Colchester #iPhoneography
via Pixelpipe
Apple boss Steve Jobs reveals iPhone 4 may be recalled
The much-vaunted new iPhone 4 may be recalled, Apple boss Steve Jobs revealed last night.
Posting a message on the social networking site Twitter, the tycoon said: ‘We may have to recall the new iPhone. This I did not expect.’
Launched in Britain last week, the £500 handset has been dogged by technical problems.
Steve Jobs shows Russian President Dimitry Medvedev the new iPhone 4. The Apple boss said the new phone may be recalled following a glut of complaints
Reception has been found to cut out when users cover a metal band built into the phone’s bottom left-hand corner.
The new iPhone was also said to be unsuitable for left-handed people.
Mr Jobs responded to complaints about the new iPhone losing its signal by telling users to 'just avoid holding it in that way'.
Angry users have complained that the phone's reception suddenly plunges to almost zero when they simply hold it in their hand.
Dozens of videos have been placed on YouTube showing the iPhone 4 losing signal the moment the metal antenna that surrounds the edge of the new device is covered.
Mr Jobs issued his bizarre advice as he responded to an email from a user on the Ars Technica technology news site who had complained about the sudden loss of signal.
A clip from an iPhone 4 advert which shows the model holding the device in the 'wrong' way
In an astonishingly blunt response, Mr Jobs replied: 'Just avoid holding it in that way. All phones have sensitive areas'.
In a statement, Apple said: 'Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas.'
'This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.'
Apple claims that using one of its 'bumpers' - which cost £25 each and clip over the iPhone to protect it - will stop the user's hand interfering with the signal.
Another iPhone 4 ad shows the model's hand blocking the antenna
The firm is selling the rubber bumpers on its website but none will be shipped to the UK until July 16th.
Users have flooded Twitter with rumours about the problem and stop-gap remedies including using tape to cover the bottom of the phone.
Left-handed users are being particularly affected because when they hold the phone in their left hand their fingers cover more of the right-hand side of the phone - where the antenna is.
The left side of the iPhone 4 receives Wi-Fi signals while the right side picks up the 3G signal for calls.
Technology website T3 ran a test using one of the ‘bumper’ cover for the phone which appears to solve the issue.
Danish wireless technology expert called Gert Frølund Pedersen told Wired magazine that the problem is probably because the phone’s new antenna is built into the metal frame which surrounds the device.
‘Human tissue will have an inhibitory effect on the antenna. Touch means that a larger portion of the antenna energy turns into heat and lost.
'This makes the antenna less efficient to send and receive radio signals,’ he said.
A loss of signal, known as attenuation, can occur when an antenna is bridged.
Holding it in your hand will change the length of the antenna and interfere with the specific wavelengths it is calibrated to pick up.
The Apple iPad also faced some teething problems when it was launched with users reporting problems when they tried to connect to wi-fi. A software update had to be issued to sort this problem out.
A new iPhone complete with black rubber 'bumper' which Apple claims will help solve the problem
And the iPhone 4 is not the first Apple 3G phone to have problems with its reception - users also reported problems with the earlier iPhone 3GS when it was first released too.
There have also been early reports of problems with the iPhone’s screen.
Launched by Steve Jobs as ‘retina display’, with an paralleled definition and number of pixels, some users in the US have complained about some yellow discolouration.
The spots can appear in corners and the thin bands have shown up toward the tops and bottoms of customers' screens.
Some Apple insiders on web forums have claimed that the yellow colour is down to the clue that the firm uses to bond the glass on its screens which has not had the time to evaporate.
They claim that the discolouration will clear after a day or two as the glue evaporates.
The iPhone 4 was unveiled earlier this month. At the time, Mr Jobs said it represented 'the biggest leap since the original iPhone'.
It offers video calling, a higher-resolution display and the ability to record and view high-definition video.
The new handset updates the iPhone 3GS which launched a year ago and sold more than a million units in its first weekend.
A spokesperson for Apple was not immediately available to comment.
I've started to send the following note to web developers each time I get stuck with a Flash video whilst on an iPad, iPhone or iPod.
Hi,
I've just visited your site using my iPad and was unable to watch video content due to the use of Adobe Flash. Have you considered using the web standard HTML5 for video instead of Flash?Kind regards,
Hopefully if enough users complain something may be done about it.
Dim UK Tabloids Report Ghost App Prank
7:36 am, March 5th, 2010, Giles Turnbull
Ahh, bless ‘em. The hacks at The Sun aren’t famous for hard-hitting investigative journalism, but at least you’d expect them to know an iPhone app when they see one.
A couple of weeks ago a builder fooled them (and the Daily Mail) into believing that he’d taken a photo of a ghostly boy on a building site in Hull.
But as the internet pointed out shortly afterwards, anyone can make the exact same ghostly figure appear pretty much anywhere they like, thanks to the Ghost Capture app for iPhone.
Even funnier are some of the comments posted under the stories. On the Daily Mail’s version, for example, Mel from Stroud says:
“i am mildly psychic and i snese this boy was evacualted from the war,his father died,his mother died of old age,he lives with an old couple and this used to be his school,hopes this helps everyone”
(To be honest, I don’t think for a minute that the journalists at either paper actually believed that the photo was real, and they probably did instantly work out where it came from. But The Sun’s purpose is to entertain as much as it is to inform – so they wrote it up in all innocent seriousness, knowing that readers with a clue would be in on the joke. And that some readers would fall for it.)
(Via Macenstein, Know Your Mobile, Tabloid Watch, and half the rest of the internet.)
Posted by Giles Turnbull in Humor, News, iPhone, iPhone Apps | Comment on this article
If you enjoyed this article:
Subscribe via RSS or email, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter
Ok so I've been using Tweetie 2 for just over 24 hours now and here's my initial thoughts compared to Twittelator Pro.
