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A Look Inside Apple's Wireless Testing Facilities
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It's in both the original post of this thread and the linked Engadget article. Your problem was that you either can't or won't read them. Try again.
I thought this was the coolest part of the press conference!
Your not kidding, also we got to see a bit of what is inside apple, that is some impressive engineering for sure.
This really doesn't tell us anything when all factors are considered.
The fact that the iPhone 4 had unprecedented demand prior to and after launch, and that the phone has been out for less than 30 days (implying that the potential return rate can theoretically-though not likely-reach 100%), makes 1.7% seem less impressive.
We also have to weigh public knowledge of the issue. Prior to the mainstream media running with the story (Consumer Reports certainly represents the turning point in terms of public awareness), it is very likely that many users who experienced signal attenuation were casually blaming ATT and not even considering that it could be the phone. Without a reason to blame Apple or their phones, such consumers would be unlikely to return the phone (at least not immediately) or call AppleCare.
This also brings us to an important question: what time interval does this figure correspond to? Was the return rate 1.7% for the month of June? June 24th-July 1st? July 8th? We also have no idea what the return rate was for the 3GS 3 weeks after launch. Perhaps all iPhone launches are met with low initial return rates, and have an increasingly greater return rate as the launch of the next generation approaches. This scenario is both reasonably plausible (who wants an older model phone?) and would account for the difference in numbers we saw.
None of this means that the phone is useless for everyone, of course. I'm sure that for most users the phone works perfectly. However, I've had signal attenuation happen in my hand with a friend's 4 (tragically, that day, his fingers were for some reason causing even MORE attenuation than mine). My 3GS has never had the problem, and I am an intransigent believer in using my iPhone without a case.
And you know better than them, unless we saw different video they new what they where doing, and thought it was a problem they took a chance on it because the design was something people would like.
I for one have no issues with the problem, so its not perfect so what, the phone is a piece of art, and anyone who thinks its not, is in their right to take it back like the songs says, take it back get your money and go get an Evo, that should make your life better. Or stick with the 3GS either way, I go with Steve on this one and say, designed won out over some engineering but then we are not buying Dells here are we.
$100 million dollar test facility or not, Apple KNEW about the issue before launch. Cannot understand why people aren't seeing this.
Never before have Apple made a 'case' or 'case-like' accessory for the iPhone, despite the enormous potential of the 3rd party case market.
So now with the iPhone 4 release they have 'bumpers' ready to roll that cover the exact piece of the phone causing reception problems. Coincidence? I think not.
This was NOT an attempt to cash in on the case market. It does very little to protect the phone, as has been shown on many online videos.
What it does is mask a problem Apple already knew existed, making Job's 22 days assertion yesterday a little disingenuous to say the least.
Never before have Apple made a 'case' or 'case-like' accessory for the iPhone, despite the enormous potential of the 3rd party case market.
So now with the iPhone 4 release they have 'bumpers' ready to roll that cover the exact piece of the phone causing reception problems. Coincidence? I think not.
This was NOT an attempt to cash in on the case market. It does very little to protect the phone, as has been shown on many online videos.
What it does is mask a problem Apple already knew existed, making Job's 22 days assertion yesterday a little disingenuous to say the least.
Don't forget that FCC requires the antenna to be done in a specific way, they have to also work their engineering magic writhing goverment laws.
I was going to say the same thing. You don't have to dig too deep to prove that guy wrong. lol.
You are probably right but I can't see a facility like that be used for just one series of products. They have to test the entire Apple product line from Macs to mobiles in there to really get good use out of it.
My guess is this EM testing place is in the alleged secret east bay Apple campus that holds a bunch of servers, prototyping rooms and very high concept things they can't fit in Cupertino.
Folks allude it is somewhere between Fremont and San Jose. They don't even have the Apple logo anywhere for public view. Been told, to the uninformed, it looks just like a warehouse.
'Cause Steve said show. Like all great men in history, his whims and intuition overrides any logic or reason. When you are at that high of a game, there is no degree for it cause you can see life transparently.
They are too busy quoting Apple tripe. Ever see the Simpson episode where the Beef Council comes to Lisas school and show a film on the merits of beef slaughter, and at the end feed the kids fresh tripe?
Many of the posters here remind me of Ralph Wiggom, as he eats the triple, quoting from the movie just shown.
Oh yes, this is just like what Apple showed today
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bps-xbo8wnA&feature=related
Down the hallway is one of the saucers shot down at Roswell. I think they are the seventh company to get a crack at reverse engineering after Intel gave up back in 1998. Hope they don't try to reverse the power flow on the central disk like Olsen did at DEC in the 70s. I think that building in Cambridge is still sealed for another decade!
I kind of want to make an iPhone game out of this. You play as Jason Chen running around from shady test chamber to shady test chamber, avoiding falling into spike pits while also trying to reproduce the signal issue. You only have a limited amount of time to reproduce the signal problem, as a killer Robo Steve Jobs with laser beam eyes is chasing after you. Avoid the falls, reproduce the issue, upload it to YouTube and escape the facilities before it's too late!
