-- Here's where Professor Steve sits down in his wheelchair and uses this helmet that amplifies his reality distortion abilities. We call it "Manzana".
It will be interesting to see how this plays out, but so far this seems to be some excellent crisis communication.
I’m actually surprised by that. I always thought of Apple as a fairly undynamic one trick pony when it comes to PR. (The secrecy, suspense, big event and hype cycle.) I should have noticed something when they released their “Thoughts on Music” or “Thoughts on Flash” letters.
(— edit: wow. The top story right now on HN is not some article lamenting Apple’s reaction, it’s cool pictures of Apple’s testing facilities. This is fucking brilliant PR ;)
Will this be the next "intel inside" ploy? Except this time its "Apple's grab for your money inside"? Or "Steve Job's awesomeness inside"?
What was the quote? "The only thing worse than being talked about all the time, is not being talked about all the time". Because bad press can be turned into awesome press.
Maybe it's just me, but I'm guessing that the main thing that people will remember from this will be: "Wow, I bet Apple's competitors don't have a cool lab like that and that probably means their products aren't as advanced."
This looks like something out of a James Bond movie villian's hideout - all it needs is a self-destruct sequence announced over the PA system by some lackey with a monotone voice who inexplicably sits through the entire process while paitiently waiting to be engulfed in flames by the resulting explosion.
A European pop band (Beborn Beton) had a track called 'Encounting', which they clearly mixed up with 'And counting', which is what those guys say in the movies.
Before clicking the link I was about to post a pedantic "please change to a headline that doesn't editorialize", but after a second of looking at the pictures...holy crap! That is (objectively) insanely cool! :)
How can they make such a massive investment in this type of thing and end up with such a big 'oops'? It must be heartbreaking for the antenna engineers.
What would it take to convince you that it isn't a "Big 'oops'"? [Serious question]
I just checked my EVO manual and it specifically says where not to touch the phone (upper left). The difference seems to be that people learned where not to touch the iPhone and then made a huge deal about it as if it was something new.
Generally I would agree with that. Except that location on the iPhone 4 is rather unfortunately placed. And even more so, when Consumer Reports weighed in. I tend to respect CR quite highly. If they say there is a problem, I tend to believe them.
I felt the same way about Consumer Reports until they kept releasing new 'reports' about things that generally looked like link-bait to me. They did their whole initial review of the unit without noticing the problem, i.e. it worked as they expected it to work. It wasn't until it was brought to their attention that you could touch the spot and change the signal that they did the followup report. Then they released something about duct-tape working. Then posted something else about bumpers working, etc. It makes it very hard for me to have confidence in their testing after that.
A co-worker just showed me his new iPhone 4 this afternoon. I joked with him that he had interesting timing, and tried to show him the antenna issue. I've never used an iPhone 4, so I figured it would be easy to replicate the issue. It wasn't, and the reception at my office is terrible. I was able to drop a bar off by cupping most of the phone in both hands, but couldn't kill the signal completely. I think my co-worker installed the software update already, so perhaps this is partially why.
I have an iPhone 3GS and have put off upgrading because of the signal issue. I figured there was some media hype, but wouldn't have figured I'd be unable to replicate the issue.
"To assure optimal phone performance and ensure human exposure to RF energy is within the guidelines set
forth in the relevant standards, always use your device only in its normal-use position. Contact with the
antenna area may impair call quality and cause your device to operate at a higher power level than needed.
Avoiding contact with the antenna area when the phone is IN USE optimizes the antenna performance and
the battery life. "
It's a 2-meter handy-talkie for amateur radio operators. It operates at about 1/6 to 1/12 the frequency of a cell phone, so the antenna needs to be commensurately larger.
Fascinating. To my non-radio-engineer eyes the patterns look like acoustic dampers—is it an illusion that they resemble the foam wall inserts in a recording studio, and these are actually composed of a different material to affect megahertz radio waves?
Furthermore, how are they supposed to affect those waves, and to what end?
Wavelengths at RF frequencies and sound frequencies aren't very different; sound travels about 1/300000 as fast as EM radiation, but typical frequencies differ by about the same ratio.
In the RF chamber the foam inserts are impregnated with conductive material, sort of like antistatic IC foam.
The surfaces are designed to present maximal absorption area to any wavefronts within the room, and they're made all spiky and angular to disperse the reflections that do occur, not unlike the way a Stealth aircraft works. The goal, again in both the acoustical and RF test chambers, is to eliminate standing waves to the greatest extent possible, across the whole frequency range of interest. If you have standing waves, the measurements you make will have unwanted dependencies on the physical location of the transmitting and receiving antennas.
Play a sinewave through your speakers and you'll probably find large variations in loudness as you move around the room. The whole idea behind these expensive test chambers is to avoid that effect. They are also usually shielded to keep external sounds/EM fields out, but this is actually a secondary consideration for most users.
