Gruber's actual comment: "I don’t know if this signal-degradation-in-left-hand thing is really a widespread problem or not yet, but it’s not reasonable to tell people not to hold the phone this way."

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/06/24/iphone-hold

Wow, Gruber's comments are really terse when he's disagreeing with Apple.

Kind of disappointed since I expected some kind of ass-pulled argument about what Apple wants.

He's mentioned that neither himself or anyone of a number or friends he's asked has been able to reproduce the problem. How could he possibly write exhaustively on the topic at this point, given the lack of information and personal experience of it?

> has been able to reproduce the problem

Are you talking about the lost signal on iPhones, or are you talking about Apple's response? ... because the later is the real problem for me.

Will the next iPhone have a working antenna in the list of features?

What's your ideal Apple response?

If it's true, we fucked up, sorry, we'll try not to do it again.

You are assuming that it is a big fuck up that affects a lot of units and/or people, and that the way a phone is held usually doesn't affect its reception. You are also implying that the iPhone 4 antenna has worse performance than its predecessors. Neither of these things are conclusive, and some reports suggest the opposite.

Hypothetically, what if these things aren't true, then what would be the appropriate Apple response?

"We have reasons to believe these reports aren't true and that in fact the antenna is better than in the previous versions; nevertheless we are taking steps to investigate this issue"

There, is that so hard? ... No, telling a customer to not hold it like that is not acceptable ... WTF is Jobs smoking? Fortunately for him these news have a closed circuit, as only technically inclined people have an interest in such things; nevertheless ... what if it's a real problem with those phones and it turns out to upset lots of regular people?