Monday, July 19, 2010

Well! Looks like it's possible.

While I'm at it, allow me to weigh in on the iPhone 4 debacle.

I went ahead and purchased the iPhone 4 with full knowledge of the external antenna "issue." So, I bought a simple case-type covering for it. I've had zero issues with the iPhone 4, with or without the case. I've tried to hold the iPhone the "wrong" way and had no decrease in signal strength. And I've had no other issues with the 4.

We have short memories. The first gen iPhone, which I bought in '07, was plagued with glitches. The most serious, for me, involved the failure of the device to switch back and forth from headphone mode. What this meant was that, for me and thousands of others, if you unplugged the Apple-issued headphones, the iPhone did not switch back to regular mode, and you were unable to make calls. You could hear the caller, but the caller could not hear you. This was a major bug; various remedies were posted (one YouTube showed you how to clean out the headphone jack with a q-tip), but nothing worked. I has an appointment at an Apple store to swap out my phone. The morning of the appointment, I had a dream that my iPhone had started working. I woke up, checked the phone, and the dreaded "(headphones)" designation was gone. (A subsequent firmware patch fixed it finally.)

And have we forgotten the crappy 3G reception of the iPhone 3G? Apparently... because I never see it mentioned anymore. Point is, every initial iPhone run has had some sort of issue. But not until the 4G did these bugs become matters of cosmic importance. I'm not a Mac fanboy... My everyday box is Ubuntu, which I like a lot. I have a really good Dell with Windows 7, which is also a good OS. But for mobile, I prefer the iPhone... And likely always will. Naysayers argue that Apple just refined the innovativions of others, but I disagree. The iPhone was a radical device in '07. Steve Jobs went out on a big limb: the "no-keyboard" keyboard... the "walled garden" of iTunes being the primary software interface... the App Store. They've all worked. And the iPhone has gone from being a revolutionary device to a very good, solid, and useful device (even with still-crappy battery life). So if you are leaning toward getting one--get it.

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