8 ms·

High Ground Maneuver (Scott Adams on the iPhone 4 press conference)

227 points by salar 16y ago

jamesbritt 16y ago
But the central question that was in everyone's head before the press conference - "Is the iPhone 4 a dud" - has, well, evaporated. That was never the central question in anybody's head. No one thought the phone was a dud. A more common question was, will Apple own up to making an avoidable design flaw? Look around the Web at the responses to the press conference and decide just what questions have evaporated, and what new ones appeared.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- yarek 16y ago
  No, I think the perceived question in the media and in the largely non-owners of iPhone was exactly whether iPhone 4 was a dud. If Jobs didn't defuse that question, the iPhone sales had a potential of peaking much, much sooner than it will now because new customers would be willing to sit and wait.
- ellyagg 16y ago
  So you're suggesting that the story over the last few days was never about a legitimate gripe, but was all along just eager Apple haters slavering over the prospect of a prostrate Steve Jobs?
  - jamesbritt 16y ago
    No.
  - mmorris 16y ago
    This seems an odd reply to me. I don't think the parent suggests anywhere that there aren't legitimate gripes about the phone, just that it isn't a 'dud'. A dud is something which completely fails to operate - a bomb that doesn't explode, for example. The iPhone 4 has a significant flaw, but many (if not most) people have found it to operate perfectly well. If you look at the testing done at Anandtech, for instance, the new iPhone actually does a better job with a weaker signal. This translates into getting reception in places where it wasn't available before. Obviously, there is also a substantial design flaw in the antenna design, but the phone still operates properly for most people. Even Consumer Reports, who obviously had serious issues with the antenna problem, still rank the iPhone 4 as one of (if not the) best smartphone on the market. That doesn't sound like a dud. P.S. Just to clarify, I think Apple's response throughout this ordeal has been poor, and they obviously made mistakes in testing. But, like the parent post, I just wouldn't call the phone a dud.
    - ellyagg 16y ago
      I'm sure you got my point. The amount of press that this topic has generated is really only warranted if this flaw were a deal breaker, meaning the release was a dud. Given the uptake, and the fact that signal quality for the phone is higher, and the tiny fraction of users affected by this easily manageable quirk, we have to look for some other explanation for the outcry. In the forums that I visit, I've noticed that usernames I associate with being anti-Apple are far more likely to be concerned with Apple striking a suitably guilty tone.
      - mmorris 16y ago
        Ah, I see now. Apologies for the confusion, sometimes the tone of a comment goes straight over my head!
- megablast 16y ago
  I disagree, you must have been reading different stories to me. There was a lot of vitriol directed at Apple, and a lot of people were saying it was a huge problem for them. People are still saying it now. Check out the recent slate article posted here, or techcrunch, or response from HTC/ BB/ Nokia. A lot of people (in the media) do not see this as resolved. I am slowly learning to hate the media all over again.
  - axod 16y ago
    Why? It's a badly designed phone. There's a reason every other cellphone has an internal antenna. Good on people for calling Apple out over the lousy design, failure to test properly, and so far, the failure to take responsibility. If I had bought an iPhone 4, I'd have accepted a refund. Bumpers? case? eugh come on.
    - megablast 16y ago
      The way I see it, they took a chance on a different design, that produces better results most of the time, but has an unfortunate side effect that it causes a problem when held a certain way. The reception problem when holding a phone a particular way happends on lots of phones out there, this was just never relised before. If you were using a Nexus on or bb 9700, you would lose a call and blame it on the network or the lift. Now, you might check how you are holding the phone.
    - ericd 16y ago
      If the vast majority of the people think it's overall a much better phone than the 3GS, is it really a badly designed phone? I don't own one, but the whole antenna thing sounds massively overblown by a press hungry for some controversy. Anandtech went so far as to say that the phone was better overall in marginal reception areas than the 3GS.
      - troystribling 16y ago
        Mine was delivered Friday. One of the first things I did was to try the death grip. To get the signal to degrade I had to hold it in a position essentially embedding in the lower left corner of the phone in my palm while holding it unnaturally tight. Then there was only a single bar loss in signal. Holding the phone in a comfortable left or right handed position had no effect on the signal. If there would have not been the news around it I would have never noticed it. Even the technology press seems to be degenerating to Fox.
tghw 16y ago
Dupe of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1529615 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1529615
SwellJoe 16y ago
