

Executive Leaves Apple After iPhone Antenna Troubles - credo
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/technology/08apple.html

======
SkyMarshal
I obviously don't know what's going behind the scenes, but I question the
wisdom of ousting someone who makes such a mistake.

Constantly pushing the technology/design envelope as Apple does seems prone to
the occasional snafu. Having engineers and managers on board that have
personally experienced such problems and solved/triaged/otherwise dealt with
them seems valuable. Firing them runs the risk of creating a chilling effect
toward risk taking, as well as lobotomizing some valuable experience from the
company.

Now, maybe the executive was let go because he knew about the antenna problem
beforehand, misrepresented its severity to Jobs, and launched the product
anyway, in which case, yeah let him go. I recall some speculation that Apple
knew about the problem before hand.

But for honest mistakes, with no deception involved, that hurt in the short
term but are solvable and no more than a blip in the long term, maybe that's
not so wise.

Thoughts?

~~~
mishmash
Your theory makes sense, but if this is true, he _fucked up the iPhone_ and
man, even if letting him stay would create a better executive, increase value
to the entire company, etc., I just flat can't see Jobs letting him stay in
any manner at all.

~~~
sprout
That sort of thinking is really stupid, and much as I dislike Apple I do
believe their management is smarter than that.

~~~
jad
I believe it's called 'accountability'.

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siglesias
This may signal that return rates for iPhone 4 have exceeded expectations and
that iPhone 5 development will have to be accelerated. I can't see this
happening if the antenna situation hadn't had a significant financial impact
as manifestation of customer dissatisfaction.

That's unfortunate because many of us are awaiting the latest OSX iteration,
and Apple is a company that doesn't really focus on more than one major
product release at a time, based on personnel limitations and so on.

~~~
flatulent1
The two people that I know that upgraded (from G and GS) both say that overall
reception is better than before and they love their phones. We're in a hilly
area. The phones are still sold out in many places, I can't believe there is
any significant financial hit over this.

Certainly any revisions to later production and next model antenna design
would have no impact on the timetable of whatever OS X and iOS projects are in
the works. If anything siphons talent within Apple, it'd probably be those
continuing to improve iOS for iPad in particular. Although the iPad is doing
extremely well, being so new they're no doubt working very hard to make things
better yet. Apple is working hard on many fronts. Their projects are planned,
so there's no reason to expect any significant unforeseen migration of
engineers between projects.

Realistically, the biggest thing that drives some people away from the iPhone
is AT&T. (on a personal level it is about general dislike of the company not
any actual service problem, it's similar to how some have grown to feel about
Microsoft. I had the feeling even before the iPhone came out) If Apple can
expand to another U.S. carrier without a significant loss due to changed AT&T
terms, we could see a real change in the financial picture... more growth.

The comment about "many of us are awaiting the latest OSX iteration" puzzles
me a bit. While I'm sure Apple will add some cool new things in the future,
without knowing what they are can you really be chomping at the bit? Apple
certainly does work on development of many things at one time. Release timing
is determined by many factors beyond engineering.

As far as hardware updates go, I think more people are interested in watching
Mac hardware iterations as improved Intel chips come out. But for the bulk of
consumers the existing chips are plenty powerful. I'd probably most like to
see third parties (including open source projects) make more use of the
excellent support for using multiple cores and GPUs in the OS. In particular
I'm thinking of VLC and ffmpeg (which is the basis for many video utilities).

~~~
matwood
You can add a 3rd person to your analysis. I've had the iPhone 2G then the 3GS
and now the 4 and the 4 has the best signal of the 3 by far.

In my experience all the cell phone companies in the US suck. Go to any of
their message boards and you'll see the same complaints over and over. The
nature of Apple tends to draw a lot of hype from both sides and that certainly
spills over to AT&T. Personally, I had zero problems with AT&T when I lived in
the south east. When I moved to Denver I just happened to move into a dead
zone and would lose calls constantly. I used the mark the spot app and
complained a few times and they apparently did something on their end to the
point where I can't remember the last time I dropped a call now.

------
credo
From Gruber's comments in
<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/08/07/papermaster> , it appears like
some folks at Apple are spreading the word that Papermaster was fired and that
he was responsible for the problems.

It is unclear whether Papermaster will respond to the rumors or whether he'll
ignore them.

------
jsz0
Maybe the antenna issue played some role but keep in mind he was an IBM old
timer (26 years) coming into a _very_ different company. Imagine what his
first day was like? I'm not sure it was a good fit. So there may be a lot more
to this than the obvious knee jerk reaction of trying to connect it to the
last notable event in our minds. With all the different people involved in
launching the iPhone including Jobs himself it just seems unlikely to me
they'd pick this guy to walk the plank for it. If he wasn't meshing with the
culture before all this it could have been enough to push him over the edge.

------
macmac
"Reached on his cellphone, Mr. Papermaster declined to comment." - so now we
know he already got a job at Nokia.

~~~
jrockway
Haha, I was going to make the same comment. However, for the HN audience, I
wasn't going to add any commentary. The comment, in its entirety, would have
been:

 _Reached on his cellphone, Mr. Papermaster declined to comment._

------
00joe
He did make a comment, however the way he was holding his phone dropped the
call.

------
rbanffy
We know very little about the design process that led to the iPhone 4 antenna.
It's very hard to guess how much blame, if any, Papermaster has on the design
flaw and where, in the continuum between "he was fired for covering his ass"
or "he decided he could not work with the kind of external interference in the
design by Ive or Jobs that caused the problem", this decision happened.

------
ravichhabra
Jobs really spend a large amount of time on the Antenna during launch. And he
ended up looking pretty bad, and someone must have been responsible for making
him think he could go ahead and talk about in during launch. If he had known
about these issues I am sure he would never have dedicated a full 5 minutes on
this 'magical antenna design'. Perhaps he never said anything about the
antenna, than the reports might have been different. Jobs himself put the this
under the microscope.

------
gigafemtonano
I suspect Apple never caught this call dropping issue due to the fact that
everyone who had one of these new 4G iPhones was required to keep it in a case
when they were field testing them. Wasn't the phone that Gizmodo got their
hands on in a big case that made it look like a 3GS? How can anyone but the
people who insist on this secrecy be responsible for the fact that the field
testing seemed like everything was working fine?

~~~
mattparcher
This is a common misunderstanding. In fact, Apple showed members of the press
specially-equipped vans that they use to systematically test reception in the
field under a variety of scenarios, in addition to the dozen or so anechoic
black rooms they have indoors. [1]

[1] [http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/16/inside-apples-black-
lab-w...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/16/inside-apples-black-lab-wireless-
testing-facilities/) (among others)

~~~
gigafemtonano
Simulated and real world are two different ball games. In the real world tests
with sh- er um crappy AT&T signal strength, they were testing in privacy
cases. Ideal tests in the anechoic chambers or iVans were just that - ideal.