Who wants to buy me a dev license? Lol. Also I only kind of know Qbasic, Pascal, VB, HTML and Javascript. So Objective C? Hmmm. But I do know Lightwave and Photoshop. Any takers? Haha!
Make it a Flash game. The irony would overwhelm any fanboy playing it.
and by where you mean the test van they stated they used to drive around everywhere and test the phone jackass?
That is THE coolest room in the world. Makes you wonder what else they have behind closed doors in Cupertino.
1. It might look "cool" to some and might feel even cooler when Apple mention a random large amount of money, singing to the choir who are already easily wowed by shiny, but they're designing 'phones. They should have a test chamber.
It'd be like walking into a restaurant and the owner giving you a tour of the sink. Good. They have a sink. You need to use the sink as part of a hygiene routine, but you're not going to guarantee cleanliness just because everyone washes his hands. "Oh, wow, they have sinks, they couldn't have caused the food poisoning!" would be a horribly unsound argument.
2. The problem isn't that signals can be attenuated if you put your hand near/on the antenna. Anyone in the first year of any sort of analog electrical engineering study will have a grasp of that, and mobile 'phones have been designed with that problem in mind for nigh on 30 years. The problems are (a) the likelihood of proximity of hand to antenna position; (b) the amount of insulation between antenna and hand. You don't need a $100,000,000 lab to find this out, just one left handed person operating the phone on the move without a phone condom.
IOW, one day with any x-hander of Good Character[tm] who is able to sign an NDA would have been a very good investment for Apple.
3. The low return rate is misleading. In early weeks you are going to get a lower rate because you're selling more to fans than people going through their normal upgrade cycle, and fans have higher tolerance levels. What is more, Apple have been making unique promises: a software upgrade would fix the problem; a conference will be hosted to discuss other solutions; returns without restocking fee. All these are (yes, including the final one!) more likely to make people hold onto their 'phone for a while longer despite the troubles, for they are reassured that they have many alternatives.
The iPhone 4 is, by today's mobile phone standards, a fairly decent phone with an awful antenna position. Jobs could have left it at the "we're not perfect" rather than set up the hilarious site which might as well have a flashing marquee, "All surfaces are covered with millions of bacteria. Not just ours. So if we cause food poisoning, everyone does. And this irrelevant and tenuous argument is why you can't class action us."
It'd be like walking into a restaurant and the owner giving you a tour of the sink. Good. They have a sink. You need to use the sink as part of a hygiene routine, but you're not going to guarantee cleanliness just because everyone washes his hands. "Oh, wow, they have sinks, they couldn't have caused the food poisoning!" would be a horribly unsound argument.
2. The problem isn't that signals can be attenuated if you put your hand near/on the antenna. Anyone in the first year of any sort of analog electrical engineering study will have a grasp of that, and mobile 'phones have been designed with that problem in mind for nigh on 30 years. The problems are (a) the likelihood of proximity of hand to antenna position; (b) the amount of insulation between antenna and hand. You don't need a $100,000,000 lab to find this out, just one left handed person operating the phone on the move without a phone condom.
IOW, one day with any x-hander of Good Character[tm] who is able to sign an NDA would have been a very good investment for Apple.
3. The low return rate is misleading. In early weeks you are going to get a lower rate because you're selling more to fans than people going through their normal upgrade cycle, and fans have higher tolerance levels. What is more, Apple have been making unique promises: a software upgrade would fix the problem; a conference will be hosted to discuss other solutions; returns without restocking fee. All these are (yes, including the final one!) more likely to make people hold onto their 'phone for a while longer despite the troubles, for they are reassured that they have many alternatives.
The iPhone 4 is, by today's mobile phone standards, a fairly decent phone with an awful antenna position. Jobs could have left it at the "we're not perfect" rather than set up the hilarious site which might as well have a flashing marquee, "All surfaces are covered with millions of bacteria. Not just ours. So if we cause food poisoning, everyone does. And this irrelevant and tenuous argument is why you can't class action us."
There is no way Apple didn't know this. All phones have problem (a) which is what Apple focuses on while trying divert attention to the fact that only the iPhone has problem (b) to any significant degree.
I do find the misdirection rather impressive, though. It takes a certain amount of balls.
You say that even though they have a photo of a person holding a cell phone in a chair inside one of the testing chambers? You are the type of onlinetards that are turning the internet into a useless stream of ones and zeros. You still describe the device as defective even though only 0.55 percent of users report problems to Apple. Do you know how many companies out there wish they had a .55% failure rate with customers in early adoption of a product? I have yet to meet an actual person that is unhappy with the phone. If anyone thinks its bad on this website, check out the onlinetards trolling the political and news websites. Pretty scary out here in the anonymous ether.
It's up to 21 now.
How could any rational being spin this in a negative light?I don't "lol" at them. They scare me. They shouldn't be allowed out of the cellar.