Antennagate
The story of “antennagate” has died down ever since Apple’s press conference where CEO Steve Jobs acknowledged the iPhone 4′s alleged weak spots in its antenna system.

The myth of “antennagate” states that when you touch the bottom left side of the phone, especially where the black strip is… your signal goes way down and may cause you to drop a call. The science behind it is that the human body is a natural conductor, and once you bridge the two pieces of the antennas (as separated by the black plastic strip) you effectively change the length of the antenna. That length is crucial when you are trying to receive a specific wavelength of energy. People also found by putting a layer of insulation over the antenna joint will ease the problem. Therefore, cases and the so-called “Antenna-aid” methods came to play, and eventually forced Apple into giving out free cases to all iPhone 4 users.

I got my iPhone 4 on August 13th, and went home and began testing these myths of “antennagate”. I found some very interesting results that I would like to share.

1. “antennagate” certainly exists in Canada as well, despite other reports.
2. One may lose 2-3 bars in an area with mediocre signal strength by bridging the antennas.
3. A simple tape or band-aid does not solve the problem. Only a case can effectively eliminate it.
4. Myths about Apple applying a non-conductive coating to the phone to solve the problem is bogus.
5. I have yet to drop a single call despite numerous attempts to “death-grip” my phone.
6. While calls did not drop… 3G data throughput did die.
7. I was getting 2-3 bars with my iPhone 3G in this area, but now with the iPhone 4 I get 3-4 bars. The new antenna really is better than the old generation… well when it works.

Before we get into the details one must understand that “antennagate” can only be produce under certain conditions where the signal strength is at around 3-4 bars. When you are in an area where you receive 5 bars (and possibly even more but the phone does not display) you do not experience any noticeable degradation in signal strength. Therefore, you cannot antennagate in all areas and it is true that when you “death-grip” any phone the signal will indeed drop by a certain amount. While it is true that you can ease the effect by sticking a piece of non-conductive tape on the antennas, the tapes are simply too thin to create a radio-penetrable space for the antenna to work efficiently. Therefore, only a case with measurable thickness will eliminate the effect of “antennagate”. The claims and wishes that a non-conductive coating on the phone will help with the issue is completely false. Unless Apple will spray on half inch thick of coating… it will not work.

However, even if you use the phone without a case the drop in bars will probably not cause a drop in calls. I have tried numerous way to bridge the antenna with my finger, my palm… my palms (both my hands)… I simply could not get the call to drop! The phone would work perfectly fine with one bar of signal. The same thing could not be said for the data connection. Once you “death-grip” the iPhone or simply touch the antenna joint, the data throughput goes way down and virtually dies. This drop in throughput was more noticeable with 3G than EDGE.

Lastly, the antenna on the iPhone 4 is noticeably better than the previous generations of iPhones. After updating to firmware 4.0.1, I could not get my iPhone 3G pass 3 bars, in fact most of the time it stays at 2 bars. On the same firmware, the iPhone 4 always get 3-4 bars very consistently in the same area. I don’t think Apple was lying that the phone’s antenna is in fact a better one… at least better when it’s insulated and not obstructed. In addition to signal strength, the data throughput on 3G has improved quite a bit as well. See the screen shot of my speed test: this was done with only 4 bars. However, I was a bit surprised about the awesome upstream speed, but other users in Canada and the US have confirmed to have seen the same thing.

Battery Life
There are many conflicting claims about the iPhone 4′s battery life. Aside from Apple’s official claims of up to 40% improvement over the 3GS, review sites like Engadget claim that the iPhone 4 can live for 38 hours without recharging and that’s under heavy use. However, numerous users claim to have much shorter battery lives than either Apple or Engadget.

From my personal experience, the battery on the iPhone 4 needs some burn-in to reach maximum capacity. When I first got the phone, its battery life was mediocre at best. After 4 cycles of complete discharge and recharge, it got significantly better. Right now it lasts about 30 hours before running down to 5% or lower.
I have:

• 3 Exchange accounts on push email and calendar.
• 1 account on hourly fetch.
• I usually play about 2-3 hours of games.
• Check the web regularly for stock updates.
• Send and receive about 50 text messages per day.
• 5 min or less of talk time per day.
• Network is on 3G and occasionally WiFi.

