Apple's historic practice of squeezing suppliers very hard while charging higher prices. Who knows.
There was an article I can no longer find which dealt with the contract the workers at Foxconn are required to sign. It basically absolves the company from responsibility for a variety of things, including, but not limited to, suicide.
There may also be the matter of Steve's beliefs which make him a target of the media. He certainly has not helped the situation with the company's responses.
Whether other companies deserve to be "hammered" in addition to Apple does little to change the facts as they apply to Apple. This thing is snowballing.
I don't know that Apple are alone on the Foxconn matter, but they are certainly "front and center" on the matter. I think the timing was such that the suicides, the wage increases, the working conditions and the iPhone 4 problems came together to get Apple more noticed than the others. It may also have something to do with Apple's historic practice of squeezing suppliers very hard while charging higher prices. Who knows.
There was an article I can no longer find which dealt with the contract the workers at Foxconn are required to sign. It basically absolves the company from responsibility for a variety of things, including, but not limited to, suicide.
There may also be the matter of Steve's beliefs which make him a target of the media. He certainly has not helped the situation with the company's responses.
Whether other companies deserve to be "hammered" in addition to Apple does little to change the facts as they apply to Apple. This thing is snowballing.
This whole thing is just very unusual for Apple because for once, this was very, very bad PR management. It was pretty clear there was a real issue underneath all this (reproducable hardware problem, explanation for why it slipped through QA, strange concidence with the bumpers in Apple's offering, test mode being disabled in iOS 4 (that would have shown dBm values), alledged responses and actual responses from Apple and Apple Support staff etc etc.).
This eventually just shows that Apple, too, is only a company. They make mistakes, they fuck up from time to time and once in a while, they don't want to admit it.
This is not going to kill Apple, but it is pissing off a lot of people and they should do something about it now, or they will lose money that they may otherwise make.
As a PR professional, I'm just rather stunned by the way Apple has been handling this so far. It's really not a good example coming from an absolute PR and marketing powerhouse.
This whole thing is just very unusual for Apple because for once, this was very, very bad PR management. It was pretty clear there was a real issue underneath all this (reproducable hardware problem, explanation for why it slipped through QA, strange concidence with the bumpers in Apple's offering, test mode being disabled in iOS 4 (that would have shown dBm values), alledged responses and actual responses from Apple and Apple Support staff etc etc.).
This eventually just shows that Apple, too, is only a company. They make mistakes, they fuck up from time to time and once in a while, they don't want to admit it.
This is not going to kill Apple, but it is pissing off a lot of people and they should do something about it now, or they will lose money that they may otherwise make.
As a PR professional, I'm just rather stunned by the way Apple has been handling this so far. It's really not a good example coming from an absolute PR and marketing powerhouse.
It will be interesting to see who speaks and how they handle the problem on Friday.
Here is a news item about what just might be the "smoking gun" internal memo at Apple.
According to that article a congressman is now involved - so ya now its gonna get fixed - and quick - on the cheap.
An analyst claiming to have information about a fix described as "an internal bumper" claimed to resolve the antenna problem. Apparently Apple are hoping to avoid a complete product recall. Even if the "internal bumper" does work, it will only resolve a portion of the antenna problem in my view. I suppose there will be a new round of independent testing to be followed to see whether it improves the situation.
This change actually presented itself in our numeric signal strength reports - there?s more dynamic range in these numbers too. Previously, the absolute lowest value any iPhone would report was -113 dBm. With iOS 4.0.1/4.1, the value is now a shockingly low -121 dBm.
Comments
Thanks for the info RBR and wizard69
Maybe my estimate was a little high but the point still stands. It costs more than 3c for Apple to produce the Bumpers. Maybe more like $5 - and yes I agree they're making an obscene profit on them. If Giving them out free would quiet everyone and make this thing go away I'm sure they would. But with Class Action suits etc. I don't think they have that option.
I'm not an expert but I would not be surprised to find future production runs include a coating for the antenna
As I recall it, the relief sought in the first of the class action lawsuits was a "free" bumper...plus attorney's fees, of course, lest we forget the important part of the lawsuit.
