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Nicely put @litbrit. And way to squander all the goodwill sent your way Weigel http://j.mp/cldG46 

http://twitter.com/rotophonic/status/18494562151 

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When I first read Apple's July 2nd response to the iPhone 4's antenna problems, something bothered me about it. As I've been writing about the iPhone 4 lately, I went back to read it again and I think I know why: Apple's reaction is flippant and condescending. The tone of the whole PR release is all wrong for something as significant as this. Let's break down some of the most egregious problems in the release. I've included a link to the complete release at the bottom of this post if you'd like to read the entire thing.

"It has been judged by reviewers around the world to be the best smartphone ever, and users have told us that they love it. So we were surprised when we read reports of reception problems, and we immediately began investigating them. Here is what we have learned."

"Surprised" is clearly the wrong word to use here. As the builders of this product and with the complete design and all the phone's engineers at their disposal, a better word to use would have been "concerned" or "alarmed." It's not like the iPhone 4 had been out in the wild being used by millions of people or even thousands of people prior to its release. Apple releases products like a multimillion person beta test. It's release on the 24th was the first time that a significant enough sample of users began using the product. Notwithstanding the fact that I believe the iPhone team was fully aware of the issues prior to launch, the tone of this pair of sentences immediately calls into question the credibility of those people reporting the problems: "Everyone else loves the phone. Why don't you?"

If you take Apple at its word that these complaints are coming from outliers and that the majority of people are thrilled with the reception, Apple does not seem to be leaving any room for the possibility of a defect. What if there is a defect in some phones that occurred during manufacturing? Isn't that a possibility? Apparently not.

After explaining that holding *any* phone will attenuate the signal, the release continues:

"At the same time, we continue to read articles and receive hundreds of emails from users saying that iPhone 4 reception is better than the iPhone 3GS. They are delighted. This matches our own experience and testing."

Again with the implication that the antenna issue reports are coming in from freaks and idiots who clearly can't see how great the phone is.

Then this:

"We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising."

It seems like this line, the one line that sticks out in the release (as it's the only one sentence paragraph in the whole thing), sums up the tone of the entire message from Apple: Not only is the iPhone 4 delighting everyone, but even the iPhone's flaws delight!

"Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars."

When I read these words, I heard, "Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that we'd been reporting signal strength in a way that would make both our phone and our carriers (AT&T etc) look better." In the cell phone world, this is akin to Ferrari issuing a statement saying, "We were stunned to discover that our speedometers display our cars' speeds at 180MPH when in reality the car was only moving 90MPH."

"To fix this, we are adopting AT&T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength."

Recently recommended? When was this recommended? Last week?

"We have gone back to our labs and retested everything, and the results are the same— the iPhone 4’s wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped. For the vast majority of users who have not been troubled by this issue, this software update will only make your bars more accurate. For those who have had concerns, we apologize for any anxiety we may have caused."

So here's the crux of this PR release, "we apologize for any anxiety we may have caused." In other words, my dropped calls and completely non-existent data signal are simply the result of anxiousness. And demonstrable problems with the iPhone 4's antenna implementation are just "concerns."

So here's the deal, Apple: the iPhone 4 is a great device that is fantastic in many ways but in the end it's a fancy walkie-talkie and flaws in its design that result in dropped calls and no signal mean that there is a serious issue with the most basic function of the device. If you were in the car business, it's as if you've sold people a car and when people begin reporting to you that if they hold the steering wheel a certain way the car stalls, and you respond by questioning whether this actually happens in real life (like how Toyota questioned whether their cars had really accelerated on their own) and wax on about how much people love sitting in it and how beautiful the dashboard is. And have you seen how brilliantly the paint sparkles?

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/07/02appleletter.html

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After a few weeks of having the iPhone 4 to kick around, my feelings are decidedly positive about the usability of the device, but I have to say that the iPhone 4 Antenna Issue is so significant that I can't imagine Apple not having to issue a recall and fix this phone. Take a look at these screen grabs that I took in Speed Test on the iPhone 4:

This first one was taken with the iPhone 4 resting on the palm of my hand with my hand only touching the glass back of the phone. Nice near-T1 speeds. Sweet

Then yesterday, I'm on the phone with my Mom and at first the call is nice an clear but unbeknownst to me, my hand had slipped down into the iPhone 4 Chokehold position (or, for Steve Jobs, where everyone in the universe holds their iPhones). She began saying, "You're breaking up. You're breaking up..." "Oops...," I said as I moved my hand to daintily hold the phone by its top side near the speaker. "That's better," she said. It happened once more as I continued the call.