The battery life improvement over the 3G and 3GS here is definitely not as prominent as Apple had promised. However, it is definitely not bad. If you are experiencing significant lower battery life, I would suggest you do a couple of complete recharge cycles or take your phone back to Apple for a replacement.

Lastly, watch the signal strength on the phone. When you are in a low to no signal area, you might consider turning the phone off or into “Airplane Mode” to save it from constantly searching for network. You may also try to reset your network settings to resolve any conflicts by going into: Settings – general – reset – reset network settings (be sure not to hit any other command there).

Cases
Apple is offering every iPhone 4 user a free case through their Case Program at least through the end of September. For my phone I already ordered the InvisibleShield which is by far my favourite brand for iPhone cases. I also got a free Apple’s iPhone 4 Bumper, which goes super well with the InvisibleShield.

The Bumper is really the best case Apple’s free case program has to offer. In my opinion it perfectly preserves the iPhone 4′s essence of design by overlaying metal buttons for “ON/OFF” and volume controls. That way you still get the great responsiveness of the phone’s buttons and the buttons are not obstructed by the casing.

While the Bumper offers minimal protection of the phone’s front and back, the InvisibleShield effectively compensate for the shortcoming.  At last… it looks awesome!
InvisibleShield also gives out pretty decent discounts on a regular basis.
Visit http://www.zagg.com/community/contest.php to get not only a coupon up to 50%, but a chance to win an iPad.

Please feel free to share your experience with this phone in the comment area. I’ll will keep this posted updated as I discover more interesting facts about the new iPhone 4. =)

Around 11:30 am, we saw a few shipments arriving at the store… but was again told by store officials that the delivery did not contain any iPhone 4… so time continued to tick. Around 12:45 pm people started to get excited because a few large boxes showed up! But again… NO IPHONE 4s! The good thing was… time knows no limits… and either did any of our fellow fanboys/gals! Therefore, another 3 hours flew us by… but the only thing it left everyone with was the ultimate truth – THE STORE WILL NOT BE GETTING ANY IPHONES TODAY!

People looked at each other in dismay… How could an Apple Store be out of iPhones and not know when the next shipment is coming in… but only to drop a definitive nuke after making people age while standing in front of the store? This just does not make sense! Why couldn’t the manager get this information sooner? Knowing that the information could be obtained… but only to tell customers that they have wasted their life waiting! I think the answer to this has something to do with the discussed “antennagate” problem. You see… the iPhone 4 does have a very prominent weak spot in its antenna structure. While the problem is not so evidential in all areas, it may cause your call to drop while in an area with less than optimal signal coverage. Steve Jobs then came out and introduced the Free Case Program for all iPhone owners. It wasn’t a solid solution, but it was better than nothing. After all, Apple rarely gives stuff away unless they mess up really bad. (Remember the whole free upgrade from MacOS 10.0 to 10.1 offer? MacOS 10.0 probably had more problems than Windows XP and Vista combined.) However, Steve admitted to the fact the new antenna system performed slightly worse than its previous generation design, but he insisted that the media had blown the facts out of proportion… because he think it really wasn’t that bad.

Maybe Steve was right, or maybe he was trying to cover things up… but everyone in the press room knew how much turbulence this pesky little problem had caused the mighty Apple. How can Apple fix this and defend its corporate image as “the best on the planet”? Here comes clever marketing!

If Apple only knows how to do two things… it’s marketing… and marketing! While the mighty Apple may have taken a few punches… those wounds can easily be healed by making a couple of customers stand  in line for the alleged “magical device”. While I was waiting in line, passer-bys kept asking us what we are waiting in line for… and we would prodly answer: “iPhone 4!”. There you go everyone, let Apple takes u back into the classroom with this one. I think this is why nobody knew when shipments will be in… but it needs help tell the story – that Apple fanboys/gals are crazy enough to wait for it even if they know the risks of wasting their lives!

You can call me a conspiracy nut or whatever… and I did see a lot of international college students waiting in line to grab a few phones as gifts when they return. So either all these phones have been grabbed by them and secretly exported to China… or Apple is taking advantage of the fact that certain people are looking to grab an iPhone for the bragging rights… or Apple is limiting supply to drive up the phones’ price in the grey/black-market.

