Alexander’s Blog

Today, in an open letter to public Apple finally admitted that the problems that iPhone users are experiencing are real. But Apple’s explanation is rather strange. They essentially say that although they know about the reception problems, they can’t really help you. However, they will do you a favor and fix the problem with the signal strength (the bars on the phone) so it will correctly show you how really pathetic the signal quality is. Currently, the signal bar gives you fake results so you don’t have a clue as to what exactly is your signal strength on your iPhone. The problem is associated with iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 4.

It seems like most people are getting a chuckle out of reading Apple’s response to the problem. I am sure Apple doesn’t think it’s funny. At least not with the concerns of potential class action lawsuit looming over their head. Here’s what Apple says (the bold highlights are mine):

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

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. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.”

Apple also blames the iPhone users because they don’t hold the phone properly and says that other phones have similar problems so this isn’t really that bad. I can’t speak for everyone else but my Motorola phone never loses its signal strength no matter how I hold the phone. I tried holding it upside down, backwards and forward, at every angle, even jumping up and down, but could not duplicate Apple’s claim that that’s how cell phones are supposed to work. But then again, I don’t have an iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, Droid, Nokia or an RIM phone. This may come to Apple as a surprise that my cell phone works while driving through the I-90 tunnel, in elevators, and even in basements…..and no, my service provider is not AT&T. According to Apple:

“To start with, gripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by 1 or more bars. This is true of iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, as well as many Droid, Nokia and RIM phones. But some users have reported that iPhone 4 can drop 4 or 5 bars when tightly held in a way which covers the black strip in the lower left corner of the metal band. This is a far bigger drop than normal, and as a result some have accused the iPhone 4 of having a faulty antenna design.”

I guess Apple’s engineers didn’t know how to calculate the formula’s properly so Apple has decided to use AT&T’s formula for calculating signal strength.

“To fix this, we are adopting AT&T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone’s bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.”

In an effort to justify the great quality of iPhone 4, Apple said that they “continue to read articles and receive hundreds of emails from users saying that iPhone 4 reception is better than the iPhone 3GS.” I don’t think criticizing your own product is such a great idea. In fact, it’s a bad marketing idea. There are 41,152,350 people who purchased an iPhone by the end of 2009. Considering the fact that just in three days (June 24-26, 2010) Apple sold 1.7 million iPhone 4s, I wouldn’t be jumping up and down if only a couple of hundred people are excited about iPhone 4′s reception, compared to a worse product iPhone 3GS. That’s not something to brag about.

Apple admits that the mistake with the formula goes back all the way to iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G. It will take them a few weeks to offer a software update.

“We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.“

To help the public, Apple has announced the following:

“As a reminder, if you are not fully satisfied, you can return your undamaged iPhone to any Apple Retail Store or the online Apple Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund.”

If you own an iPhone longer than 30 days, you are out of luck. Keep in mind that Apple won’t release the software update for several weeks…..okay, they said “a few weeks.” If you wait for the software patch then you may not be eligible for a refund if you miss the 30-day deadline. Obviously, if they don’t come out with a patch for the next 30-days (i.e. “a few weeks”), you are guaranteed to be ineligible for a refund.

You may have read about Apple’s recommendation to use bumper as a workaround (which they sell for $29 each). What people find funny is that Apple also claims that this is not a design flaw, it’s a software problem. How does using a bumper fixes a software bug? Talking about bumpers, you might want to read this article “Why Apple’s iPhone 4 bumper case is a rip-off” on Ars Technica’s Web site.

Makes you wonder why Apple’s testing and quality control department were not able to discover this and other iPhone flaws. Perhaps the iPhone manual should include instructions on how to properly hold Apple’s iPhones. Can you imagine someone making a really important phone call accidentally holds his/her iPhone in an improper method (whatever that is). Aren’t you glad President Obama uses a Blackberry, not an iPhone? Until Apple fixes the iPhone flaws, dialing 911 on an iPhone might not be a good idea.