Anyone else consider his response to be pretty much exactly the expected level of arrogance and disregard for customers from Steve Jobs?
- YooLi 16y ago
  Out of curiosity, what should he have said to make it not seem like 'arrogance and disregard' to you?
  - SwellJoe 16y ago
    Oh, I dunno...I've really gotta think hard about that...Oh, wait! I've got it: "We're sorry. We made a mistake. We've corrected the design, and will repair/replace devices of impacted customers at no cost." Instead it sounds to me like he was really saying, "Other people make mistakes, and oh, I guess we're kinda like other people, so it's kinda like we might have made a mistake of some sort at some time, too, but not really. Those other phone makers make mistakes, though, you better believe it. Unlike us. We try to never make mistakes. Except maybe this one, whatever puny complaint you were talking about." Seriously, you don't see this as an arrogant response to a legitimate complaint about a very expensive product that is marketed as a superior product? We're talking about a several hundred dollar device, that Apple makes a tremendous profit on throughout the product's life. A good company would take actual responsibility for a flawed design. Apple somehow manages to be treated like a good company, while consistently treating its customers poorly. It's an amazing trick. Maybe it really is hypnosis.
    - Goosey 16y ago
      Not hypnosis, just your friendly neighborhood reality distortion field http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn-YesqzvNk&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn-YesqzvNk&feature=playe...
    - andreyf 16y ago
      How about this: I know about 20 people who have iPhone 4's. None of them have any issues with the antenna, no matter how they hold the phone. This issues is hugely overblown, demonstrated by elementary arithmetic. These issues exist in very few phones, or maybe with very sweaty hands.
yanilkr 16y ago
Over analysis. That might be part of authors line of work, but this reminds me of something my humanities professor talked to some of us, engineers about some time back. Three doctors, a general doctor, an orthopedic doctor and a neuro surgeon are casually talking to each other outside a building. They notice a man walking abnormally, slightly dragging one foot. The General practitioner says, the guy must be shot on the left foot thus causing the behavior. The orthopedic doctor predicts, the guy was born with one foot longer than the other thus explaining the behavior. The neuro surgeon predits, the guy seems to have suffered a stroke in the past and this might be a result of that. Now all of them are curious to know the truth and approach the guy in question. The guy just had his shoe damaged.
abstractbill 16y ago
I really do hate to admit it, but if BP had said "All of the easy sources of oil have been found fifty years ago. If the oil industry stops taking risks, many of you would be out of work in less than a decade. We all want a future of clean energy, but no one sees a way to get there as quickly as we need to. We will do everything we can to clean up the spill, and to make things right with the Gulf economy." then I think I would feel better about the company than I do now.
- prospero 16y ago
  I think casting the spill as the inevitable byproduct of oil exploration, and not the result of carelessness, would be far more harmful to the oil industry in the long run.
  - DLWormwood 16y ago
    > far more harmful to the oil industry in the long run. Given that this is a media driven news cycle type event, a short term fix may be the only thing that could work to deflect criticism. Besides, large corporations are not known for thinking in the long term usually, so your retort does seem a little odd to me. That does raise a question… Does this industry need to be harmed to make further progress elsewhere? (I don’t consider myself much of an eco-sympathizer; I tend to look at oil politics from a more conservative “national sovereignty” angle.)
    - prospero 16y ago
      Besides, large corporations are not known for thinking in the long term usually BP doesn't have to be thinking twenty years out to see the folly of admitting that there is an unavoidable risk in drilling.
  - megablast 16y ago
    Good. We can only hope that the oil industry is damaged by this already, but probably not. Most people just do not care about this stuff.
  - 16y ago
kqr2 16y ago
Is there a list of other language "maneuvers" one can employ?
- teejae 16y ago
  That's the domain of rhetoric. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric
- wallflower 16y ago
  http://usualerror.com/e-book/verbal-aikido/ http://usualerror.com/e-book/verbal-aikido/
- stcredzero 16y ago
  Here is a list of "debate tactics." http://www.johntreed.com/debate.html http://www.johntreed.com/debate.html
sbaqai 16y ago
