Category: Companies

More problems with the new iPhone 4

More problems with the new iPhone 4

I can attest to occasionally experiencing this problem. It is rather intermittent for me and I can mostly control the problem by not moving the phone from my ear during the conversation.

This is a little frustrating. I get the antenna being affected by my hand but this proximity sensor problem is just bad engineering (either software or hardware).

My new iPhone4 – me too!

My new iPhone4 – me too!

My thoughts on my new iPhone 4. I just received it yesterday from FedEx (it was fun watching the FedEx package being tracked from China through Hong Kong through Anchorage through Indianapolis and then to Loveland, OH where it was routed to me). I received it one day ahead of Apple’s expected revised delivery date.

I say “revised” because AT&T and Apple screwed up and missed my first delivery date.  The unit was supposed to ship on July 2 but they updated their date on July 3 to say that it was going to ship a week or so later. I was upset and I called Apple – the very polite and professional rep apologized but couldn’t change the ship date. He did give me a bumper as a consolation gift – good thing too as it turns out.

Like others on the web, I can easily see a degradation of the signal by holding the phone with my left hand.

I wanted to create a video of my experience. Unfortunately, I now understand why most of the videos on the web are so poor – it is really hard to record this experience due to the relatively small signal strength indicator, the very reflective screen, and the fact that you have to physically hold the phone in order to see the problem – you can’t just lay it on a table.

So this post turns into me saying “me too” which, I acknowledge, is pretty boring.

I have slightly larger than normal hands. I also used to be an athlete and my hands are very strong. Due to this, it is quite likely the pad of my hand below my thumb, is larger than most people.  According to the site, we live in INTERESTING TIMES (thanks for the image), this muscle group is the Adductor pollicis, Flexor pollicis brevis, and Abductor pollicis brevis.

When I hold the phone in my right hand, the signal strength is full bars. When I switch the phone to my left hand (still standing in exactly the same place), the number of bars drops over the course of about 5-10 seconds. It drops to virtually be flat line.

I don’t need to hold it tightly, the phenomenon happens in a very lose grip. In fact, my grip can be so loose that if I rotate my hand, the phone will fall out (I did this over a sofa to prove it to myself). I know that other bloggers have suggested that you need to hold it with a death grip, “Kung Fu” grip, or in an awkward Twister style contortion. This appears to be implying that it is inconvenient to hold the phone in the offending way. This is not the case for me, it is a casual grip in the most natural holding position possible. I am assuming that this difference could be the size of the pad of my hand, as I said above.

I have no idea if this will cause a dropped call.  I haven’t had the phone long enough for this to be truly tested.

I know that Apple says this is a software bug. This is pure spin and, forgive my vulgarity, it is pure bullshit. Even if the code was misrepresenting the signal strength in the bars, it is still changing that representation with the position of my hand. This means that it is not software related by environmental.

So, am I so upset that I am returning the phone?  No! It is still the best phone on the market and definitely the best phone on the AT&T network (I am forced to be on this lousy network due a corporate contract with my employer). I will probably have to enclose the phone in some kind of case, something that I have not done for the previous phones that I have owned. I don’t like cases as they exaggerate the size of the phone in my pocket.  I will try to find the thinnest case that I can find.

The iPhone 4 is a dramatic step forward in usability and speed compared to my old iPhone 3G. It is wicked fast and responds to my touches and swipes with a level of fluidity that I would never have expected. It is simply a joy to use.

Members of my family own the various Android phones. They currently are envious of my new iPhone 4 and if the iPhone 4 was available on the Verizon network, they both would trade in their Android phones for a new iPhone 4.

I know that Apple is holding a press conference tomorrow and supposedly this issue will be discussed.  I await their honesty with baited breath! My opinion of Apple for perpetuating this spin has dropped considerably. They should have owned up to it already and I am disappointed that they tried to play the spin game. I can almost guarantee that there were some engineers at Apple that knew that the ‘software bug’ ploy was bullshit (there are news reports that this may be true).  If I can come to the conclusion in 3 minutes of testing, surely they could have come to the same conclusion after a day or two of testing.

While I couldn’t do a video of my own, CNET did one that was pretty consistent with what I was trying to do. They have better production tools than I own. The only difference is that I wanted to hold the phone with my left hand, show the degradation, and then switch it to my right hand to show it pop back up.  They say in their video that it takes a minute – my testing shows about 5-10 seconds.

UPDATE:
I just saw this on the Wall Street Journal:

Apple engineers were aware of the risks associated with the iPhone 4’s new antenna design as early as a year ago, but Steve Jobs liked the design it so much that Apple went ahead with its development, said a person familiar with the matter.

The company kept such a shroud of secrecy over the new phone’s development that the device didn’t get the kind of real-world testing that would have exposed such problems in phones by other manufacturers, said people familiar with the matter.

