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Steve Jobs denies iP4 reception issues!

adam.posey said:
It is (mostly) a software issue. The reality is that putting your hand in front of any antenna is going to have the potential to interrupt it. For those of us with satellite radio the experience of driving through a dirt road where the sky isn't easily visible is maddening. These are realities of science, not Apple's fault.

What is Apple's fault is how the phone's software reacts to that interference. That's all I'm allowed to say, but trust me, the terrible behavior people have been reporting: It's a software problem.
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Interesting first post, especially the bit about "that's all I'm allowed to say." I was under the impression that all Apple employees are banned from using Macrumors?

If you're the guy that's willing to buck the company line...we at least appreciate your input on the antenna issue.
 
Lol, I couldn't resist a quick Photoshop job:

scaled.php
 
rfbandit said:
Yeah, I was surprised by that as well. It looks like he sent it from a computer, the disclaimer on the bottom is not in my signature, so I'm assuming it's in his. EDIT: This message is automatically added to all emails sent through my company's exchange server, it is not my signature on my iPhone, so I assumed it came from him. I can't find a way to view headers in my webmail exchange server access. Once I find a way, I'll copy/paste the headers.
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I once sent Steve Jobs an e-mail and replied back with just that single message. No sent from my iPhone or iPad.. Just a plain ol' message. It had also shocked me that his infamous signature hadn't appeared.
:apple:
 
It means the issue is fully understood. The fix is understood. And the fix is imminent. For him to joke with "tuned" says he happy about it.
 
Hello,

I new here and this is my first post. Let me just say that none of you know me from Adam and I understand if you choose not to receive this message. Let me get on with it by saying that I am very familiar with issues such as this. I also own a iPhone 4 and have experienced the issue personally. However, I would caution anyone who thinks that this problem is absolutely a hardware issue not to jump to that conclusion prematurely. I'll try to briefly explain why.

An iPhone isn't much different from your typical electronic gadget these days. Underneath that beautifully designed exterior, or "mechanicals" you have a processor, PCB, memory, antenna ect. All of the "hardware" that makes the device do things we enjoy so much. That hardware is controlled by software that sits on top of a kernel and driver layer that acts as an interface. Because the antenna is DESIGNED to be in contact with the user, and there is no way it wasn't, then you can bet Apple has done a lot of extensive testing of this product to ensure this kind of problem doesn't exist IN HARDWARE. By that I mean there are specific test cases that would test the performance of the hardware against these kinds of conditions. But let's dig a little deeper into what's going on. Bear with me as I'm trying not to get very technical with the language.

The signal comes in and is detected by the antenna. This signal is being amplified and then converted from anologue to digital and passes to the processor. But there are other things to consider like interference. If interference is also allowed in then it can do a lot of things that could cause issues like what we see here. So ideally, you filter out the noise/interference which doesn't necessarily have to come from outside the device so that your signal to noise ratios is acceptable. Filters are not always hardware either. If there is a driver issue or problem in the OS itself, it could easily cause problems like this. Now I'm not saying that I know for a fact something like this is going on. Only that it's possible. Remember, noise is always there. Other RF signals, internal components or even from contact with your hard! A bad design can do this. But so too can software or drivers that are not properly written to handle the noise. Like a bad tuning algorithim for instance.

So with all that babble I just wrote in mind, Steve may really be hinting to a fix. The bottom line is we just don't know. What I do know from experience is it's highly unlikely that if this was a true HW issue that any of us would have our iPhone 4's as Apple would certainly have known about this before release and redesigned. The risk to their brand name is too great otherwise. Now considering that the launch date was approaching, it's also possible that the pressure to get product out was such that they figured the risk of deploying the device with a bug was within acceptable limits and that a quick software update to address the problem would be forth coming soon enough after launch to make this a non issue.
 
Veritas&Equitas said:
Interesting first post, especially the bit about "that's all I'm allowed to say." I was under the impression that all Apple employees are banned from using Macrumors?

