"Antennagate"

So the tech press and bloggers are offering their analysis and meta-analysis about "Antennagate".

Ignoring the fact that these dying publications' revenue model are based on selling more dead trees (or garnering more pageviews in the case of bloggers) and thereby have a vested interest in making mountains of molehills, let's concentrate on their reasoning ability (or lack thereof).

First, some numbers. Spencer Webb, who actually designs antennas for a living has done some independent measurements on his own, and calls out Consumer Reports on their flawed methodology.

From the article, Mr Webb makes some interesting observations, which I shall summarize and include some points of my own.

1) The iPhone 4 is markedly better than the iPhone 3GS at uploading/downloading if both phones are used without covers. Remember this.

2) When both phones are held in the so-called "death grip" (full grip), the iPhone 4 on average is still better than the iPhone 3GS, but with a greater variance as compared to the 3GS. In other words, you may or may not get worse performance in a full grip.

3) What this means is that if you're a current iPhone 3GS owner and have never had problems, it's likely you will not experience problems with the iPhone 4 either, even with a full grip.

4) Assuming that cell tower reception is poor, changing to a half-grip or simply not bridging the iPhone 4's antenna gap may be able to improve the situation significantly. This is what Steve Jobs meant to say.

5) Since the press has decided to make an issue out of it, Apple decided to give out free bumpers up and refund the cost of bumpers for those who bought them, until 30 Sep.

6) With regards to "analysts" jumping on the "less than 1% delta vis-a-vis iPhone 3GS per hundred dropped calls" data point and thereby claiming Apple is playing the numbers game, remember point 1. The iPhone 4 has better reception than 3GS, which means where you could not even make or receive calls with a 3GS, an iPhone 4 can, albeit with a weak signal. Would it be such a surprise that the call subsequently gets dropped?

As can be seen, the large majority of the charges are not backed up with good reasoning whatsoever.

As to why Steve Jobs appears to be defensive about all this, have you ever questioned a Japanese salesman about his company's product quality? You might as well insult his mother. Same thing here.