Something I think that needs to be mentioned is that what was happening to Apple in the media is similar to what happened to Toyota with their acceleration issue a couple of months back. The number of complaints of "unintended acceleration" shot up after it was initially covered in the media. There was no real focus on investigative journalism, or analysis of the actual statistics by news organizations. There was also the whole rigged ABC News broadcast, which they admitted later to faking. Toyota's Recall became the top most reported story in Jan-Feb 2010. And IIRC, as the media hysteria was winding down, the NHTSA concluded the majority of unintended acceleration was driver error. In Apple's case, they had made a weakspot into a visual accent. And Jobs mentioned their algorithms made things appear more dramatic than they were. Both of these things were probably dumb, but dumb-like-the-recessed-headphone-jack (gaffe), not dumb-like-the-Microsoft-Kin (flawed design). The software fix is already out and the hardware will probably get fixed next iteration (perhaps coated?) and isn't a big deal. Yet the media coverage greatly outpaced the issue, and again no mention of statistics or data. There are a lot of parties interested in seeing these reputable companies take a dive. It's great for competitors; but more cynically - its great for hedge fund managers with certain short positions... Reporting misinformation and sensationalizing news for securities price manipulation isn't new, and it's been done to Apple before. From 2006: Aaron Task: Okay. Another stock that a lot of people are focused on right now seems to be Apple. Jim Cramer: Yeah. Apple’s very important to spread the rumor that both Verizon and ATT have decided they don’t like the phone. It’s a very easy one to do because it’s also you want to spread the rumor that’s it not gonna be ready for MAC World. This is very easy ‘cause the people who write about Apple want that story, and you can claim that it’s credible because you spoke to someone at Apple, ‘cause Apple doesn’t – Aaron Task:They’re not gonna comment. They’re not gonna – Jim Cramer: So it’s really an ideal short. Again, if I were a short Apple, I would be working very hard today to get that. The way you would do that is you pick up the phone and you call six trading desks and say, “Listen, I just got off the phone with my contact at Verizon and he has already said, ‘Listen, we’re a Lucky G house. We’re a Samsung house. We’re a Motorola house. There’s no room for Apple. They want too much. We’re not gonna let them in. We’re not gonna let them do what they did to music.’” I think that’s a very effective way to keep a stock down.
- pierrefar 16y ago
zmmmmm 16y ago
> He spoke indisputable truth Scott Adams' problem seems to be that he is living inside the reality distortion field. Part of the whole problem with Jobs' handling of this is that he has repeatedly failed to tell the truth (at very least not the whole truth, but arguably he has lied in an absolute sense). To be specific: Jobs stated that all phones have this flaw. But all phones do not have this flaw. The flaw is that the phone has an antenna that is shorted by the user holding it a normal way. No other phones have this flaw. It is an outright lie. Jobs himself made a big deal on stage about how no other phones have this kind of antenna when he was selling it as a good thing. Now he says that all phones have the same problems that are caused by this unique antenna design. No they don't. It's a lie. The real tactic here is simply to gloss over the truth and hope you get away with it - at the moment I'm not sure whether Jobs has or not.
- othermaciej 16y ago
  If you lose signal, does it actually matter if it's caused by bridging two antennas, or by shielding, or capacitive coupling, or whatever phenomena cause other phones to degrade in signal quality when held? It seems like what really matters is not the specific physical process that causes signal attenuation, but rather (a) how likely are users to run into the problem, relative to other phones; and (b) how severe is the problem, when you do run into it? Harping on the mechanism seems like a way to try to score gotcha points, rather than a genuine concern for users of the device.
  - recoiledsnake 16y ago
    From the Q&A session: >10:43AM Ryan from gdgt: You showed people almost covering the entire phone in their hand, but on the iPhone 4 it can happen with just a touch. Can you explain that difference? Bob: When you touch the phone, you put yourself between the signal and your phone, so when you touch that spot you can attenuate the signal, and if you grip it with your whole hand, you can attenuate it even more. We don't build phones with an antenna on top... >Hmm, that didn't really sound like an answer to us.
    - 16y ago
ryanricard 16y ago
I'm surprised he didn't mention the "Our phone doesn't have a problem," "All phones have this problem" combo as well.
marze 16y ago
In the PR world, there is a saying that "all publicity is good publicity". What about this antenna issue--is all the coverage a net positive for Apple or is this an exception to the "rule"? Just curious to know what others here think.
stcredzero 16y ago
For an example of a backfiring "high ground" maneuver, take a look at Mark Zuckerberg's Hoodie. http://www.switched.com/2010/06/07/mark-zuckerbergs-illuminati-like-hoodie-reveals-facebook-as-the/ http://www.switched.com/2010/06/07/mark-zuckerbergs-illumina... Really, the message he wanted to convey included goals that sounded as lofty as Google's. In short, he seems to want to organize the world's connections in much the same way Google organized much of its HTML information. Why did it backfire? Well, the intent was obvious to Mark, but not so obvious to the audience. http://lesswrong.com/lw/il/hindsight_bias/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/il/hindsight_bias/ Also, a flop sweat during your interview/presentation is a big hurdle to overcome.