If you're the guy that's willing to buck the company line...we at least appreciate your input on the antenna issue.
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I'm not an Apple employee. And I won't say how I've come to know what I know because

(1) My knowledge is extremely vague. Extremely. How many times it was filtered before it got to me is.. well.. hard to tell, frankly. But a number of my programmer and electrical engineer friends have been able to at least say: "That sounds pretty plausible." and so I trust the information.

(2) I've been asked not to repeat specifics. Just as it was filtered to me, it was filtered to you. I'm just simply not qualified to speak authoritatively on this issue.

You have an outline from me that I learned AFTER i made my YouTube video.

The phone handles bars differently and it has some new firmware techniques for dealing with signal. Interrupting that signal causes this bug to kick in and you get the behavior that you see where it goes looking for new towers, etc.,

This is not really hidden information, Walt Mossberg has said just as much (you just have to read between the lines).
 
br0adband said:
In other words:

Defective by design...
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In other words when a certain Apple engineer lost his phone in a bar Apple went into lockdown mode and didn't allow the phone out for testing without covers (or really at all). The issue might have been discovered at that point, but you can all kind of thank Gizmodo for helping to make sure this bug was never caught in time to patch it before release.

The testing environment before that event wouldn't have shown this. Apple's campus has a great signal, enough that the bug wouldn't show up because the hand wouldn't cause enough interference to make it happen. In "real world" testing covers were used and so direct contact between the hand and the phone never, really, occurred and so this behavior couldn't be discovered. Presumably Apple would have done some non-cover testing but Giz helped put a stop to that.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 1.6; en-gb; Dell Streak Build/Donut) AppleWebKit/528.5+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.2 Mobile Safari/525.20.1)

konfused said:
most of these professional reviewers on youtube are not even able to replicate the issue, they are not holding it properly atleast for the sake of showing that it is dropping, maybe they are scared to make apple angry. This problem exists on all iphone 4s and those who dont have the problem are using bumper or are living in a different world.

Also what steve jobs is saying here is that "there is no reception issue, there is a transmission issue". Whatever there is an issue, so stay tuned till your 14 days are over and then you are stuck with the phone. -- here i completed what steve wanted to say.
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I don't think every iPhone 4 is affected personally as I know some people I trust who aren't having issues on their iP4's and they have no reason to lie about the issue.
 
Sorry for the double post but as a side note.. Jobs is fairly correct.. this phone's design does not encourage the kind of full fisted grasp/clutch that people are using to set off this bug intentionally which is another reason it's not showing up so much in testing for people who aren't looking for it.

Case in point — before this bug was discovered people talked about the great reception the phone had. Suddenly people seem to think that the sky is falling because you can, with a kung-fu death grip, cut off much of the signal to the phone (assuming you're in a place where signal was already kind of flaky.)
 
isuryan83 said:
Must mean an ios update. Good news!!
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???


This mail states clear: "There is no issue!" - When there is no issue, why do you all expect apple to fix something that is not broken?


Maybe the correct mail should be:

Yes, there is an issue - but we can fix this with an iOS/Baseband update. Stay tuned!

I really like Apple & the Apple products - but permanently denying any kind of problems will break the neck of this company! Apple, be honest to your customers and they will stay with you even if something goes wrong.

Greetings,
MP
 
paepcke said:
???


This mail states clear: "There is no issue!" - When there is no issue, why do you all expect apple to fix something that is not broken?


Maybe the correct mail should be:

Yes, there is an issue - but we can fix this with an iOS/Baseband update. Stay tuned!

I really like Apple & the Apple products - but permanently denying any kind of problems will break the neck of this company! Apple, be honest to your customers and they will stay with you even if something goes wrong.

Greetings,
MP
Click to expand...

Others have probably done this but with Jobs you have to translate. He's extremely literal.

