Apple is selling iPhone 4s faster than they can make them. I hardly think that qualifies as desperate.

Droid X specifically markets their phone in ads as superior to iPhone 4:

http://phandroid.com/2010/06/30/droid-x-ad-tears-into-iphone...

"And most importantly, it comes with a double antenna design. The kind that allows you to hold the phone any way you like and use it just about anywhere to make crystal clear calls."

I think they opened themselves up to fair game by advertising their antenna design in this way.

Relevant and informative comment instantly downvoted by Droid fans. Nice.

I'm not sure how I feel about this video campaign, but I am confused why geek.com lists Apple as “desperate”.

They're selling a lot of phones. No one is returning phones. The bad PR about the death grip is mostly settled (I don't hear it in the news anymore). Hell, Scott Adams wrote a very popular and widely circulated article about how good Apple's press conference strategy was. They're just going to continue to release these to make Consumer Reports look increasingly ridiculous in the eyes of the public.

Where is the desperation in all this?

P.S. Especially given that recent data suggests 77% intent-to-reup-handset among iPhone customers and only 20% intent-to-reup-handset among Android customers. (buried here: http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/23/technology/iphone_4_att/inde... )

Apple is constantly repeating it's position that the iPhone 4 is just the same as other phones, only better. What makes some people consider to be "desperate move" is that Apple is taking to just about every channel, including the rare Steve-Jobs-On-The-Stage PR event and comparing competitor's phones on their YouTube channel, over this one minor, if ridiculous issue.

Plus it doesn't help when "tech journalists" are willing to vilify Apple for the tiniest thing for the almighty page view. Combine with trolls and a general public that considers cell signals and RF a form of voodoo and sacrifice (you know how many people I know hold their phones to the sky to get "a better signal"), it's war to some people.

I'm no advertising expert, but I can't think of too many situations where you advertise your competitors products even in a negative light without saying something very positive about your product.

Scott Adams article was also a bit of a Rorschach test, whether you think Steve Jobs succeeded with his 'High Ground Maneuver' depends very much on your own point of view.

“I'm no advertising expert, but I can't think of too many situations where you advertise your competitors products even in a negative light without saying something very positive about your product.”

It makes Consumer Report's not-recommended status look increasingly irrational. If they give a recommend on the Droid X with such an obvious deathgrip problem (I actually hold my phone that way, using my thumb to interact with a pinching motion), then they're going to get called out on it hard.

“Scott Adams article was also a bit of a Rorschach test, whether you think Steve Jobs succeeded with his 'High Ground Maneuver' depends very much on your own point of view.”

This is the human condition. I see a pair of rainbows, someone else sees the hand of God.

"It makes Consumer Report's not-recommended status look increasingly irrational..."

If this is the root of Apple's concern then they can work with Consumer Report to establish whether their appraisal was unjustified against other devices. They don't have to take this approach.

You're certain of this? I can't imagine Consumer Reports is amenable to negotiation on their product reviews. If they are, then that's a scandal in and of itself.

Consumer Reports originally recommended the iPhone4. They retracted the recommendation when they heard about the death grip. They confirmed the problem on the iPhone4, but apparently they didn't check other phones the same way.

Yes. If Apple are in the right, a refusal to re-investigate the issue by Consumer Reports would make them look silly and the review contrived.

Apple's behavior reminds me of someone who's voted down on a site like HN on Reddit and then pulls out links to people who said similar things but were voted up. We get it logically, but for some reason we interpret it as childish and petty.

It's notable that they didn't go to these lengths with the G4 Cube overheating debacle. Apple's gone from selling almost entirely to a devout fanbase to a general appliance company and I think the change in PR strategy may be giving them a shock.

Someone please explain to me how this campaign is going to lead to Apple being portrayed as anything other than a bunch of poor sports.

See the Droid X ads where they slam the iPhone 4 for this problem, claiming they're immune due to a double antenna design.

Most folks wandering around the planet have no clue about RF and near-field effects, but then most folks wandering around haven't had much experience with carrying around RF devices or with gear operating at picowatt sensitivities.

But that gear is now increasingly commonplace.

Please explain to me why you believe that knowledge - regardless of its source - is bad.

Please also explain why that knowledge - again, regardless of its source - makes you a "poor sport".

RF is not magical.

OK, yes, there are some days when RF and antenna design and EMI does seem is magical, but that's not the same sort of magic. And you can learn why your receiver was getting bagged by that metal sign that was wired onto the chain-link fence actually is re-radiating spurious signal. Once you find the EMI.

Or once you realize that grabbing onto the antenna or getting into specific spots of the near-field might not be a good idea.

Again. Data. Goodness. Even the biggest idiots on the planet (and Apple is not among those folks) can get stuff right once in a while.

So. Why is data a "poor sport"?

There's no "data" provided here. There is no context, explanation, or insight into what is going, or why. If accompanying the video there was audio or discussion explaining how the person's grip of a phone impacts RF signal, then it would be less open to (mis)interpretation.