227 points by salar 16y ago

But the central question that was in everyone's head before the press conference - "Is the iPhone 4 a dud" - has, well, evaporated. That was never the central question in anybody's head. No one thought the phone was a dud. A more common question was, will Apple own up to making an avoidable design flaw? Look around the Web at the responses to the press conference and decide just what questions have evaporated, and what new ones appeared.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
yarek 16y ago
No, I think the perceived question in the media and in the largely non-owners of iPhone was exactly whether iPhone 4 was a dud. If Jobs didn't defuse that question, the iPhone sales had a potential of peaking much, much sooner than it will now because new customers would be willing to sit and wait.
ellyagg 16y ago
So you're suggesting that the story over the last few days was never about a legitimate gripe, but was all along just eager Apple haters slavering over the prospect of a prostrate Steve Jobs?
- jamesbritt 16y ago
  No.
- mmorris 16y ago
  This seems an odd reply to me. I don't think the parent suggests anywhere that there aren't legitimate gripes about the phone, just that it isn't a 'dud'. A dud is something which completely fails to operate - a bomb that doesn't explode, for example. The iPhone 4 has a significant flaw, but many (if not most) people have found it to operate perfectly well. If you look at the testing done at Anandtech, for instance, the new iPhone actually does a better job with a weaker signal. This translates into getting reception in places where it wasn't available before. Obviously, there is also a substantial design flaw in the antenna design, but the phone still operates properly for most people. Even Consumer Reports, who obviously had serious issues with the antenna problem, still rank the iPhone 4 as one of (if not the) best smartphone on the market. That doesn't sound like a dud. P.S. Just to clarify, I think Apple's response throughout this ordeal has been poor, and they obviously made mistakes in testing. But, like the parent post, I just wouldn't call the phone a dud.
  - ellyagg 16y ago
    I'm sure you got my point. The amount of press that this topic has generated is really only warranted if this flaw were a deal breaker, meaning the release was a dud. Given the uptake, and the fact that signal quality for the phone is higher, and the tiny fraction of users affected by this easily manageable quirk, we have to look for some other explanation for the outcry. In the forums that I visit, I've noticed that usernames I associate with being anti-Apple are far more likely to be concerned with Apple striking a suitably guilty tone.
    - mmorris 16y ago
      Ah, I see now. Apologies for the confusion, sometimes the tone of a comment goes straight over my head!
megablast 16y ago
I disagree, you must have been reading different stories to me. There was a lot of vitriol directed at Apple, and a lot of people were saying it was a huge problem for them. People are still saying it now. Check out the recent slate article posted here, or techcrunch, or response from HTC/ BB/ Nokia. A lot of people (in the media) do not see this as resolved. I am slowly learning to hate the media all over again.
- axod 16y ago
  Why? It's a badly designed phone. There's a reason every other cellphone has an internal antenna. Good on people for calling Apple out over the lousy design, failure to test properly, and so far, the failure to take responsibility. If I had bought an iPhone 4, I'd have accepted a refund. Bumpers? case? eugh come on.
  - megablast 16y ago
    The way I see it, they took a chance on a different design, that produces better results most of the time, but has an unfortunate side effect that it causes a problem when held a certain way. The reception problem when holding a phone a particular way happends on lots of phones out there, this was just never relised before. If you were using a Nexus on or bb 9700, you would lose a call and blame it on the network or the lift. Now, you might check how you are holding the phone.
  - ericd 16y ago
    If the vast majority of the people think it's overall a much better phone than the 3GS, is it really a badly designed phone? I don't own one, but the whole antenna thing sounds massively overblown by a press hungry for some controversy. Anandtech went so far as to say that the phone was better overall in marginal reception areas than the 3GS.
    - troystribling 16y ago
      Mine was delivered Friday. One of the first things I did was to try the death grip. To get the signal to degrade I had to hold it in a position essentially embedding in the lower left corner of the phone in my palm while holding it unnaturally tight. Then there was only a single bar loss in signal. Holding the phone in a comfortable left or right handed position had no effect on the signal. If there would have not been the news around it I would have never noticed it. Even the technology press seems to be degenerating to Fox.

tghw 16y ago

Dupe of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1529615 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1529615

SwellJoe 16y ago

Anyone else consider his response to be pretty much exactly the expected level of arrogance and disregard for customers from Steve Jobs?