I can't help but think that Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive have become so cocky about pushing around their software engineers to think outside the box and do things that the engineers initially thought were impossible that they actually believed that the antenna experts on the iPhone team (and lets hope there are antenna experts on the team) were just being cranky and their warnings about the dire effects of the iPhone 4's antenna design were just "an inability to be creative and focus on user-centered design." 

And beyond that, I believe that by the time Steve Jobs had demonstrated the iPhone 4 to the public he was fully aware of the issue: it's not something that you wouldn't notice. Yes, during their early tests of the device when they had it wrapped up in a disguise, they may not have noticed it as much, but certainly after Apple started to seed more devices around the Cupertino campus you'd have to notice. You notice it doing every day things with the phone. Simply hold the phone in your hand and the signal drops out. Sit on the couch and play Bejeweled: your signal disappears. Make a call: your signal drops out. This is a situation where you could not be any further from "user-centered design." Jobs says, "Don't hold the phone that way." Really? How defensive is that response? 

To me it seems clear that Jobs *knew* this was a major issue even as he presented the iPhone 4 at WWDC. Wouldn't Jobs have been more curious about the source of this signal dropout problem when it was raised on, literally, the first day the device made it into the hands of customers? He'd only be curious if he'd never heard of the issue. He'd only be curious if he hadn't already had hours of stressful internal meetings with engineers to try and fix the issue as millions of poorly designed phones were being manufactured in China. He'd only be curious if he hadn't already conceded to his antenna engineers that he was wrong about the design and should have listened to them better. "Just avoid holding it that way." Hmmm. That seems like something a cranky engineer would say.

Sounds to me like he's trying to downplay what he knows is a very serious problem: if I were him, I'd avoid the PR strategy makes you look like the BP CEO explaining how the blown-out oil well isn't as big an issue as it seems since there's so much water in the Gulf of Mexico. Competition in this space is heating up a lot and some honesty and positive action on the issue from Jobs would make a huge difference. Every iPhone 4 owner right now is asked by every potential new iPhone 4 owner, "Is holding the phone an issue?" And right now, the answer is, "Yes." Even Jobs agrees on this point. This is not the way to ensure Apple's dominance through the Android onslaught over the the coming year.

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And since the last time Steve had to deal with a technical problem on his computer was when he made Wozniak hack a problem with his Apple DOS boot loader floppy on his Apple II, he doesn't see the inherent value of the brilliant, lifesaver Target Disk mode. I can tell you as someone who is constantly fixing people's issues with their computers, it's the Macbook users who need me to be able to mount their computer's hard drive and deal with it... not Macbook Pro users. This feature is one that makes Macs better, different and more usable than your run-of-the-mill crap Dell laptop. And all those folks who'd used and loved the earlier version of iMovie with their standard def video cameras (through Firewire), iMovie fans got the big F U from Apple when they completely dropped the familiar product (which I'm sure took people a long while to get comfortable with as they made awesome home movies of their kids) and replaced it with a completely new product lacking many of the features that made the tool so great. Well, like it or not, Steve, Apple's market share is growing and you're extending your reach into the more common folks who are not as tech-savvy and not dripping with extra cash to replace their complete computer/video hardware portfolio every couple years. These folks go through a significant decision to spend $1,000+ on a Mac. Your decision is arrogant and puzzling, considering how little it would have cost to include a single Firewire port. And don't you know that USB 2.0 is a crap standard? Why is that? Here's why (from Wikipedia):

Although high-speed USB 2.0 nominally runs at a higher signaling rate (480 Mbit/s) than FireWire 400, typical USB PC-hosts rarely exceed sustained transfers of 280 Mbit/s, with 240 Mbit/s being more typical. This is likely due to USB's reliance on the host-processor to manage low-level USB protocol, whereas FireWire delegates the same tasks to the interface hardware. For example, the FireWire host interface supports memory-mapped devices, which allows high-level protocols to run without loading the host CPU with interrupts and buffer-copy operations. FireWire 800 is substantially faster than Hi-Speed USB.