Edit: another reason for shielding the room, obviously, is so the company can operate things like base-station emulators without running afoul of the law.
I'm not taking sides on whether or not this is a design flaw, but once you have a PR debacle you pretty much have to take some action to deal with it. Imagine if Toyota was just saying "actually no, the 'acceleration problem' with our cars is not statistically significant in comparison to other cars after controlling for demographic variables like the age of the driver".
And it was certainly curious how the "in depth" LA Times article (saying the Toyota problem was real) neglected to mention that all the cases they covered in the article--and listed ages for right in the article--were senior citizens...
No it doesn't. It is a relatively cheap way for Apple to show they "care" and appease the people who have issues with the design.
I'm not saying if the design is good or bad, but there are tons of instances in history of companies doing things to alleviate minor issues that had the potential to turn into massive PR cases and create much greater losses over the long-term.
Does anyone know what material is used in making those cone-like pokey things? My immediate guess would be that its some form of dense foam to damp waves; but what exactly are they?
I bet you the money in my pocket that this lab was not called "Antenna design and test lab" prior to the press conference; part of the brilliance in this deflection of attention is most certainly found it the naming itself of this awesome place.
I don't see how this helps their situation. This just adds weight to the idea that they willfully ignored the problem and shipped the phone with full knowledge of the antenna problems.
See Anandtech's followup article from yesterday. Apple innovated on the antenna, trading possible (and typical) attenuation for more sensitivity.
Anandtech feels they "willfully" went for more sensitivity for most situations, at the price of variability depending on certain rarer signal situations. He calls the design choice "ballsy".
Apple engineers tested iPhone 4 in a variety of scenarios, environments, and conditions in order to gauge performance. They spent thousands of hours in cities in the U.S. and throughout the world testing iPhone 4 call quality, dropped-call performance, call origination and termination, and in-service time. They tested iPhone 4 while stationary, at high and low speeds, and in urban, dense urban, and highway environments. In low-coverage areas and good-coverage areas, during peak and off-peak hours iPhone 4 was field-tested in nearly every possible coverage scenario across different vendor and carrier equipment all over the world."
How rigid and tough are those spikes? If you fell off the walkway while walking out to the test platform in the first picture, would it likely cause serious injury to you, or would it just crush a bunch of spikes and get you in trouble with your boss?
Spikes in RF labs are generally a soft foam, so you would probably just crush a bunch of spikes. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anechoic_chamber for more information about these kinds of rooms
I have been on a tour of a chamber like that recently, and the blue material in the spikes has roughly the rigidity of cardboard. The material is reinforced by metal wires, however. Even though the wires are not very thick (you could bend them with your hands easily), I would imagine you would hurt yourself quite badly if you fell onto them.
In fact, the whole chamber is shaped like a cube, and the measurements must be made in the middle of the cube. In the chamber I visited, the "floor" was made of a wire mesh suspended at mid-height inside the cube, so there it was impossible to fall.
After getting called out for having an issue every cell phone has, Apple did a photo shoot of a testing facility that every other cell phone manufacturer also has and used it as marketing.
Yea, because apple actually did it. :) Where was google with their photos of their insanely cool lab? If you wana take a jab at them make sure to kick them while they are down or they might think of a good comeback.
If anyone else "dares"? What, like Apple's whole plan was to make competitors look bad if they publicize their facilities, as opposed to just doing damage control for the ass-whupping they've been getting in the press?
Does Steve Jobs have a curly mustache and monocle I don't know about?
Well uh, Apple markets its products as being beyond Earth technology, extraterrestrial, life-changing, as if God himself had bestowed it upon us mere mortals...
... So yes, I don't think that's a ridiculous word to use.
Yes, I intentionally exaggerated. Apple isn't ruling the market with an iron fist (or a monocle). They are however making confident, clever marketing moves to continue to build their brand in inventive ways nobody has really done before. This recent one is especially clever in light of the fact that what they're doing isn't particularly inventive in an engineering sense, so the innovation is purely in public image. It's not going to completely counter their recent tailspin, but it's a lot stronger than I can imagine most other companies attempting. The only other one that I would believe capable of this sort of play is Coca-Cola.
And so yes, if anyone else does dare try the "we have cool testing facilities" move, they'll be patently copying Apple's marketing — not that this hasn't happened before.
The only other companies I've seen try to spotlight their facilities as being really cool and beneficial to customers have been car companies with their automated assembly lines and Intel. It doesn't work in a lot of circumstances, but there is definitely a huge cultural significance in the amazement at technology (or if you're not amazed, it's just nerd porn).
If you haven't been following, the design of the antenna makes is such that you can short-circuit the antenna if you hold wrong. Even in areas with good to great coverage, this can make you drop calls and have weak or no reception.