YooLi 16y ago
Out of curiosity, what should he have said to make it not seem like 'arrogance and disregard' to you?
- SwellJoe 16y ago
  Oh, I dunno...I've really gotta think hard about that...Oh, wait! I've got it: "We're sorry. We made a mistake. We've corrected the design, and will repair/replace devices of impacted customers at no cost." Instead it sounds to me like he was really saying, "Other people make mistakes, and oh, I guess we're kinda like other people, so it's kinda like we might have made a mistake of some sort at some time, too, but not really. Those other phone makers make mistakes, though, you better believe it. Unlike us. We try to never make mistakes. Except maybe this one, whatever puny complaint you were talking about." Seriously, you don't see this as an arrogant response to a legitimate complaint about a very expensive product that is marketed as a superior product? We're talking about a several hundred dollar device, that Apple makes a tremendous profit on throughout the product's life. A good company would take actual responsibility for a flawed design. Apple somehow manages to be treated like a good company, while consistently treating its customers poorly. It's an amazing trick. Maybe it really is hypnosis.
  - Goosey 16y ago
    Not hypnosis, just your friendly neighborhood reality distortion field http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn-YesqzvNk&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn-YesqzvNk&feature=playe...
  - andreyf 16y ago
    How about this: I know about 20 people who have iPhone 4's. None of them have any issues with the antenna, no matter how they hold the phone. This issues is hugely overblown, demonstrated by elementary arithmetic. These issues exist in very few phones, or maybe with very sweaty hands.

yanilkr 16y ago

Over analysis. That might be part of authors line of work, but this reminds me of something my humanities professor talked to some of us, engineers about some time back. Three doctors, a general doctor, an orthopedic doctor and a neuro surgeon are casually talking to each other outside a building. They notice a man walking abnormally, slightly dragging one foot. The General practitioner says, the guy must be shot on the left foot thus causing the behavior. The orthopedic doctor predicts, the guy was born with one foot longer than the other thus explaining the behavior. The neuro surgeon predits, the guy seems to have suffered a stroke in the past and this might be a result of that. Now all of them are curious to know the truth and approach the guy in question. The guy just had his shoe damaged.

abstractbill 16y ago

I really do hate to admit it, but if BP had said "All of the easy sources of oil have been found fifty years ago. If the oil industry stops taking risks, many of you would be out of work in less than a decade. We all want a future of clean energy, but no one sees a way to get there as quickly as we need to. We will do everything we can to clean up the spill, and to make things right with the Gulf economy." then I think I would feel better about the company than I do now.

prospero 16y ago
I think casting the spill as the inevitable byproduct of oil exploration, and not the result of carelessness, would be far more harmful to the oil industry in the long run.
- DLWormwood 16y ago
  > far more harmful to the oil industry in the long run. Given that this is a media driven news cycle type event, a short term fix may be the only thing that could work to deflect criticism. Besides, large corporations are not known for thinking in the long term usually, so your retort does seem a little odd to me. That does raise a question… Does this industry need to be harmed to make further progress elsewhere? (I don’t consider myself much of an eco-sympathizer; I tend to look at oil politics from a more conservative “national sovereignty” angle.)
  - prospero 16y ago
    Besides, large corporations are not known for thinking in the long term usually BP doesn't have to be thinking twenty years out to see the folly of admitting that there is an unavoidable risk in drilling.
- megablast 16y ago
  Good. We can only hope that the oil industry is damaged by this already, but probably not. Most people just do not care about this stuff.
- 16y ago

kqr2 16y ago

Is there a list of other language "maneuvers" one can employ?

teejae 16y ago
That's the domain of rhetoric. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric
wallflower 16y ago
http://usualerror.com/e-book/verbal-aikido/ http://usualerror.com/e-book/verbal-aikido/
stcredzero 16y ago
Here is a list of "debate tactics." http://www.johntreed.com/debate.html http://www.johntreed.com/debate.html

