Damon Kaswell - Speculations

I’ve been watching the ongoing debacle regarding Apple’s newest iPhone. For the uninitiated, iPhone 4 released on June 24th. It’s a beautiful looking phone. But there have been a few reports of problems with it since its release. A few piddling, negligible, unimportant problems.

Namely, it loses its signal when you hold it.

Now, Apple has responded in several different ways to these reports:

• This problem doesn’t exist. The iPhone 4 is not plagued with any signal degradation from holding the phone.
• Even if the problem is real, other phones have it, too. All your past experiences to the contrary, holding any cellphone results in a loss of signal.
• But the iPhone doesn’t have a signal problem, even though we just said that all cellphones do.
• And this problem (which, again, doesn’t exist) only happens when you hold your phone wrong.

To normal human beings, this sounds like a defect, whatever Apple says. And it’s especially bizarre for Apple to tell customers who suffer signal degradation that they’re holding the phone incorrectly, when Apple’s advertisements and demonstrations of the iPhone 4 all depict it being held the “wrong” way (otherwise known as the way someone who holds phones in his left hand, like me, would hold a phone). Engadget has a helpful pictorial.

But to my astonishment, there are Apple customers defending the phone and even arguing that this isn’t a problem. People who agree with Apple on the topic, regardless of their own past experiences with other cellphones that — let’s be honest — can in fact be held without dropping calls. This knee-jerk defense of what seems like a serious design flaw has left me scratching my head.

Here are the basics of the problem: The iPhone 4′s antennas are integrated into the body of the phone as thin metallic strips on either side, one for the GSM connection and one for wifi and bluetooth. The rest of the edge is also metallic, but separated from the antennas by thin rubber buffers. When someone holds the phone in the normal phone-holding position with their right hand, there’s no problem. But a left-handed grip bridges the gap between the antenna on the left and the other bit of metal at the bottom. For a lot of people, this results in a loss of signal and dropped calls.

Now, the science fiction writer in me wants to pick this apart. Why do people’s egos get wrapped up in the quality of a piece of technology they’ve purchased? Why defend an obvious flaw, or pretend it doesn’t exist? Why willingly change personal behavior, such as how one holds a phone, to overcome that technology’s shortcomings, without admitting those shortcomings exist? What do they gain?

I can understand partisanship for or against a particular company’s products. But that doesn’t require the complete dismissal of any facts that cast the technology I’ve chosen to use in a negative light. I use Linux rather than Windows, because I find its features more in line with what I need, and the price for equitable features in Windows is too high. I think Linux is simply a better operating system for most tasks.

But that doesn’t mean I regard Linux as the One True Operating System, perfect and error free. It has its problems, one of which is the way application developers for Linux will sometimes put out non-beta software of beta quality (I’m looking at you, Amarok 2 and Audacity 3). I stay with Linux because I find those problems less frustrating than the ones in Windows, but I don’t pretend those problems don’t exist.

So… Technology cultists. People whose senses of ego and self-worth seem to be tied to having made the “right” technology decision, and reject any facts that render their chosen technology less than perfect. I’m trying to wrap my head around it.

There’s got to be a story in there somewhere.

EDIT: I’ve made some adjustments above for clarity, and wanted to promote this really well-crafted analysis, care of dsmoen.

EDIT 2: Well, that was fast. According to the Houston Press blog, there’s now a class-action lawsuit.