Poor reception by AT&T is another real problem, but not at issue here.
Edit: More to the point, the grip that causes perhaps the greatest attenuation of signal is one of the more comfortable, natural grips for the phone. The effectiveness of any phone's antenna can be reduced if you hold it right. Most phones are designed so that the comfortable, natural ways to hold the phone minimally interfere with the signal.
Sure. Apple don't seem to acknowledge that their design is stupid anywhere. People will hold phones how they want to hold phones. It's ridiculous for anyone to claim they're holding it 'wrong'. If they're holding it 'wrong' then apple designed it 'wrong'.
Who needs those photos as marketing? I've seen enough YouTube videos entitled "Free cases!". Apple know how to play their market, those photos are just for the interested technical people.
Your comment reminds me of the Mad Men episode where they create a Lucky Strike ad campaign. The ad team offers up the slogan "It's Toasted" and the Lucky team replies that all cigarettes are toasted.
"It's Toasted" became the Lucky Strike slogan despite their protests and was a huge success. This wasn't entirely fiction of course, it was based on a true story.
We were talking about a similar thing at the Software Industry Conference today: apparently, telling people vacuously true things matters in some circumstances. For example, giving reasons using the word "because" causes compliance to requests: asking to cut in line at the copier works some of the time, asking to cut in line "because I'm in a rush" works more, but asking to cut in line at the copier "because I need to make copies" works almost as much (i.e. much better than having no explanation)!
I noticed just now that my iOS 4.0.0 3G was at 4 bars. Lifting it slightly, I got up to 5. Holding the base, sandwiched between both hands, I managed to push it down to 2 bars (you have to wait for a bit, there seems to be a delay of five to twenty seconds between each step).
However, I have to wonder at this PR, changing the discussion from whether it is unusual to dropbars from how the phone is held, from whether it is unusually easy to miss-hold the iPhone 4.
I tried this on my 3GS at different places. Some places, the bars dropped from 5 --> 0. Others it went from 5 --> 3. In some other places, it didn't drop at all. It's pretty random, but the effect is certainly repeatable at the same location.
Indeed, look at how they describe different phone models -- which of these are not like the others?:
In our tests, iPhone 4 dropped from 3 bars to 1 bar
In our tests, the BlackBerry Bold 9700 dropped from 5 bars to 1 bar
In our tests, the HTC Droid Eris dropped from 4 bars to 0 bars
In our tests, the Samsung Omnia II dropped from 4 bars to 1 bar
In our tests, iPhone 3GS dropped from 3 bars to 1 bar
I noticed some time ago that they absolutely refuse to refer to their mobile devices using articles, and avoid personal possessives whenever possible. It's always "with iPhone, you can blah blah blah", never "with the iPhone", and rarely "with your iPhone". They exclusively refer to their product as if it were an abstract idea, never grounded in physical reality.
It was always something quietly infuriating before, but here they've intentionally tried to contrast themselves against their competitors.
Now, hold on a sec -- people refer to me without an article, and I consider myself quite firmly grounded in physical reality. The point being, they're looking to talk about these devices on a personal level... the way you talk about some_one_ in your life. This is likely just as distasteful as the scenario you describe, but I think it is more accurate.
So if this not just FUD. I wonder why all these companies obviously put the antenna in the wrong place. If your hand affects the signal strength through the case, you shouldn't put the antenna at the bottom of the phone, because that is where you hold it.
It is due to regulations about radiation exposure to your head. With the antenna on the bottom, as all phones do these days, you don't get as much to your head, as if it was on the top of the phone.
Funny how movies there show that iPhone loses bars after gently holding by the base but you have to grab HTC Droid Eris really high and squeeze it like mad to get the bars down.
156 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 234 ms ] threadI’m actually surprised by that. I always thought of Apple as a fairly undynamic one trick pony when it comes to PR. (The secrecy, suspense, big event and hype cycle.) I should have noticed something when they released their “Thoughts on Music” or “Thoughts on Flash” letters.
(— edit: wow. The top story right now on HN is not some article lamenting Apple’s reaction, it’s cool pictures of Apple’s testing facilities. This is fucking brilliant PR ;)
What was the quote? "The only thing worse than being talked about all the time, is not being talked about all the time". Because bad press can be turned into awesome press.
Apple builds new product -> people have problems -> Apple solves problems.
Which inevitably will imply:
Competitors builds new product -> people have problems -> ..
There is no step 3! (badum-chunk!)
Sorry, I've had a lot of caffeine today.
"75 seconds ENcounting!"
I just checked my EVO manual and it specifically says where not to touch the phone (upper left). The difference seems to be that people learned where not to touch the iPhone and then made a huge deal about it as if it was something new.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/32516924/Sprint-HTC-EVO-User-Manua...