Twittelator Pro displays a pop-up notification letting you know that your tweet has been sent. Tweetie 2 doesn't give you any confirmation that the tweet has been sent and this is a problem when tweeting photos or large videos.
I also prefer the way Twittelator Pro displays attached photos:
Without a doubt both are great Twitter clients, for UI Tweetie 2 wins hands down (the way you refresh tweets is just pure class) but if you're looking for a feature rich client Twittelator is the winner IMHO.
Fever http://feedafever.com/ $30
So if your like me you probbably subscribe to far too many RSS feeds, don't get me wrong I love RSS it's the way I get most of my news. Recently I've reached my limit of what I can resonably get through in any one day. I'd ideally subscribe to more feeds but I really don't have the time to read them all. I'd rather not suffer the 'unread item guilt' or 'second inbox syndrome' that you can sometimes get with unread feeds. This is where the RSS aggregator Fever from Shaun Inman can help.
How is Fever different?
Fever is unique in a couple of ways, firstly (and most importantly) it's a self hosted web app, meaning the Fever installation is stored on your web server so you will need hosting that's running a recent version of PHP and MySQL. Fever is also different in the way it handles your feeds, this means you can subscribe to many more feeds without suffering the unread item guilt. This is achieved by organising your feeds into two categories, 'must reads' and 'could be interesting' I'll explain more about this later.
Installation
Before you can purchase Fever you will need to download a small package which will detect if your hosting provider is up to the job. Once your server successfully passes the compatibility tests you will be given an activation key to purchase Fever. Installation is fairly straightforward and there is even a video on feedafever.com showing you the complete install process. You may need to change the permissions of the Fever folder, presumably to allow future updates to be pushed out. Fever refreshes itself automatically, however I did encounter a problem setting up a cron job to refresh my feeds every 15 minutes. The command provided over on feedafever.com didn't seem to work with my provider (SiteGround) but after a quick email to SiteGround they soon managed to get it working for me.
Setup
Once Fever is installed you will need to bookmark it's homepage, by default the installation is placed at www.yourwebsite.com/fever/ You can now start to feed Fever with your existing feeds, this is easily achieved by importing the OPML file from your previous reader. There are four sections to Fever, the main section is called 'Kindling' this is where you place your 'must read' feeds, you can create groups of feeds here and these are read in the traditional way (although by default Fever hides unread counts). Next up are 'Sparks', this is where you file all the feeds that can be interesting but are quite high in volume. Link posts and Twitter feeds are ideal candidates to be thrown into the Sparks section as you'll never be hassled by unread counts. Just toss your feeds into Sparks and forget them. Now here's where Fever hots up, Sparks and Kindling combine to create the next section called 'Hot'. Think of Hot as your own personal Digg site.
Fever will analyse all your feeds (Kindling and Sparks) looking for matching links and will pick out the most frequently talked about links. These posts are arranged in order of their 'Hotness', giving popular/interesting posts a higher temperature and will place them at the top of the Hot list. It's all based on body temperature (hence the name Fever) the more popular the posts (based on similar links) the higher the temperature. There is also a 'Saved' section where (as you would expect) posts are stored for reading later. At the bottom of the main menu is a search bar for tracking down those lost posts.
Fevers design is simple, minimalistic and well laid out which works really well. Favicons are used to represent the feeds in both the desktop and iPhone versions. Keyboard junkies will love it's easy to navigate user interface. The arrow keys are used to move from pane to pane and up and down the lists. 'Space' will move you to the next post, hitting 'S' saves the post for reading later and pressing 'A' will mark the selected section as read. To expand a story you hit 'enter' and to view the entire post just hit arrow right.
Fluid
Shaun suggests using the site specific browser Fluid.app with Fever and provides a link to a rather nice looking icon and screenshots on how to configure Fluid. Fluid turns Fever into a standalone application complete with an unread dock badge.
iPhone
Fever also works well on the iPhone as a web app, sharing the simple, easy to navigate style of it's desktop big brother.
A link to the web app can be saved to your iPhone home screen giving the impression of a native app. However it can sometimes take a good ten seconds to open over 3G and when viewing an external site the screen orientation can get a little goofed up, a quick tilt to the left or right soon fixes this though.
Conclusion
Used as just a standard RSS reader Fever works really well, I love the simple interface and easy to remember keyboard navigation shortcut keys. The 'Hot' section of Fever is a bonus, a place to find popular stories that you might otherwise have missed. The iPhone app also works really well and as it's web based it stays perfectly in sync with the desktop.
For the last couple of years I've been using Google Reader on the desktop and more recently Byline on the iPhone and although I'd reached my limit of how many feeds I could reasonably get through in any one day I was happy with this setup. After using Fever for just over a week it has completely replaced my old configuration. I use Kindling in the same way I used Google Reader but every now and then I dip into Hot to... well.. see what's hot!
Having said that the PHP MySQL app is obviously not as fast as a native OS X app such as NetNewsWire and this sometimes shows. Navigating through the pages can sometimes feel a little sluggish but you soon get used to it. It would have been nice to try an online demo installation of Fever before purchasing the app. The iPhone web app could do with a little polish, it sometimes feels a bit beta but I'm sure this will improve as the app matures. In the week that I've been using Fever there has been an update pushed which added some extra features and fixed a few bugs, I'm sure Shaun is committed to future updates.
A license for Fever costs $30 which is $30 more than most other readers such as Google Reader and NetNewsWire but I feel if you already have web hosting the great UI and the 'Hot' feature is well worth the money.
Dave Day 2009
Apple fanboy, Music lover, Atheist, Geocacher, VW enthusiast, Podcaster. Enjoy shooting video, cycling, camping & laughing at organised religion.