"There is no reception issue" means that the phone is receiving signals as intended, it is simply not doing what it is supposed to with those signals and therefor you're experiencing problems.
 
adam.posey said:
In other words when a certain Apple engineer lost his phone in a bar Apple went into lockdown mode and didn't allow the phone out for testing without covers (or really at all). The issue might have been discovered at that point, but you can all kind of thank Gizmodo for helping to make sure this bug was never caught in time to patch it before release.

The testing environment before that event wouldn't have shown this. Apple's campus has a great signal, enough that the bug wouldn't show up because the hand wouldn't cause enough interference to make it happen. In "real world" testing covers were used and so direct contact between the hand and the phone never, really, occurred and so this behavior couldn't be discovered. Presumably Apple would have done some non-cover testing but Giz helped put a stop to that.
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We've been saying that since Wednesday, nice to see some people are now getting up to speed. ;)

And Gizmodo has nothing to do with this because it's of course defective by design, has been since probably the end of February and it was simply too late to do anything about it.

Hence, the bumper which serves zero actual use aside from preventing skin-on-metal contact. Even the tiny volume "buttons" on the bumper don't actually pass through to the metal underneath.

Why people can't see this as the case and Apple's "Band-Aid" is beyond me. At least the bumper ISN'T defective by design... ;)
 
br0adband said:
We've been saying that since Wednesday, nice to see some people are now getting up to speed. ;)

And Gizmodo has nothing to do with this because it's of course defective by design.
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Gizmodo's moment-of-glory by buying that iPhone prevented Apple from doing any further testing in legitimate circumstances. You don't think there's any possibility that a lack of testing might, just maybe, allow for bugs to slip through?

Also I've been up to speed, believe me, you just didn't seem to be. My misunderstanding.

RE: The bumper. If you look at the design one thing it WILL do is raise your phone ever so slightly off of the surface on which it is resting — preventing scratches and micro abrasions from such daily wear and tear. It won't do much to protect your phone from a sudden impact but given the nature of the glass I'd gather that if the impact is too sudden your phone isn't going to survive entirely anyway.
 
adam.posey said:
Sorry for the double post but as a side note.. Jobs is fairly correct.. this phone's design does not encourage the kind of full fisted grasp/clutch that people are using to set off this bug intentionally which is another reason it's not showing up so much in testing for people who aren't looking for it.

Case in point — before this bug was discovered people talked about the great reception the phone had. Suddenly people seem to think that the sky is falling because you can, with a kung-fu death grip, cut off much of the signal to the phone (assuming you're in a place where signal was already kind of flaky.)
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Sorry, but you're wrong. Every single picture of a model holding the iPhone 4 in Apple's press and marketing materials so far has the model holding the iPhone how probably 90% or more of the people that will own one or even use one for a few minutes will hold it - and that's precisely how Steve Jobs is now saying is the wrong way to do it - and the ultimate kicker: Steve Jobs holds it precisely the same way!

As such, once again, this is and has been a known issue for a long long time. I don't need a "Vulcan Death Grip" when a Dim Mak fingertip works even better... :p
 
adam.posey said:
Gizmodo's moment-of-glory by buying that iPhone prevented Apple from doing any further testing in legitimate circumstances.
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How did it?

Apple has to carry out a variety of testing, not just for commercial purposes but also for regulatory reasons - in several different countries.

They also had to test the phone with different network configurations.

The Gizmodo incident should not have had any impact on their ability to test their device. If it did, Apple has serious problems.
 
I reckon it's a software problem. The os isn't allocating enough power to the radios when needed (when signal strength is reduced due to obstruction). Probably a power saving feature.

My h&c hd2 let's you chop and change it's software including the radio separate from the os. One one of them I had reception issues when holding the phone, the bars went down and calls would only last 30 seconds. Now on the latest radio software I get much better signal strength, faster download speeds and calls do not drop any more. Sadly this comes at a loss of battery at a slightly quicker rate ( I went from charging every other night to charging every night).