Apple’s iPhone 4 has been dogged by reports of antenna-reception problems since its launch last month.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704682604575369311876558240.html?mod=djemalertNEWS

The Apple is spinning

The Apple is spinning

Apple has recently put out an open letter explaining that they have made a mistake in calculating the signal strength bars on their hit product, the iPhone (all versions up to the latest iPhone 4). I am glad that they Apple code developers have stumbled on this bug and are producing a fix. We all know that there are a few more software bugs in every product, so it is no surprise that Apple has a bug in this portion of their code.

But, is that really the fix? No.

All wireless devices need antennas.  If you are as old as I am, there is a chance that your first mobile phone was a “bag phone” or a “car installed phone”. These phones were massive and required a car or, at least, a briefcase to carry them around. The towers were so far dispersed that you needed a BIG antenna that was putting out mega-wattage to reach them. Putting that antenna up to your head would almost certainly turn your brain to scrambled eggs in a couple of weeks or so. These monsters were also analog and all you could do was talk on them (no texting – how in the world did we survive?).

Technology continued and the infrastructure improved. More towers and better communication technology developed. Analog turned to digital and everything got smaller. Also, people got tired of that stupid stick coming out of the top of their phone so the designers put the stick inside the phone (and not on top).  However, there is one thing that didn’t change – the physics of transmitting energy through the air still requires an antenna. The unfortunate thing is that the bigger the antenna (within reason) the better reception that you get. So Apple did good by putting the antenna into a metal strip that surrounds the phone.

If you are old enough, you may remember “rabbit ears” on your TV set. My job as a young brother was to stand beside the TV and hold the rabbit ears in the perfect pose so that my big brother (who would beat me up if I didn’t comply) could watch ABC’s “Wide World of Sports”. My body touching the antenna improved or hurt the reception of the TV based on where I touched it and how I stood. I stood in some pretty awkward positions in order to avoid my brother’s wrath.

So, when you hold any mobile phone with the antenna carefully hidden inside, your sweaty hands and your big old head are affecting that antenna to some degree. With the iPhone 4, you are making physical contact with that antenna so you are more likely to affect the signal – that is simply physics.

Apple is changing their software so you will be less aware of the issue and stop your damn complaining. They aren’t fixing the root cause; they just don’t want you to be aware of the problem anymore. This is the nature of spin – nothing really changes but your “perception” of the problem is different. If you don’t like it, take the phone back and buy an Android (which has the same problem just not as noticeable).

The issue is even more aggravated because the iPhone is only available on AT&T’s lousy network. Any time you screw with that signal, you will have problems. Since you so rarely have a good signal from AT&T, losing a little bit because you have sweaty hands and are touching the phone in it’s “special parts” just adds frustration. Apple would solve a lot of these problems by just signing a deal with Verizon.

Banking problem: 5 rules for a possible solution

Banking problem: 5 rules for a possible solution

Even though the economy is slowly starting to recover from the excesses of spending of the George W. Bush administration (and the equally complicitous Congress), we are still far from out of the woods. The economy is in pain, in addition to the overspending, due to poor financial market regulation which destroyed several top-notch financial firms such as Lehman Brothers (who also appeared to break some standard accounting laws and best practices). The government responded to help these big institutions because they were “too big to fail.”

Let’s face it – there should be no such thing as “too big to fail.” Most of us work for companies that are not in that category. If our employers screw up and the company goes down the tubes then we will individually hurt and perhaps the micro-economy around that company will hurt a bit but for the most part the US GDP won’t even see the speed bump. This is the way that it should be – screw up and fail then just pick yourself up and get on with life.

“Too big to fail” simply stinks of a type of monopoly. I know that monopoly prevention is usually about consumer rights and price gouging, but is this that far from where we are now? Isn’t consumer price gouging exactly what we just went through with the TARP program?  I know that my taxes feel like I am getting gouged! This is especially true when I know that I am paying way too much in taxes and that still doesn’t cover what the US government spends! If it is a choice between taxing me more and the US Government (and the state governments) spending more, than I know the choice that I want to make – cut the damn spending!

So what is my suggestion?

The FDIC was nice enough to give us a list of banks here. The first thing that I see is there are some BIG banks! How can these not be monopolistic when they are that much larger than banks that are ranked just 10 places below them.  We need some sanity here.

  1. No bank in the top 100 largest banks can be larger than double the size of the next smallest bank.
  2. No bank in the top 100 largest banks can be more than five times larger than a bank that is ranked 10 spots below it.
  3. No bank in the top 100 largest banks can be more than ten times larger than a bank that is ranked 20 spots below it.
  4. No bank in the top 100 largest banks can be more than twenty times larger than a bank that is ranked 40 spots below it.
  5. The top 100 banks combined size cannot exceed double the combined size of the banks ranked 101-500.
  6. No FDIC insured bank can have more than 10% of its ownership by a non-US entity.

