iPhone 4 Antenna bar fiasco

I've been listening to the MacBreak Weekly podcast and the biggest topic lately is the iPhone 4 antenna mess. It seems that there are 2 technical problems with the iPhone 4 related to this. The first affects all iPhones going back a few years and that has to do with the number of bars. The second is the "death grip" that causes the bars to go down and to drop calls.

Everyone has discussed both of these to death, but I'd like to throw in my 2 cents. The number of bars is not a true indicator of anything. How do I know this? Well, I'm actually someone that has written code to display antenna bars. I wrote the Mac status software for Franklin Wireless. In that software, I read the RSSI value from the modem and put up the bars. Well, I was told to change the bar "calculation" a few times. When I say calculation, it was more like, "if it is in this range, display x bars". There is absolutely no rocket science involved here; the modem gave me the dB of the RSSI and I displayed bars. So when Apple says they messed up the calculation, it is, in my opinion, a bunch of baloney. I believe it is more likely that someone either tweaked the value to make it look like there were more bars (AT&T says "more bars in more places") or someone was given the wrong table (you could argue that the latter is actually the wrong calculation, but it was probably overlooked as it looked like there were more bars). So Apple's upcoming fix will make AT&T look worse which they may deserve.

On the "death grip", I think people are over reacting (we'll know more on Friday when Apple has a press conference). The reported fix is to use a bumper or a case. I had ordered Apple's bumper, but cancelled my order because it would take too long to arrive and the $35 (including tax and shipping) just didn't sit right with me. So, I decided to go on eBay and see what they had. I picked 4 different cases for a total of under $5 including shipping, direct from China. All of the cases arrived this week and the case that I'm using right now is a silicone case that cost $0.99. If I, as a consumer, can get a case that effectively solves the "death grip" problem for $0.99 with shipping, Apple can easily get cases for half that. At this point (with the information at hand), I think that Apple should send everyone that is having a problem a free bumper. This would allow them to save face and move on. Going forward, they can include the bumper or coat the metal with something.

It's amazing to me how blow out of proportion this has become; everyone knows about it, even those people that don't care about the iPhone. I wish Apple the best of luck on a quick resolution, but for me, I'm quite pleased with my phone and haven't had any issues with it.

Jesus Phone in hand

As I indicated in a previous post, I planned to get an iPhone 4. I pre-ordered it, but since I was late to the party, it wasn't going to arrive until July 15th or so. I had wanted it sooner as I was going on 2 trips before then; I don't travel all that much, so having it would have been convenient.

I tried Wal-Mart, but they didn't have any on launch day. So, on Thursday night, right before the Apple Store closed in Fashion Valley, I called and asked about stock. The guy I spoke to said that they should get more on Friday and people would be lining up before they opened at 8 am. So, I decided to give it a try on Friday. I arrived at around 8:05 am and got in line. The employees that came out indicated that they had stock, so I waited. I spent about an hour and 10 minutes in line and finally got in the store. It took about another 15-20 minutes to process my order and I was out the door with my phone.

So I bought into the hype and lined up for a phone; however, I didn't line up at 5 am like other people did. Apple constrains supply and I think fudges numbers to get on the news, which is what happened. If Apple had stock to sell me, why couldn't they ship me a phone and have it delivered the day after launch? I guess that wouldn't get them the free publicity.

Now that I have my phone in hand, I'm reasonably impressed with it. I'm less impressed with AT&T and their coverage, but we'll see how that goes. I did find what I consider to be a very annoying bug with the cellular radio in the phone; if you go out of coverage area for an extended period of time, the phone stops searching for a signal. I had to put it into airplane mode and then turn off airplane mode to get it to search again. I understand power conservation, but you'd think that it would simply try less often to get a signal. What is also strange is that I had coverage, went inside a building, completely lost coverage (the building was a wood framed building, I believe) and never got a signal back. Someone else next to me had a Palm Treo on AT&T and had 2 bars of coverage.

The future of TV

A few weeks before Google announced Google TV, I experienced the future of TV, at least as I see it. We normally record our programs with the EyeTV hooked to a Mac Mini. However, sometimes the EyeTV has a fit and we don't get everything recorded, but that's another story. Since our media center is a Mac Mini, I simply used screen sharing to access the Mac, used a web browser, went online to CBS's Web site (I think it was CBS), and played a show in HD. It streamed quite well on our TV and the commercials weren't all that annoying. The only problem, however, is that the Flash ads sometimes pop the viewer out of full screen and require me to use my laptop to put it back. If I wanted to watch TV without my laptop on my lap, this would be a problem.

We've now started to watch more shows this way and it is convenient. It allows us to watch shows that we haven't recorded; convenient during the summer when our standard shows aren't on.

My hope is that Google TV will build upon this concept and allow people to use a television remote to watch TV on the web without having to pay a ton of money for cable. We're a family that only subscribes to basic cable (it comes with HD for the broadcast channels as it is required by law), so the concept of Google TV could work for us if it let us watch shows that are already available online, free of charge.

A month of being self employed

I've now been self-employed for a month and things are going quite well. Right as I left my job, pieces fell into place which gave me steady contract work. My contract projects are going well with very little pressure (I don't consider a deadline a lot of pressure as I simply have to get the work done). Every morning when I start my day, I look at the phone on my desk expecting to see a missed call. It still hasn't happened; my work no longer consists of going from one emergency to the next.

The projects I'm working on are challenging in that I've taken over someone else's code, but I like challenges. At the moment, I'm mostly just doing bug fixes, but that's fine with me. I'm pretty much left alone; issues are assigned to me, I fix them. Everyone's happy.

My stress level has gone down significantly and I feel like I've gotten my life back. I'm still probably in the honeymoon phase (I know I've said that before) of self-employment, but I'm hopeful that this feeling will continue.