sbaqai 16y ago

Something I think that needs to be mentioned is that what was happening to Apple in the media is similar to what happened to Toyota with their acceleration issue a couple of months back. The number of complaints of "unintended acceleration" shot up after it was initially covered in the media. There was no real focus on investigative journalism, or analysis of the actual statistics by news organizations. There was also the whole rigged ABC News broadcast, which they admitted later to faking. Toyota's Recall became the top most reported story in Jan-Feb 2010. And IIRC, as the media hysteria was winding down, the NHTSA concluded the majority of unintended acceleration was driver error. In Apple's case, they had made a weakspot into a visual accent. And Jobs mentioned their algorithms made things appear more dramatic than they were. Both of these things were probably dumb, but dumb-like-the-recessed-headphone-jack (gaffe), not dumb-like-the-Microsoft-Kin (flawed design). The software fix is already out and the hardware will probably get fixed next iteration (perhaps coated?) and isn't a big deal. Yet the media coverage greatly outpaced the issue, and again no mention of statistics or data. There are a lot of parties interested in seeing these reputable companies take a dive. It's great for competitors; but more cynically - its great for hedge fund managers with certain short positions... Reporting misinformation and sensationalizing news for securities price manipulation isn't new, and it's been done to Apple before. From 2006: Aaron Task: Okay. Another stock that a lot of people are focused on right now seems to be Apple. Jim Cramer: Yeah. Apple’s very important to spread the rumor that both Verizon and ATT have decided they don’t like the phone. It’s a very easy one to do because it’s also you want to spread the rumor that’s it not gonna be ready for MAC World. This is very easy ‘cause the people who write about Apple want that story, and you can claim that it’s credible because you spoke to someone at Apple, ‘cause Apple doesn’t – Aaron Task:They’re not gonna comment. They’re not gonna – Jim Cramer: So it’s really an ideal short. Again, if I were a short Apple, I would be working very hard today to get that. The way you would do that is you pick up the phone and you call six trading desks and say, “Listen, I just got off the phone with my contact at Verizon and he has already said, ‘Listen, we’re a Lucky G house. We’re a Samsung house. We’re a Motorola house. There’s no room for Apple. They want too much. We’re not gonna let them in. We’re not gonna let them do what they did to music.’” I think that’s a very effective way to keep a stock down.

pierrefar 16y ago

zmmmmm 16y ago

> He spoke indisputable truth Scott Adams' problem seems to be that he is living inside the reality distortion field. Part of the whole problem with Jobs' handling of this is that he has repeatedly failed to tell the truth (at very least not the whole truth, but arguably he has lied in an absolute sense). To be specific: Jobs stated that all phones have this flaw. But all phones do not have this flaw. The flaw is that the phone has an antenna that is shorted by the user holding it a normal way. No other phones have this flaw. It is an outright lie. Jobs himself made a big deal on stage about how no other phones have this kind of antenna when he was selling it as a good thing. Now he says that all phones have the same problems that are caused by this unique antenna design. No they don't. It's a lie. The real tactic here is simply to gloss over the truth and hope you get away with it - at the moment I'm not sure whether Jobs has or not.

othermaciej 16y ago
If you lose signal, does it actually matter if it's caused by bridging two antennas, or by shielding, or capacitive coupling, or whatever phenomena cause other phones to degrade in signal quality when held? It seems like what really matters is not the specific physical process that causes signal attenuation, but rather (a) how likely are users to run into the problem, relative to other phones; and (b) how severe is the problem, when you do run into it? Harping on the mechanism seems like a way to try to score gotcha points, rather than a genuine concern for users of the device.
- recoiledsnake 16y ago
  From the Q&A session: >10:43AM Ryan from gdgt: You showed people almost covering the entire phone in their hand, but on the iPhone 4 it can happen with just a touch. Can you explain that difference? Bob: When you touch the phone, you put yourself between the signal and your phone, so when you touch that spot you can attenuate the signal, and if you grip it with your whole hand, you can attenuate it even more. We don't build phones with an antenna on top... >Hmm, that didn't really sound like an answer to us.
  - 16y ago

ryanricard 16y ago

I'm surprised he didn't mention the "Our phone doesn't have a problem," "All phones have this problem" combo as well.

marze 16y ago

In the PR world, there is a saying that "all publicity is good publicity". What about this antenna issue--is all the coverage a net positive for Apple or is this an exception to the "rule"? Just curious to know what others here think.

stcredzero 16y ago

For an example of a backfiring "high ground" maneuver, take a look at Mark Zuckerberg's Hoodie. http://www.switched.com/2010/06/07/mark-zuckerbergs-illuminati-like-hoodie-reveals-facebook-as-the/ http://www.switched.com/2010/06/07/mark-zuckerbergs-illumina... Really, the message he wanted to convey included goals that sounded as lofty as Google's. In short, he seems to want to organize the world's connections in much the same way Google organized much of its HTML information. Why did it backfire? Well, the intent was obvious to Mark, but not so obvious to the audience. http://lesswrong.com/lw/il/hindsight_bias/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/il/hindsight_bias/ Also, a flop sweat during your interview/presentation is a big hurdle to overcome.