I had seen a posting somewhere or other that there was supposedly a second batch of iPhones that had some sort of non-metallic coating over the metal frame/antenna, but I now believe that posting was either mistaken or simply wild speculation. I suspect that it would be a relatively quick and comparatively easy way to resolve the matter in the long run. Until then, bumpers or covers of some description would appear to be the way to go if there is a problem with an individual iPhone.
There is an interesting article which casts a little bit of light on the iPhone testing protocol used by Apple which suggests that washing hands before touching the device may have failed to duplicate real world conditions. Surely everyone washes their hand before touching the iPhone in the real world...not!
Who knows whether the substance of the article is accurate, but stranger things have been done "in the lab" which caused problems in the real world.
Cheers
As I recall it, the relief sought in the first of the class action lawsuits was a "free" bumper...plus attorney's fees, of course, lest we forget the important part of the lawsuit.
I had seen a posting somewhere or other that there was supposedly a second batch of iPhones that had some sort of non-metallic coating over the metal frame/antenna, but I now believe that posting was either mistaken or simply wild speculation. I suspect that it would be a relatively quick and comparatively easy way to resolve the matter in the long run. Until then, bumpers or covers of some description would appear to be the way to go if there is a problem with an individual iPhone.
There is an interesting article which casts a little bit of light on the iPhone testing protocol used by Apple which suggests that washing hands before touching the device may have failed to duplicate real world conditions. Surely everyone washes their hand before touching the iPhone in the real world...not!
Who knows whether the substance of the article is accurate, but stranger things have been done "in the lab" which caused problems in the real world.
Cheers
Y'know I suspect that Engineers testing the iPhone in the wild had them hidden in protective covers or fake 3gs covers - yeah, it really could be that simple. Yeah right..... still
Ironically if it weren't for companies like gizmodo Apple may have discovered the problem in time to sort it.
That being said, given the supposed outcry. If Android phones aren't outselling the iPhone now, they're not going to for a long time.
This isn't a figment of someone's imagination or incorrect expectations based on a faulty strength reading. It's a technical/design problem that needs to be fixed.
It also seems to be owner related as to whether the issue is a major problem for a particular phone but there are a lot of customers who are reporting dropped calls when holding their phones in a normal manner.
Jobs/Apple need to be more reactive in a consumer-friendly way. Apple should be red-faced over this.
<snip>Ironically if it weren't for companies like gizmodo Apple may have discovered the problem in time to sort it. <snip>
Meaning no offense, I sincerely doubt that. There is no way that the loss of a single test unit held back the product testing. There should have been any number of units in actual testing for everything from user interface to ergonomics, reception and transmission, battery life, GPS and, yes, even drop testing.
I was told by "a reliable source" that the people provided an iPhone 4 for pre-release review (subject to NDA and so on) had to keep it in a secured room that had no windows and so on and so on which might have contributed to some of the early reviews being more like an Apple press release.
This is not the first time that Apple have been "guilty" of not adequately testing a product prior to commitment to volume production and probably will not be the last.
Thanks for the info RBR and wizard69
Maybe my estimate was a little high but the point still stands. It costs more than 3c for Apple to produce the Bumpers. Maybe more like $5 - and yes I agree they're making an obscene profit on them. If Giving them out free would quiet everyone and make this thing go away I'm sure they would. But with Class Action suits etc. I don't think they have that option.
I'm not an expert but I would not be surprised to find future production runs include a coating for the antenna
Here is a link an analyst's report dealing with the growing PR problem which cited a figure of $1 it would cost Apple (per unit) to provide a bumper along with the iPhone 4. His estimate of a full blown recall was a figure big enough to get anyone's attention.
On a separate matter, dealing with the conditions at the Foxconn plant, the author of the below article concludes "One can't help wondering how Steve Jobs, the billionaire Buddhist, manages to square Foxconn's activities with his belief in karma - that what you do in this life will be repaid in the next..."
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz0tgQYRTWW
Here is a link an analyst's report dealing with the growing PR problem which cited a figure of $1 it would cost Apple (per unit) to provide a bumper along with the iPhone 4. His estimate of a full blown recall was a figure big enough to get anyone's attention.
On a separate matter, dealing with the conditions at the Foxconn plant, the author of the below article concludes "One can't help wondering how Steve Jobs, the billionaire Buddhist, manages to square Foxconn's activities with his belief in karma - that what you do in this life will be repaid in the next..."
