Absolutely right...and probably the best comment I've seen here in the past 2 weeks.
Pure speculation here but I believe the IP4 had it's fair amount of field testing. I'm working in product development for a bread making industry and new innovation products can easily take up to one year to develop and being launched...so with all the innovation technology in the Iphone 4, this product is not one that can be developed in a few weeks and get rushed to market. It's being on the drawing board for quite sometime now and the concept of the external antenna is not something someone at Apple had decided to implement overnight.
The original iPhone revolutionized smartphones and at this time is considered to be one of the best if not the best smartphone on the market (3GS) and I don't think Apple would have jeopardized that, Competitors are there and they are also making great products so Apple have way too much to loose in that story...this also forces me to believe that it's not possible that they always tested the phone in a case. If it's true, that means they are absolutely not serious in developing such products (especially one with external antenna) or highly incompetent. I also recall seeing on a Mac forum somewhere that in the IP4 development, they also had a plan B with a less major upgrade to the phone in case something major would have gone wrong in the last development phases of the actual IP4...which tells how serious they are in product development.
Having a skin to antenna contact or bridging the 2 antennae together...come on it's Basic RF 101 and people here seriously think they never saw that coming or SJ said launch that and f..ck you customers. It's not Apple and their highly praised customer service. The iP4 is being in all media all over the world so as I said, Apple have way too much to loose in this situation. I think they were well aware of the drawbacks of such design right off the bat and they have designed the phone accordingly. My opinion is that it's more probable that the actual issues of calls dropping are software related or related to the manufacturing process rather than a design flaw...of course not being an antenna expert, I might be wrong...
No matter Apple fanboys or haters, Apple is a serious company in the mobile phone business and I don't think they would have done such a dumb move. If they were stupid, dumb, incompetent or whatever haters like to qualify Apple, they would not have that much success in business and their stock would not be at 250$