Personally, I don’t buy that they can’t make enough phones after 2 weeks of launching the device. Judging by the number of people who lined up… the demand is strong and suggests that many people are without phones! Either way, there are lessons to be learned from all this. Never be too desperate for a phone, never be to evil to people who pay your salary because sooner or later they will catch on.

I came home to check people’s feedback on RedFladDeals, only to find many people selling their newly purchased iPhone 4s for twice as much as Apple is! Also, users confirmed that the “death grip” exist in Canada as well. Clearly, Apple did not make any hardware revisions to address the issue, at least not for this batch of phones. People were also concerned about the long wait to activate their phones on Rogers/Fido system. Their service kept crashing and people reported line-ups and wait times of 10 hours + at Apple Stores. Apple online store has a 3 week ETA for order and finally to make the situation worse, Fido and Rogers are directing people to local stores to buy the phone. They are not willing to take order over the phone anymore…

I have to say. This is all too much hype for a phone that is reportedly crippled by design. It is also obvious that the initial launch was affected by the limit stock the stores had. Could this mean Apple is pushing out the initial crippled batch and shipping in new ones? One can only guess…

Update: It appears that since launch date no stores in the country other than Apple themselves have been getting more shipments of iPhones. Rogers reported to receive a shipment that was ready to go on sale today (Saturday, Aug 7th). However, nobody has reported seeing any stock at Rogers stores… so the iPhone shortage continues…

Version 4 at first glance gives you a very refreshed feel to it. I think it’s mainly because the icons were made to be brighter, and the default screen brightness was a bit higher than my original… but none the less I liked it. The responsiveness of the OS also improved quite a bit over OS 3.x. This is especially evidential on older hardware like my iPhone 3G. The homescreen transitions are smoother, and icon animations are silkier. All of my apps from iOS 3.x worked flawlessly and games ran as they should.

To the more negative end of the spectrum. I wasn’t a big fan of the “you can never quit your app, unless you really try” scheme Apple used to manage background apps. It reminded me of the Windows Mobile 2003 days… you had to download a Task Manager app just to kill processes… On iOS 4, when you press the Home button once the app falls back to the background but still remains in RAM in an inactive state. If you want to kill the program, you have to double tap Home then tap and hold its icon… then tap on the little red “X” on the top. It’s just too many hoops the user has to jump through to quit an app. I’d much rather have something like the Backgrounder (jailbroken app) and let it default to “quit” and double press to background.

One other thing I want to mention, and this is to all iPhone 3G users like myself.  Our somewhat ancient toy can in fact multitask! Enabling it will require a jailbreak but the end result is worth while. My best experience with jailbreaking was achieved with the help of redsn0w. This little app runs on Windows and MacOS, it jailbreaks your iPhone 3G and 2G iPod touch directly. This means you can simply go to iTunes and update your iOS and then use redsn0w to jailbreak without wiping any data.

One tip to remember, older hardware like the iPhone 3G cannot run very well with the wallpaper enabled, the responsiveness of the screen greatly deteriorated when a wallpaper is set. Therefore, I highly recommend you to NOT enable wallpaper and just hack multitasking if you need it. Also remember to periodically quit your apps in the background because the iPhone 3G does not have a lot of RAM to work with.

iOS 4.0.1
This little update to the iOS is perhaps the most embarrassing update Apple ever had to release. It “fixes” the reception issue seen on the iPhone 4 and subsequent iPhones. Primarily, Apple realized they have been too generous when calculating the iPhones’ signal quality bars… so they made this fix to give you a better idea of your signal strength. Therefore, installing the update will give you less bars… but that is as it should be… at least that’s what Apple is telling users.

You can jailbreak iOS 4.0.1 with the same redsn0w release. Simple update your iPhone 3G or 2G iPod Touch to 4.0.1 and then fire up redsn0w. Instead of pointing it to the 4.0.1 firmware, point it to the original iOS 4.0 firmware. This is possible because the 4.0.1 did not change the baseband code, so you are good to use the old firmware so it’ll pass redsn0w’s verification.