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz0tgQYRTWW
Why is it only Apple being hammered on Foxconn? They make stuff for everybody.
I don't know that Apple are alone on the Foxconn matter, but they are certainly "front and center" on the matter. I think the timing was such that the suicides, the wage increases, the working conditions and the iPhone 4 problems came together to get Apple more noticed than the others. It may also have something to do with Apple's historic practice of squeezing suppliers very hard while charging higher prices. Who knows.
There was an article I can no longer find which dealt with the contract the workers at Foxconn are required to sign. It basically absolves the company from responsibility for a variety of things, including, but not limited to, suicide.
There may also be the matter of Steve's beliefs which make him a target of the media. He certainly has not helped the situation with the company's responses.
Whether other companies deserve to be "hammered" in addition to Apple does little to change the facts as they apply to Apple. This thing is snowballing.
I don't know that Apple are alone on the Foxconn matter, but they are certainly "front and center" on the matter. I think the timing was such that the suicides, the wage increases, the working conditions and the iPhone 4 problems came together to get Apple more noticed than the others. It may also have something to do with Apple's historic practice of squeezing suppliers very hard while charging higher prices. Who knows.
There was an article I can no longer find which dealt with the contract the workers at Foxconn are required to sign. It basically absolves the company from responsibility for a variety of things, including, but not limited to, suicide.
There may also be the matter of Steve's beliefs which make him a target of the media. He certainly has not helped the situation with the company's responses.
Whether other companies deserve to be "hammered" in addition to Apple does little to change the facts as they apply to Apple. This thing is snowballing.
This whole thing is just very unusual for Apple because for once, this was very, very bad PR management. It was pretty clear there was a real issue underneath all this (reproducable hardware problem, explanation for why it slipped through QA, strange concidence with the bumpers in Apple's offering, test mode being disabled in iOS 4 (that would have shown dBm values), alledged responses and actual responses from Apple and Apple Support staff etc etc.).
This eventually just shows that Apple, too, is only a company. They make mistakes, they fuck up from time to time and once in a while, they don't want to admit it.
This is not going to kill Apple, but it is pissing off a lot of people and they should do something about it now, or they will lose money that they may otherwise make.
As a PR professional, I'm just rather stunned by the way Apple has been handling this so far. It's really not a good example coming from an absolute PR and marketing powerhouse.
This whole thing is just very unusual for Apple because for once, this was very, very bad PR management. It was pretty clear there was a real issue underneath all this (reproducable hardware problem, explanation for why it slipped through QA, strange concidence with the bumpers in Apple's offering, test mode being disabled in iOS 4 (that would have shown dBm values), alledged responses and actual responses from Apple and Apple Support staff etc etc.).
This eventually just shows that Apple, too, is only a company. They make mistakes, they fuck up from time to time and once in a while, they don't want to admit it.
This is not going to kill Apple, but it is pissing off a lot of people and they should do something about it now, or they will lose money that they may otherwise make.
As a PR professional, I'm just rather stunned by the way Apple has been handling this so far. It's really not a good example coming from an absolute PR and marketing powerhouse.
It will be interesting to see who speaks and how they handle the problem on Friday.
Here is a news item about what just might be the "smoking gun" internal memo at Apple.
It will be interesting to see who speaks and how they handle the problem on Friday.
Here is a news item about what just might be the "smoking gun" internal memo at Apple.
According to that article a congressman is now involved - so ya now its gonna get fixed - and quick - on the cheap.
According to that article a congressman is now involved - so ya now its gonna get fixed - and quick - on the cheap.
An analyst claiming to have information about a fix described as "an internal bumper" claimed to resolve the antenna problem. Apparently Apple are hoping to avoid a complete product recall. Even if the "internal bumper" does work, it will only resolve a portion of the antenna problem in my view. I suppose there will be a new round of independent testing to be followed to see whether it improves the situation.
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10807...exclusive.html
Hey ya engineers:
This change actually presented itself in our numeric signal strength reports - there?s more dynamic range in these numbers too. Previously, the absolute lowest value any iPhone would report was -113 dBm. With iOS 4.0.1/4.1, the value is now a shockingly low -121 dBm.
Hiiiii Friend !!!
Can you suggest me about Apple new product.
Damdama Lake