Hear that? USB 2.0 uses the processor of your computer to manage the protocol so it's inherently slower. You can digitize video while you do something else on your computer. Good luck doing that with USB 2.0. Why aren't you leading the charge against promoting such a weak alternative? And if you're really so gung-ho on USB, what steps are you taking to make sure USB supports the kind of cool things Macs should offer, like Target Disk mode. Now if you take Apple's logic on this forward, that Apple provides the ports we "should" be using and really need, how come my Macbook Pro doesn't have the ports that I need? Why are you reducing the number of ports I have on my high-end laptop? Where's SATA 3.0 port on any new of the new Macs? As a Pro user I have several SATA external drives and this standard is wicked fast, yet I don't have it. Sure I can drop another $100 on a lunky ExpressCard to add the capability, but that still doesn't feel right. How about an HDMI-in? An HDMI-out? How about something new and better than all of these that us forward-thinking Apple Pro users "should" be using? It strikes me that this decision stems from the same type of arrogance that leads Apple to provide updated software for their computers who's tech notes describe the update as only containing "bug fixes" rather than the actual specific fixes they have done.

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If you watched the debate, it seems to me that the race is over. McCain has lost.

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It's not about moral teaching. It's about equal treatment for all people under the laws of our state.

Restoring Marriage and Protecting California Children

"Sorry, Son, a long time ago I was scared of people who were gay so I voted to eliminate your rights so it would be impossible for you to live a life like the one your mother and I enjoy. I believed that men and women chose to be gay so they could enjoy being beaten, mocked, marginalized and discriminated against. Your choice to get married would have no effect on me or our lives, but I was scared of people like you. Sorry about that."

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With the Presidential election only 3 weeks away, John McCain faces a stark choice: Will he go down in history as a principled conservative who lost an election standing on his convictions? Or will he go down as an opportunist who lost while bringing out the darkest elements in American politics?

John McCain is now at a crossroads. At this historical moment, he has virtually no path to win the Presidency. The question is whether he will lose with honor or lose with disgrace. Will his legacy be like that of his Arizona Senatorial predecessor Barry Goldwater, who ran a campaign of conservative principal in a liberal year and lost in a landslide, only to see his principals come to power 16 years in the form of Ronald Reagan? Or will his legacy be like some combination of Richard Nixon, Robert Dole and George Wallace, one of a man whom, in his overweening ambition for victory, took the low road and tapped the dark forces of American politics to his own everlasting shame and dishonor?

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Finding Number One For the reasons explained in section IV of this report, I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) provides

"The legislature reaffirms that each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust."

I'm very very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing... any hint of any kind of unethical activity there.

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A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how the McCain Campaign had announced that Palin "agreed to cooperate with the Troopergate investigation" and how what was really going on was that she agreed to participate in the investigation initiated by her own complaint filed against herself at the Alaska State Personnel board. Now they have a new pile of crap they want you to believe: on Thursday, the day before Steven Branchflower is due to release the real investigative report into the Troopergate scandal, the McCain campaign has released its own "report" that "clears" Palin of any wrongdoing. The McCain campaign doesn't just think Americans are stupid: they actually think voters are as stupid as Todd Palin. From the AP:

Trying to head off a potentially embarrassing state ethics report on GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, campaign officials released their own report Thursday that clears her of any wrongdoing.

Not only that, the faux report blames Andrew Halcro, who now sarcastically admits, he was "the blogger on the grassy knoll." And as for the real report, TPM Muckraker is reporting that Palin's lawyer is now complaining that the report cannot possibly be complete because Palin was never deposed.

Palin's lawyer, Thomas Van Flein, tried to preemptively discredit the report, telling the ADN that it won't be comprehensive because Branchflower didn't interview Palin or her chief of staff, Mike Tibbles. "They didn't even try to interview the governor. You want to know why she reassigned Monegan, it would be nice to talk to her. They didn't even try," Van Flein said. "It's a report that's going to be half-done at best. And anything that's half-done will likely be half-baked."

What a friggin' joke! She refuses to cooperate with the investigation and then complains she didn't get a chance to tell her story. I hope Alaskans run a recall election for Governor up there. I think we'll wait for the real report.