You can read the entire open letter here.

Here are some additional links of interest.

1. My blog post from June 29, 2010: Is iPhone a Lemon?
2. Guardian’s blog: Steve Jobs solves iPhone 4 reception problems: ‘don’t hold it that way’
3. Sharee English’s blog: To iPhone or not to iPhone
4. Ars Technica article: Why Apple’s iPhone 4 bumper case is a rip-off
5. ZDNet: Is Apple covering up the real problem with it’s iPhone?
   

Today I read Jason O’Grady’s review of his iPhone 4 on ZDNet titled “My iPhone 4 is a lemon, oh my!” With all the horror stories about Apple’s iPhone, from being notorious as one of the most hackable phone on the market today to the disastrous service from AT&T that iPhone users have experienced, it’s no surprise that iPhone 4 will not be winning any awards or raving reviews any time soon from Jason O’Grady, a respected  journalist and author who specializes in mobile technology. Jason has published six books on Apple and mobile gadgets so if he says his iPhone is a lemon I absolutely believe him. Here a are a few selected quotes from his article on ZDNet. Make sure you read his entire article.

“Say what you will about the iPhone 4, but mine’s a lemon. Reviewers have called it “the best smartphone,” “worth upgrading” and “game changing,” but they’re all bogus superlatives that don’t apply to mine. Sure, it looks great, it’s all shiny and gorgeous, but what good is a phone that can’t make phone calls?

“Dropped calls. My experience was bad almost from the beginning. The first five calls that I made — business calls, mind you — resulted in dropped calls. I began my iPhone 4 experience by apologizing to my client for the phone problems. Not good.”

“Signal loss. My next bad experience was the “death grip” issue, where simply holding the i4 would degrade its signal from a solid five bars to one or zero (my video of the flaw is here). Holding it wrong? No. The antennas are in the wrong location. Apple completely missed the boat on this obvious defect and flaw in the design.”

“Proximity sensor. My iPhone 4 constantly mutes, holds or switches to FaceTime when it touches my face. Clearly a problem with the iPhone’s proximity sensor.”

“Custom ringtones. I had to fight with my iPhone to get my custom ringtones to sync and since then it’s been downhill from there. My ringtones keep playing in a stuttered loop after I answer the call. I hear a garbled version of my ringtone ringing after I answer the call. The only solution is to hang up and call the person back.”

“Battery life. For the all hype around battery life on the iPhone 4, I’m not seeing it. I charged mine overnight, unplugged it at around 8 am and got the 20 percent battery warning before 6pm. I wasn’t using it excessively mind you, nothing out of my normal usage pattern (brightness at about 50 percent) but I was using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth intermittently throughout the day.”

Check out the complete article here. You might also be interested in Sharee English’s blog “To iPhone or not to iPhone.” I am not saying that everyone iPhone user has trouble with their iPhone but a lot of people believe that iPhone is way over hyped, is over priced and there are definitely some serious issues with service and security. It’s not the greatest thing since sliced bread as Apple would like you to believe. Just Bing or Google “iPhone horror stories” and see what I mean.

For some reason Apple and Linux users have a tendency to believe that their computers are immune from viruses and malware. I am not sure who spread this rumor (some people suggest it was Apple but I have no proof of that), but I can assure you that it is not true. I have blogged several times over the years about Macintosh security issues. The only reason you don’t hear much about Macintosh and Linux security exploits and read about attacks on Windows-based PCs is that Microsoft Windows runs on about 90% of the computers in the world. The bad guys have very little interest on finding security holes in operating systems that are run by a small percentage of people around the globe.

A recent post on ZDNet, written by Ed Bott, discusses some serious security issues in Linux and Macintosh. Here’s a portion of his blog post:

“Every time I write about Windows security software, I get a predictable flood of responses from Linux advocates who claim that they don’t need any such protection. Today comes a shining example of why they’re wrong.

