A lot of my problems were possibly due to the signal strength at my home, but my Verizon phone also drops to zero bars and is perpetually at 1 bar but still provides superior voice service.

Perhaps I should spend a few moments on why I went ahead with the iPhone 4 purchase in the first place?
1) Dropped calls had supposedly increased by only less than 1%, according the Apple/AT&T.
2) Apple’s videos demonstrating signal bars on other phones. (Although they are pulled from Apple’s website, you can still view them on YouTube — contrary to perception that they are hard to find).
3) The case was supposed to solve the problem.

Well, now I know what an average really means! Your individual numbers could be much much worse.. And that signal bars are computed using different formulas (e.g. Apple’s own admission of having used an incorrect formula all along).

But the free case solution rollout is what roils me most about Apple’s solution. The free cases were backordered 2-4 weeks and (though admittedly dumb on my part) the case I purchased myself on day one left the questionable portion of the phone exposed.
Apple should have mailed a ‘strip’ solution that could immediately by attached to phones (Needless to say, people are still making money selling such strips.)

My personal anecdotes may be tainted because I get only 1-3 bars at home, and that may be amplifying the attenuation problems. I’ll have more to say later on why my iPhone 4 is slowly turning into a glorified iPod Touch.

It’s surprising how Apple has gotten away with its iPhone 4 debacle; the Apple store still indicates a 3 week wait. But, as most people suspect, it will probably improve the antenna in a new model to arrive  before the holiday shopping season.

So, what about current owners who will continue to stare at their unsightly bumpers for the remainder of their 2-year contracts?
“Oh, so you have the old iPhone 4 with antenna problems?!”

I suspect that Apple/AT&T will offer something along the following lines (pick one):

1. AT&T would reduce their contract to 1-year, hence they would be able to upgrade to next year’s June 2011 model as soon as it starts selling. This would effectively cost AT&T/Apple about $200 per customer (their $400 phone subsidy is currently spread over 2 years) but keeps customers away from an ‘upgrade’ rush.
2. For an extra $100, customers can immediately exchange old iPhone 4s for a new ‘fixed’ model. The net cost to customers is $70 (discounting the free $30 case). AT&T/Apple might lose maybe $100 per customer, as they will still be able to sell refurbished old models (like they sell the iPhone 3GS 16/32 GB models today).
3. For free, Apple will replace the antenna at Apple stores. There are 2 visible screws on the bottom plate and possibly the lower antenna can be taken apart and replaced. This one may be hard to implement, but might be preferable to customers less willing to switch devices but who want some remedy.

At $139 a piece, the newest Kindle has mass appeal but is going to stress profit margins even more. A preview feature for web browsing indicates that feature creep is inevitable, and is going to increase hardware costs in the future (How about video, color?). While Apple will probably never release an iPad without color, or video, it will very likely breach the $300 price point, and put pressure on the Kindle.

It was necessary for Amazon to start developing the Kindle to preserve its market share as the paper book format paved way to e-readers. And soon, it will have enough of a captive audience stocked with Kindle books and magazines. It will be time to get out of the hardware business then, and HP is the most likely player to pick up the baton.

The Kindle will be a good brand to add along side Palm, and provide opportunities to up-sell and down-sell between the two lines. Without any competing e-marketplace, HP will prove to be a natural ally to Amazon in its battle against Apple.

I could swear that when the latest mac mini (spring 2010) was released, the apple web pages used language like “completely redesigned” (I’ll verify this once archive.org catches up). However, the press release about the “all new” mac mini does include the phrase. Right now, the description tamely reads “Redesigned in a very big way”.

There are changes that are “new”, but the mini is still severely underpowered. 2 years ago (Note: archive.org links are slow but worth the wait), the CPU was a 1.83GHz or 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. Now, its a 2.4GHz or 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. And barely 6 weeks after the mac mini release, the iMac line was updated to start with a 3.06GHz Intel Core i3 processor with 4MB level 3 cache.

I can’t understand why Apple is so insecure about selling decent mid-priced computers without displays. Is the incremental revenue from a bundled display really that important? Or is Apple afraid that a sub-$900 display just doesn’t function well with a Mac computer (I suppose if you bought a $2500 mac pro, you would plunk down another grand for a ‘grand’ display!). The mac pro costs four times as much as a mac mini; that’s a huge price gap to get the next leap in performance.

With the new mini’s form factor approaching that of Apple TV, one could cynically wonder whether a mini is simply an overpriced Apple TV. Does the hardware in a mini or Apple TV cost only about $300 and that Apple TV recovers its margins through iTunes sales, while the mini’s markup is for a DVD drive and the application software? Ok, that might be a stretch.

My old Windows monitor, a previously (3 years ago) stunning Dell 2007WFP, made text look terrible (fuzzy, bleeding) with my new Apple Mac Mini.

Turns out, this is a known problem for windows users who migrate to a Mac, the latter respecting print fidelity over monitor display. On the other hand, Windows would hammer out fonts to look good on the display, even though print output might look different. And then last year, Snow Leopard made things worse.

To cut  a long story short, my Mac Mini went back home. I just wasnt sure any non-Apple display would cut it and was resigned to buying a 27 inch iMac. Somehow, the 21.5 inch iMac also wouldn’t appeal to me, so I set forth to measure why some displays were just more ‘desirable’ overall.

A higher pixel density is good; so is an overall large number of pixels. But, is there a way to capture both of these in a single metric?

You can also check out the detailed formulas.

The monitors with a high desirability score are highlighted.  I suppose this gives some explanation as to why the 27 inch iMac looked ideal to me (The 30 inch display would do fine too, but I never considered it because of budgetary concerns)..