To sum up, I think iOS 4 is a winner for the most part. Apple has done a good job to make it friendly to older hardware like the iPhone 3G. Furthermore, it is also a free update to all iPod Touch users as well! We can see that Apple is really trying to push this release to everyone. I’m not going to get into iPhone 4′s antenna issue since it won’t be available in Canada until July 30th. Until then… I’m glad iOS 4 gave my good old iPhone some new blood. =p

Update: For those who are having issues with iPhone 3G overheating after updating to iOS 4, I sometimes have the same problem and pretty sure it has something to do with the 3G/EDGE radio. I find that if Data is turned off or if I use WiFi, the problem is less evidential. It might also have something to do with Exchange and multiple Exchange accounts. I heard some of these problems will be fixed in iOS 4.1. So let’s wait and see how Apple does it.
For all jailbreakers, remember to not turn on Wallpaper, and don’t get multitasking if you don’t really need it. The biggest reason why I have iOS 4 on my 3G is the ability to do multiple Exchange accounts. If you can do without all these features, then staying on iOS 3.x is probably a wiser choice.

Solution: Go to Settings and clear your iPhone 3G’s network settings. This has solved most of the heating issues and network problems for me. It appears that the network was dead even tho the phone still shows 3G signal. Then my 4 Exchange account probably overloaded by constantly trying to establish a connection back to the servers. Let me know if this works for you.

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Apr 5th
iPad seems to be the hottest new gadget in town. Today Apple reported that 300, 000 units sold on US launch day, which is a lot better than the original iPhone. (but remember the original iPhone was a lot more expensive)

Personally, I never buy any first generation product, especially not from Apple. The company is known to introduce cool concept products into the market that need major polishing, especially on the software side. The iPad is essentially an iPod Touch with a 9.7 inch screen, and a slightly faster processor. It offers NO new features in the package other than the large screen real estate.

Apple is being smart in leveraging its position as a market leader to introduce a dirt cheap  tablet before anyone else and even before its own software team could finish iPhoneOS 4.0. It was a gamble but I think the odds are agreeing with Steve Jobs. Even if iPad doesn’t sell as well as iPhones and iPods, the launch is significant enough to position the company as one of the pioneers of modern tablet computers.

My guess is that Apple probably already has the next generation iPad sitting in its vault somewhere. It probably has a camera or two built-in for video conferencing. However, the first fight that the company wants to win is PRICE, and they have already won even before the product shipped out. Its $499 starter unit price is unbeatable so far. Now come to think about it… the removal of that camera on the iPod Touch 3rd Gen could be related to the decision to launch the camera-less iPad.

Therefore, the bottom line is that Apple scored a winner either way. Competitors can easily beat iPad in features, but will fail tremendously in pricing. For the rational person… will he/she spend $500 on an iPod Touch XL or $600+ on a HP tablet that runs Windows? The decision is tough… and my answer will be NEITHER… but I won’t denied the appeal that the iPad has over the tablet PC.

Apple will be giving everyone a sneak peek at the iPhoneOS 4.0 on Thursday, April 8th. Let’s see what this software update can bring to the table. Either way, personally I’ll be waiting for iPad 2nd Gen before telling Apple my credit card number.

However, lately I realized my iPhone tethering is no longer working. The Macbook cannot see the phone in Network Preferences, and iTunes spits out an unknown error (0xE800006B). I did everything from resetting my settings on the phone, and deleting iTunes’ plist file. Nothing worked! Every time I plug my phone in, the same error message pops out… didn’t know what to do.

I eventually realized the problem was caused by the 64bit kernel and the lack of proper driver support for it… and apparently iTunes (as of 9.0.2) was not rewritten like most other apps for Snow Leopard.

That made me wonder… Apple has a Windows 64bit version of iTunes but not a Mac version?  What is going on here?

Anyway, I thought I’d let the world know since this problem isn’t documented by Apple.

Short answer… Fresh Install > Upgrading

Long answer… it depends on how the upgrade went and what you are looking for. I recently did an upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard and noticed very little problems. the most noticeable problem was the long bootup time… and I know that Snow Leopard had specific optimizations to decrease boot time. Furthermore, I had some apps that were incompatible with Snow Leopard… so I finally decided to give the system a good wipe and install from scratch. and since then… all the problems have been solved… especially after installing the 10.6.2 update. Just always remember to backup your data and apps before wiping things out. Time Machine is very useful in this respect.

On the Windows side, I successfully upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 without a glitch. The two systems are extremely similar under the hood, and I did not notice any problem after upgrading. I even did a clean install of Windows 7 and noticed no improvements. To be fair, I didn’t have anything installed in Vista anyway… just Office and Adobe CS.