Data would be excellent. This video provides none.

The poster you responded to didn't, by my reading, say that Apple were poor sports. He said that this would be portrayed as them being poor sports. Whining is normally a form of poor-sportsmanship, and this comes across as whining (at least to some people).

'So. Why is data a "poor sport"?' Because it's not data, it's just some hand holding a phone and the bars are dropping. No explanation whatsoever.

Apple taking the position that theyre only as good as everyone else?

Apple's position is that they're educating people about RF & cell phones. You can't fix physics with a software update.

From where I'm sitting, it seems like several large swathes of the American public do not understand what scientific laws are about. Many people seem to operate on the notion that if you feel strongly enough and shout enough, you can make whatever you want to be true, so long as enough others back you up.

Many people are rightfully pissed at BP for cutting corners and creating a huge clusterfuck in the Gulf.

Many of these same people are totally off base being pissed at BP for not fixing the broken well faster. But, hey, the screaming makes them feel better. Also, smug and superior.

I do think some of the preparation BP did after the disaster should be prepared ahead of time to be standing by for a future disaster.

We get a large number of complaints that the compass in our iPhone app doesn't work when the user is in a car or on a bus.

Lots of people have a compass on their car's dash... what's different about those that they work? (Yeah, I'm a software guy for sure...)

Probably just that it's on the dash, as opposed to in their lap. I assume a dedicated compass is also higher quality than the one in the iPhone, but I don't have a good idea of how that would work.

That depends on whether you think Apple is just getting more attention about this problem because they are Apple, or because the iPhone 4 problem is much worse than other handsets.

I dont own an iphone so I cant comment on the quality of the iphone 4, but all the other mac adds seem to be about how macs are better than pcs and about simplicity and about "think differrent". This ad is about "see were no worse than everyone else", while the underlying physics point is valid - why waste ad dollars on communicating your equality with other vendors ?

> why waste ad dollars on communicating your equality with other vendors ?

Because Consumer Reports singled out Apple's iPhone 4 as the only phone with such issue, and presented it as a dealbreaker.

In that situation levelling with others is step up for Apple.

I like how they had the dialpad open to make the phone look more complex and less attractive. Nice touch.

I like how you implied malicious intent over a totally pedestrian point to support your obvious biases (as if somebody using the dial pad could be interested in signal strength!) Nice try.

It's marketing designed to make the Droid X look bad. It's by definition malicious.

Honest question: is that not the app used to make calls on the Droid X? If it looks overcomplicated, how is that anyone's fault but Motorola/Google?

Apple certainly didn't design the interface for placing calls on a competitor's device.

All one would ordinarily do to check call strength is look at the home screen. For me the dialpad is a very infrequently used app, and I rarely use it to make calls.

In any case, why are you so hostile to the idea that Apple was being intentionally malicious? If I were trying to discredit a competitor's product, I too would choose the most unattractive space I could to highlight it. Given that the signal strength is shown in most apps, you certainly have a wide choice.

That is the app where (for most people) signal strength matters most. To me, it seems contextually relevant.

It's just less simpler than the home screen with a nice background, however, there is no reason why anyone would open the dialpad to carry this experiment.

Actually the demonstration is of the phone making a call and the bars dropping as a result of the way it's held.

You can tell the phone is engaged in a call by the dial button being a great big red "End Call" button, and by there being a little green call icon on the top left of the status bar.

Why this is a home-goal by Apple is that even though the bars dropped by the death grip, the phone did not drop the call.

The fundamental complaint about the iPhone 4 is that the death grip is causing dropped calls.

So Apple have gone and shown that whilst their competitors also are affected by the basic laws of science, they've managed to keep a base level of quality that avoids the consumer being affected by dropped calls.

Of course, we can over-analyze anything nowadays.

How come the call wasn't dropped when it hit 0 bars?

The video is about making calls. A dialpad seems reasonable.

Actually they were doing the Droid X a favor here. The lockscreen for the Droid X is so hideous Ars even featured it as an example of hot-messness.

Good point. My first thought was that "why would the keyboard be open by default?"

I think it's informative to know that all phones lose signal when held certain ways but their method just seems childish.

I'd rather see them report bandwidth loss when held or a video showing that some phones can't make calls when held due to dropping below a threshold (iPhone).

I would too.

But I don't think most people would take to that. For the vast majority of iPhone 4 users, the death grip problem is not as significant as those "touch with one finger to kill" videos (which, I confess I am still having a hard time believing).

The complaint itself is essentially childish: “Apple does almost the same thing everyone else does! They're lame! #lolrecall!” I'm not sure a mature counter-strategy would actually be effective in the face of that. Especially given how incredibly invested into phones people seem to be getting these days.

i've noticed that on verizon, bars don't matter. as long as you get a signal, the sound quality is perfect.