So its not necessarily a hardware problem as you are all quick to jump on, and it indeed can be a software problem as some of you deem to be impossible.

As much as I hate to agree with the lord of spin, stay tuned (ironic words really considering so many can't stay tuned due to these problems).
 
Wow!

adam.posey said:
Others have probably done this but with Jobs you have to translate. He's extremely literal.

"There is no reception issue" means that the phone is receiving signals as intended, it is simply not doing what it is supposed to with those signals and therefor you're experiencing problems.
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Wow. That IS literal. :D Most people interpret that in a very different way. Steve Jobs words things in such a way that only those literal types of people could really understand; The rest just assume what they think the definition is, is the definition.:rolleyes:
 
adam.posey said:
Gizmodo's moment-of-glory by buying that iPhone prevented Apple from doing any further testing in legitimate circumstances. You don't think there's any possibility that a lack of testing might, just maybe, allow for bugs to slip through?

Also I've been up to speed, believe me, you just didn't seem to be. My misunderstanding.

RE: The bumper. If you look at the design one thing it WILL do is raise your phone ever so slightly off of the surface on which it is resting — preventing scratches and micro abrasions from such daily wear and tear. It won't do much to protect your phone from a sudden impact but given the nature of the glass I'd gather that if the impact is too sudden your phone isn't going to survive entirely anyway.
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I appreciate your thinking but, be honest: do you actually truly believe in any appreciable amount that Apple spent the past 1.5 years working with prototypes of the iPhone 4 all the way from start to finish and now beyond and they never bothered to test skin capacitance and its potential signal-wicking tendency for a device that emits microwave radiation?

Do you really believe that after everything else was all said and done that then, in the last few days of final assembly and commitment that they would THEN decide, "Ok, let's take the case off and run some skin capacitance tests... that's the last hurdle..."

Really?

The FCC wouldn't have tested it using human hands so it's not their fault, either. It's all Apple, from start to finish.

Defective by design...
 
br0adband said:
Sorry, but you're wrong. Every single picture of a model holding the iPhone 4 in Apple's press and marketing materials so far has the model holding the iPhone how probably 90% or more of the people that will own one or even use one for a few minutes will hold it - and that's precisely how Steve Jobs is now saying is the wrong way to do it.

As such, once again, this is and has been a known issue for a long long time. I don't need a "Vulcan Death Grip" when a Dim Mak fingertip works even better... :p
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Every single one of those photos shows them using the iPhone in a wifi situation or in a situation that isn't dependent on cellular connection (such as reading a book).

You certainly do hold the phone differently if you're using it for a wifi-only facetime call.
 
The biggest issue I'm having is iOS4 is killing my battery 10-20% faster than 3.1.3 on my 3GS, even when all running background apps are closed.
 
darkhunter139 said:
Explain to me how touching the antenna has anything to do with software?
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The attenuation may definitely be there when touching that area of the case. However, from a previous job, I learned that modern antenna electronics use "steering" algorithms in software to either switch to different signals or use different areas of a multi-cavity (?) antenna to optimize reception. For this reason, I do believe the fix may be doable in software. I'm not an RF engineer so I can't go deeper.
 
adam.posey said:
Every single one of those photos shows them using the iPhone in a wifi situation or in a situation that isn't dependent on cellular connection (such as reading a book).

You certainly do hold the phone differently if you're using it for a wifi-only facetime call.
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And therein lies the "read between the lines" issue as you pointed out earlier:

Why do you think Wi-Fi is the only acceptable way to use FaceTime? ;)

It ain't a 3G thing, I promise, because 3G can handle the relatively low bitrate stream that FaceTime creates... it only works on Wi-Fi because if you hold the phone the way Apple shows people holding the phone for FaceTime usage, it doesn't work for precisely the reasons those of us are pointing out.

Defective by design...
 
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