If you downloaded and installed the open-source Unreal IRC server in the last 8 months or so, you’ve been pwned. Here’s the official announcement:

Hi all,

This is very embarrassing…

We found out that the Unreal3.2.8.1.tar.gz file on our mirrors has been replaced quite a while ago with a version with a backdoor (trojan) in it.

This backdoor allows a person to execute ANY command with the privileges of the user running the ircd. The backdoor can be executed regardless of any user restrictions (so even if you have passworded server or hub that doesn’t allow any users in).

Two additional details in the announcement added extra helpings of irony:

It appears the replacement of the .tar.gz occurred in November 2009 (at least on some mirrors). It seems nobody noticed it until now.

Right. Because even server administrators believe that open source and Linux software are impregnable by design, the official download of a widely distributed server product has been infected with a backdoor that gives bad guys complete ownership of the system. Oops.

And my favorite part:

The Windows (SSL and non-ssl) versions are NOT affected.

Again, that’s right. A similarly infected Windows file in the wild would be detected within days if not hours after a routine virus scan by someone checking the download before installing it.”

Ed goes on to talk about Macintosh security issues. You can read his entire post here.

If your laptop is stolen, it sure would be nice to be able to track it. Well, the researchers at the University of Washington (UW) along with the researchers at the University of California, San Diego have developed an open source software package, called Adeona (the Roman goddess of safe returns) to do exactly that. It uses state-of-the-art cryptography so you, the owner of the laptop, will be only person who can track your stolen laptop. If you are wondering about the cost of such valuable software, worry not….it’s FREE.

Adeona uses the Internet as a homing beacon by occasionally sending the laptop’s IP address and related information to OpenDHT, a free online storage network. By using the IP address, you can get a general idea where the laptop might be located. The tool works on laptops and desktops running Windows, Macintosh and Linux.

If you are using Macintosh you would like this tool even better because Adeona will use the computer’s internal camera to take a photo and send it to the server. The photo, along with the general location of your stolen laptop, could be valuable for law enforcement authorities to help you track your laptop.easy

The program is very easy to install and takes only 3.8MB on a Windows computer. The software consists of Adeona Client, which periodically sends private updates regarding your laptop to a remote storage location on the Internet. The Adeona Recovery Tools is the component that helps you retrieve the updates that were sent by your laptop. Of course, you want to install both the components. You will be prompted to provide a password. This password will ensure that only you will be able to reteive the information about the laptop.

Once you have installed the product, make sure that you back up the file created by the setup program on your desktop. The file is called adeona-retrievecredentials.ost and it contains the location-finding credentials of your laptop.

NOTE: Unfortunately, the extension .ost will confuse some people because it is used by Microsoft’s Outlook as an offline storage file. To read the contents of the file do not double-click it, instead you can open it in Notepad to read the content.

Here’s the message you will see at the completion of installation.

To retrieve a lost or stolen laptop you execute the Run Adeona Recovery tool from the Start menu. You will be prompted to enter your password. You may have to wait an hour before you do a retrieval after you install the software on your computer. In my evaluation of the software, I was able to get the location information relatively quickly, within 20 minutes or so after the installation. The retrieved location information will look something like this. I am using fake IP addresses in the example.

Retrieved location information:
update time: 10/03/2008,10:38 (PDT)
internal ip: 10.5.15.20
external ip: 192.168.9.8
access point: (n/a)
Nearby routers:
1 0.000ms 10.5.15.1 (MYROUTER)
===============================
Press any key to continue . . .

You can use one of the several free tools to look up the IP address information, such as IPLookup.

Check out this link for more details. You can download the tool at http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/.

Microsoft’s Excel application contains a vulnerability that could allow a remote attacker to gain access to a system.

The flaw affects multiple versions of the spreadsheet software, including Excel 2000, 2002 and 2003, as well as versions of Microsoft Office containing those versions. It can also be manipulated in Excel Viewer 2003 and Office 2004 for Mac. Click here for more details.