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I'll have more about this story later, but Brian Ross of ABC News reported today that he has interviewed two former NSA linguists who claim they routinely eavesdropped on, transcribed and recorded conversations made by members of the press, the Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, and the US Military as they made calls to the United States. Not terrorists. Not suspected terrorists. Just ordinary US citizens calling the United States from abroad.

Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.

ROSS: Kinne says she listened to hundreds of Americans simply calling their families … KINNE: Personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything having anything to do with terrorism. It was just personal conversations that nobody else should have been listening to. ROSS: President Bush has reassured Americans again and again: GEORGE BUSH: It’s phone calls of known Al Qaeda suspects making a phone call into the United States. KINNE: I would say that that is completely a lie — I would call it a lie — because we were definitely listening to Americans who had nothing to do with terrorism… ROSS: Kinne says she intercepted, recorded, and transcribed conversations with the military, journalists, and Red Cross and aid workers.

What a shock! Bush and his cronies in the NSA, CIA and Justice Department lied to us about what they were really doing. Glenn Greenwald has the first salvo that one can only hope will lead to a criminal investigation of the most corrupt, lawless Administration in history.

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The crisis also forced McCain to suddenly wrench himself into a populist posture -- a transformation so ridiculous given his previous statements and pro-deregulatory past that it colored everything that followed. Obama then performed solidly amid the skirmishing in Congress. This, combined with the public's preference for Obama's economic solutions over McCain's, ensured that McCain's higher "preparedness" numbers didn't lead voters to see him as best prepared to manage the crisis. It's the basic disconnect at the heart of McCain's claim to being the right candidate to take control of the economy that is really driving him down. In short, McCain lost his "maverick" brand because on the driving issue of the campaign, he isn't a maverick, and never really was. And thanks to media coverage pulled towards skepticism by the liberal counter-narrative -- not to mention the crisis itself -- voters know it.

Or as Glenn Greenwald of Salon describes the Republicans' situation:

This is a dying, desperate movement -- so deeply out-of-touch with the country that they actually proclaimed that Sarah Palin would save them in the wake of the debate, only to watch her continue to drag down their ticket. Polls now even show Obama with large leads in traditional red states like Virginia (10-12 points) and North Carolina (6 points). Watch McCain's speech today and you will see only one thing: the behavior of cornered rats.

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Finding Number Three Harbor Adjustment Service of Anchorage, and its owner Ms. Murleen Wilkes handled Trooper Michael Wooten's workers' compensation claim properly and in the normal course of business like any other claim processed by Harbor Adjustment Service and Ms. Wilkes. Further, Trooper Wooten received all the workers' compensation benefits to which he was entitled

"Well I remember at one point in the conversation [Wilkes] had mentioned or said something to the effect that either the governor or the governor's office wanted this claim denied and I remember my response being, why? I don't care if it's the president that wants the claim denied I'm not going to deny it unless I have the medical evidence to do that," Grasso testified, according to Branchflower.

Murleen Wilkes, the proprietor of Harbor Adjustment Service in Anchorage, had originally denied that she was pressured by Gov. Palin’s office to deny state trooper Mike Wooten’s claim for workers compensation benefits. But Wilkes changed her story two weeks ago when she was subpoenaed by Steven Branchflower, the former federal prosecutor who was appointed in July to probe allegations Gov. Palin, Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s running mate, abused her office by abruptly ousting Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, state officials knowledgeable about her conversation with Branchflower said.

Wilkes has a $1.2 million contract with the state to handle workers compensation claims. Her contract with the state was up but her firm was recently given a new contract--for $1.5 million--despite the fact that there were others who provided the state with a lower bid than Wilkes’s firm. One of the other applicants who submitted a lower bid has appealed the decision.

[Alaska Troopergate Investigator] Branchflower confronted Wilkes with evidence—including statements made to Branchflower by one of Wilkes's former co-workers—that showed her previous statements were contradicted and that Palin’s office did try to intervene and contacted her to ensure Wooten did not receive benefits for a back injury he said he received while on the job. Wilkes told Branchlower that she received phone calls and personal visits from Palin officials, including Palin’s husband, Todd Palin, and was told to deny Wooten’s application for worker’s compensation claims because he lied about his physical condition, these people said.

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