Yes, I know that the title of this article only says 5 rules but the list has 6 rules. The last rule is simply to reduce our banking exposure to undue influence by foreign nationals. We need to realize that our banking and financial systems is just as much of a strategic US asset as our defense contractors. We want the decisions of our strategic institutions to be governed by good business intentions and not the political aspirations of a foreign body.

Because of all of this re-arrangement, we would have to do this with plenty of warning. I would suggest that the law wouldn’t take effect for 5 years after signing to give the banks time to adjust. Also, in the first 5 years after the law is in effect (years 6-10 after signing), the penalty should simply be a 1% fine for the amount of out of compliance the bank was in e.g. if a bank was too large by $1B than the fine would by $10M. After the first decade, a bank would be taken over by a government agency to accelerate their divestitures, existing management and board of directors would be fired (and forbidden to run a bank for 10 years), and then new management would be installed by the shareholders.

There would also need to be a grace period of perhaps 3 years if banks ranked lower than the bank in violation decreased their size by more than 10% in a year and that caused the non-compliance. We cannot punish one institution due to the acts of another. However, we can require them to adapt to the current situation within a reasonable time, I suggest 3 years.

What would this do for the financial institutions?

The first thing that would likely happen is that the banks below 500 would likely start to get bought up pretty rapidly by the banks that are 101-500.Also, the top 100 banks would start to divest portions of their business to other banks (or create new entities) so that they could balance out. It definitely would mean that the top 10 banks would get smaller relative to the next 20 banks. That is the point, they would no longer be too big to fail. While we wouldn’t want them to fail, we also wouldn’t be on the hook as taxpayers to fix their screw-ups.

With the built-in delays and grace periods, it would probably take 20 years to get to a better balance. That is okay. In the words of some great philosopher: haste makes waste. It took us several decades to get the current mess that we are in and if we try to adjust too quickly, we will screw it up.

I know that there will be a lot of nay-sayers that think this won’t work or some other way will work better. I am sure there are good ideas out there but any idea that still concentrates wealth in the hands of a dozen corporations is simply not a solution to the core problem. Those suggestions are only to take care of a problem that presented itself already – in other words they are a band-aid to an existing cut. My suggestion is that we know that injuries and mistakes will happen in the future (banks will always fail) but let’s not get in trouble as a nation because of the problem.

RANT! How dumb are the oil companies?

RANT! How dumb are the oil companies?

I am sure that you have heard of the current oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.  If you haven’t, here is a link – please come back after you have caught up with current events.

I am just aghast at how stupid these companies are. Current reports are that they didn’t install an “acoustic switch” on the well. From NewsInferno:

The Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded last week was not outfitted with a safety device that might have prevented the massive oil spill now nearing the U.S. Gulf Coast. The device, known as an acoustic switch, is a last-resort protection against underwater spills, and is required by regulators in Norway and Brazil. Unfortunately, the U.S. has no such regulation for oil wells operating off of its shores.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, an acoustic switch is a remote control device that a crew can use in an attempt to trigger an underwater valve that shuts down a well that’s damaged. The switch is meant as a last resort, as the primary shut-off systems almost always work on wells when they are out of control. It can be triggered from a lifeboat if an oil platform has to be evacuated.

According to the Journal, U.S regulators did consider requiring the acoustic switch on offshore wells, but drilling companies resisted because of its cost, and questions about its effectiveness. To be fair, the switches have never been tested in real-world situations, only simulations. U.S. regulators also maintain they are prone to causing unnecessary shutdowns.

Are these guys just plain stupid.  Didn’t they see Jurasic Park where the pessimistic mathematician, Ian Malcolm, talks about if something can go wrong then it will go wrong?

BP AND ITS KIN SHOULD HAVE BACKUP SYSTEMS FOR THE BACKUP SYSTEMS THAT ARE BACKING UP THE BACKUP SYSTEMS.  IF THEY DON’T HAVE 6 FOOLPROOF WAYS OF TURNING OFF A BROKEN WELL THEN THEY SHOULDN’T DRILL!

The problem with American entrepreneurship today

The problem with American entrepreneurship today

You know it is bad when one of the greatest founders of a technology company says the following (from a Fortune interview):

It must be private, never go public. There will be no upside investors other than me and the employees. . . . I hope we can pull it off under those conditions because I would be thrilled to lead another group of smart engineers, without all the crap that goes into running a company today. I just don’t want Congress telling me how much I should be paid or firing me. I want to pretend I am back in the 1980s again.

Scott McNealy – co-founder of Sun Microsystems