I find it crazy how many people leap to either attack or defend Apple without having ever used one of the things.
I have an iPhone 3GS and have put off upgrading because of the signal issue. I figured there was some media hype, but wouldn't have figured I'd be unable to replicate the issue.
Page 169:
"To assure optimal phone performance and ensure human exposure to RF energy is within the guidelines set forth in the relevant standards, always use your device only in its normal-use position. Contact with the antenna area may impair call quality and cause your device to operate at a higher power level than needed. Avoiding contact with the antenna area when the phone is IN USE optimizes the antenna performance and the battery life. "
(that's actually a more recent model)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen
Furthermore, how are they supposed to affect those waves, and to what end?
In the RF chamber the foam inserts are impregnated with conductive material, sort of like antistatic IC foam.
The surfaces are designed to present maximal absorption area to any wavefronts within the room, and they're made all spiky and angular to disperse the reflections that do occur, not unlike the way a Stealth aircraft works. The goal, again in both the acoustical and RF test chambers, is to eliminate standing waves to the greatest extent possible, across the whole frequency range of interest. If you have standing waves, the measurements you make will have unwanted dependencies on the physical location of the transmitting and receiving antennas.
Play a sinewave through your speakers and you'll probably find large variations in loudness as you move around the room. The whole idea behind these expensive test chambers is to avoid that effect. They are also usually shielded to keep external sounds/EM fields out, but this is actually a secondary consideration for most users.
Edit: another reason for shielding the room, obviously, is so the company can operate things like base-station emulators without running afoul of the law.
Not going to nitpick about the wavelengths but you're off by a factor of about 3 here.
So they spent million of $ to improve the antenna and forgot this little detail? Where are the testers?
He was sitting in the chair, didn't you see him? ;)
I'm not saying if the design is good or bad, but there are tons of instances in history of companies doing things to alleviate minor issues that had the potential to turn into massive PR cases and create much greater losses over the long-term.
I can't be the only person who had this thought.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Room
Anandtech feels they "willfully" went for more sensitivity for most situations, at the price of variability depending on certain rarer signal situations. He calls the design choice "ballsy".
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3821/iphone-4-redux-analyzing-...
Apple engineers tested iPhone 4 in a variety of scenarios, environments, and conditions in order to gauge performance. They spent thousands of hours in cities in the U.S. and throughout the world testing iPhone 4 call quality, dropped-call performance, call origination and termination, and in-service time. They tested iPhone 4 while stationary, at high and low speeds, and in urban, dense urban, and highway environments. In low-coverage areas and good-coverage areas, during peak and off-peak hours iPhone 4 was field-tested in nearly every possible coverage scenario across different vendor and carrier equipment all over the world."
In fact, the whole chamber is shaped like a cube, and the measurements must be made in the middle of the cube. In the chamber I visited, the "floor" was made of a wire mesh suspended at mid-height inside the cube, so there it was impossible to fall.
(edit: simplified)
Does Steve Jobs have a curly mustache and monocle I don't know about?
... So yes, I don't think that's a ridiculous word to use.
And so yes, if anyone else does dare try the "we have cool testing facilities" move, they'll be patently copying Apple's marketing — not that this hasn't happened before.
The only other companies I've seen try to spotlight their facilities as being really cool and beneficial to customers have been car companies with their automated assembly lines and Intel. It doesn't work in a lot of circumstances, but there is definitely a huge cultural significance in the amazement at technology (or if you're not amazed, it's just nerd porn).
I just tried holding my Nexus One (UK) in different ways. I was able to squeeze it from 4 bars down to 3, but nothing else :/
Poor reception by AT&T is another real problem, but not at issue here.
Edit: More to the point, the grip that causes perhaps the greatest attenuation of signal is one of the more comfortable, natural grips for the phone. The effectiveness of any phone's antenna can be reduced if you hold it right. Most phones are designed so that the comfortable, natural ways to hold the phone minimally interfere with the signal.
"It's Toasted" became the Lucky Strike slogan despite their protests and was a huge success. This wasn't entirely fiction of course, it was based on a true story.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_Strike
See also: David Ogilvy's Shell campaign
http://www.copywriting1.com/2007/10/famous-david-ogilvy-tv-a...
And Claude Hopkins' Schlitz campaign
http://www.copywriting1.com/2007/10/claude-hopkins-schlitz-b...
FWIW, I think it's a lame response from Apple.
However, I have to wonder at this PR, changing the discussion from whether it is unusual to dropbars from how the phone is held, from whether it is unusually easy to miss-hold the iPhone 4.
It was always something quietly infuriating before, but here they've intentionally tried to contrast themselves against their competitors.
Also: "bars" is not a scientific unit.
Well, sure it is, if you're measuring the pressure of hot air.
It gets more exciting if you mute it and put on Liberi Fatali in the background.