Since now I own both systems… I think I can bring some new perspectives and observations to the table.

First of all… I’ve been a loyal Windows user since the 3.0 days. and I guess that’s how long this endless debate has been going on for… However, we are looking at a completely different landscape than those old days.

The common myth that Apple made “better” hardware than your average PC is dead now that everyone is on the Intel train… and we have normal PCs running hacked versions of MacOS… and Intel Macs booting Windows XP and Vista. (official Win 7 support is also coming.) So if you really look at what Apple is offering and charging for… is basically your average hardware stuffed in a fancy chassis. Surprisingly enough… according to official stats there are now more people who are willing to pay the premium for Apple’s fancy design.

But here is my story… I’ve been a Windows user for quite a while… and the ONLY reason why I now own a Macbook Pro is because I needed to run the iPhone SDK. It may not have been the wisest 2 grands spent… but the new Macbook Pros are amazing looking machines! I have to say… cosmetically I have nothing to complain about the machine! The fact that I can get a Dell with similar specs doesn’t bother me at all.

What bugged and is still bugging the hell out of me… is when Mac users… Apple officials and loyalists portray their OS as the best in the world for anything you do!

This is simply UNTRUE! MacOS looks fancy but it is not the ultimate saviour when it comes computing! It is not! Even with the latest Snow Leopard release… it is not even close!!!
Like Mircosoft Windows… it has flaws! If you install too much stuff… it will get slow… if you don’t do regular maintenance… something will go wrong… The number one thing about OS… not one system out there right now will “just work”. If you don’t take care of it… it will not take care of you. Get used to it!

I’ll give you an example… ever since Leopard MacOS had this weird problem where it cannot open files if they were downloaded from the Internet. The only thing that will fix it… REBOOT! That is until Apple released an update a few days ago to address the problem. This is a problem that existed in Leopard and Snow Leopard. As you can imagine I was extremely annoyed by this problem… because even my Windows machine didn’t have to be rebooted this many times to fix a stupid problem like this.

Second annoyance – Video playback. The codec support for MacOS is extremely poor. Codec packs like Perian are still incomplete when you ever come across one of those rare codecs. Needless to mention WMV support… trying to play a HD WMV file on a Mac is simply PAINFUL. You can either use VLC or Flip4Mac… VLC doesn’t have great performance and Flip4Mac will not let you seek the file unless the file is completely buffered. Bottom line… video playback is years behind the performance you get on Windows.

Third annoyance – Lack of software. especially quality free apps. Trying looking for a decent MySQL client for your Mac… paid or free… I bet you cannot find a single one worth competing with SQLyog! Also… when Apple wants you to think that their iWork bundle is any competition to MS Office… DON’T BELIEVE THEM! I’m a university student, and I have to say Numbers is years behind what MS Excel is capable of… same thing with Pages. The only thing I like is probably Keynote… it makes your presentation looks a bit prettier. =p

If you are a Windows user. Be ready to tolerate these annoyances because they are likely to stay for a long time. You might miss that good old Windows UI… I’ll bet you on that one!

On the “dark side” of things… Microsoft just released Windows 7 not too long ago. and big thanks to the University of Waterloo I was able to get an early copy of the OS. I have to say… Windows 7 is everything that I hoped it will be. It is a smart and stable system that is light years away from what Windows Vista had become… and performance-wise Win 7 even leaves XP in the dust! I love it. and I am really considering switching back to Windows for my general computing needs… especially when more Windows Live apps are being released Windows-only.

The bottom line is… Mac was never meant to be a mainstream machine! Its design is amazing… but there are so many things that aren’t perfect on the software end. I honestly think you might find it useful to run Windows on a Mac to get the most out of it.
While Apple keeps bashing Microsoft for the lack of innovation… Microsoft has made a very strong point with Windows 7 and their Windows Live series of services and software. It will be interesting to see how the game plays on from now on…
However, as a consumer I think people should always remember that nothing is ever exactly as advertised. nothing is ever perfect. just because you have spent a lot of money on something… doesn’t mean it’s worth it.
To be happy with your purchase… you need to think about what compromises are you willing to accept… it doesn’t matter how much money you have… you can’t have everything. =)