

Who Do You Believe, Randall Stross or Your Own Lying Eyes? - aditya
http://daringfireball.net/2009/12/stross_lying_eyes

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kmod
I think people need to stop jumping to conclusions. Maybe the "problem with
the network" is that "there are too many iPhones on the network." This deals
with every actual piece of evidence that people are putting forward to try to
refute the original article. Is it really so hard to believe that Apple could
put out a piece of hardware that does not behave nicely to others?

I'm not saying that the nytimes article is right, but just that people who say
it's wrong are wrong.

As an analogy, you can take the routers that were stupidly configured to use
stratum 1 NTP servers. These misbehaving devices placed too much strain on the
NTP "network" because they used it inappropriately. But it was only the NTP
servers that a lot of these routers were configured for that were having
problems. Yet no one would claim that it's the NTP network's fault for the
issues.

~~~
antonovka2
> As an analogy, you can take the routers that were stupidly configured to use
> stratum 1 NTP servers. These misbehaving devices placed too much strain on
> the NTP "network" because they used it inappropriately. But it was only the
> NTP servers that a lot of these routers were configured for that were having
> problems. Yet no one would claim that it's the NTP network's fault for the
> issues.

A poor analogy:

\- AT&T sells the iPhone.

\- AT&T sells the service.

ergo,

\- AT&T is responsible for providing quality service to the iPhone.

~~~
kmod
Right, I'm not saying that AT&T isn't responsible or that people don't have
good cause to be dissatisfied with them. All I'm trying to say is that it's
possible that the root technical cause of the bad service issues isn't in
AT&T's network, but in bad behavior from iPhones that manifests itself when
you have a large concentration of them in one area.

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megaduck
We can answer this pretty easily by looking at AT&T Blackberries. If 3G
Blackberries also have issues, then it's the network. If not, it's Apple's
problem.

Anybody out there with a BB care to comment?

~~~
wglb
I have an LG phone with at&t, and a droid with verizon. Verizon gets where
at&t can't, even if you just compare non-3g.

~~~
megaduck
That's interesting, but not quite what I'm looking for. I'm trying to find out
if the iPhone is a good phone on a crappy network, or a crappy phone on a
crappy network.

How does your LG perform in urban areas like SF, Seattle, or NYC? How's the 3G
performance in those situations?

~~~
wglb
Sorry, I am pretty short of information--mostly here in Chicago area, and
don't yet have a handle on the 3g performance.

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houseabsolute
I don't think this piece is very well-argued. For one thing, I've been trying
out a new android phone (my iPhone is on the back burner but I doubt I will be
making a permanent switch) and the signal quality does seem to be a little
better with the Android phone.

Many of the points rely on comparisons to other countries, but analytical
people will recognize that problems can be caused by interactions in systems
that otherwise work fine on their own too. For example, I had an old wireless
router that worked fine with my Windows computers, but not with my Macbook
Pro. But my Macbook Pro worked fine with other b/g access points. Without
better information, how could we possibly tell which one is at fault? But
Gruber (fanboy that he is) is drawing the conclusion that AT&T must be at
fault.

As for the "Apple would have fixed it" assertion, or the question of why the
number of complaints have gone up as iPhone users have, Gruber's blindness to
his own biases is truly startling. You could as easily argue that AT&T has had
three years to fix their network, so it must be Apple's fault because if the
blame lay at AT&T's door it would have been fixed by now. And _of course_ the
number of complaints will rise as iPhone users rise if the problem is some
interaction between the iPhone specifically and AT&T's network: there are more
iPhone users in existence to complain!

All in all this is very, very poorly done. I have no idea who's at fault but I
do know that I won't be going to Gruber for anything more than entertainment
if I'm reading about this whole fiasco.

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jsz0
All of the major SmartPhone operating systems allow you to see GSM signal
quality in an exact dB measurement. It should be pretty easy for someone with
access to many GSM handsets to do field testing. Arguing back and forth with
anecdotal evidence is pointless when it's so easy to obtain the facts.

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tjmc
My own little data point fwiw - I'm using an iPhone 3GS in Perth, Australia on
the Vodafone network. The reception is definitely worse than my old Nokia on
the same network. I've heard similar things from friends using iPhones on
Optus which has a separate network from Vodafone.

I definitely think there's an issue with the iPhone's reception, but it's not
so bad that I'd go back to my old "dumb phone".

------
bugs
When the problem is limited to highly populous areas like New York and Chicago
and the phones work better if not flawlessly in suburbs and smaller cities the
network most definitely is the problem.

~~~
lepht
Happy iPhone user here in North Eastern US, but I think your logic (and the
TFA's) is faulty:

It is completely possible that it is a problem with the iPhone, but one that
is only visibly affecting the network when there's a high density of iPhones
being used in a small geographical area.

It's like the whole controversial 'pre-fetch' setting on Fasterfox and other
'web accelerators'. It's fine for individual users, but it violates the
contract of how network clients (browsers) are expected to act.

Once there's a sizable number of people using the technology it becomes a
problem that affects everyone.

To say that the issues only occur in large metropolitan areas does not
completely exclude the iPhone itself from being a contributing factor.

~~~
bugs
See I understand where you are coming from but the comment about Hawaii's
network makes me think otherwise. (Usually the AT&T complaints are limited to
Chicago California and New York so that also brings to question why isn't
everyone else experiencing such issues.)

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bmalicoat
Every smart phone I've owned, mostly T-mobile Sidekicks and now an iPhone, has
had slightly worse reception than a 'normal' phone on the same network. So I
take it as a given that the iPhone trades a bit of reception strength for
better battery life, but not to the point of dropped calls. Those fall
strictly on AT&T shoulders in my eyes.

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coffeemug
More importantly, I couldn't care less whose problem it is. I paid $70/mo to
T-Mobile for three lines on a family plan, in addition to three free
(admittedly crappy) phones, and had a stellar reception everywhere. Now I pay
$80/mo to AT&T/Apple for a single line, in addition to $250 cost for the
phone, and I can't make a single call without problems in 90% of the places I
go to. The important message is "shut up, stop pointing fingers, and fix it",
not a guessing game about whose problem it is. It will only become interesting
to me from a purely intellectual, technical perspective when they fix the
problem. For now, I couldn't care less who's at fault.

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mtrichardson
I'm in Portland. We're not exactly a thriving metropolis. However, I've been
living without 3G simply due to the horrible reception, the astonishing number
of dropped calls and - even worse - the calls that I just never get. Edge, it
turns out, is way more reliable for those of us here.

I never had any of these problems on T-Mobile, nor do those I know who
currently have jailbroken phones on that network.

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gamble
This reminds me of the advertising DSL-based ISPs used to run claiming that
'data hogs' on cable ISPs destroyed the experience for everyone else. Even if
the iPhone was inefficient, that's something you compensate for with more
aggressive network upgrades. If a communications network consistently provides
poor service, that's not bad technology - it's poor management.

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danw
It's both. I hear from some friends at mobile operators that the radio network
code on the iPhone is pretty troublesome compared to other vendors. At the
same time iPhone users use more bandwidth than certain operators planned for.

Operators need to boost capacity. Apple needs to improve their networking
code.

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tobyhede
I am in AU and have terrible coverage with my iphone, as do several of my
friends/colleagues. However, just as in the US it seems that some of the other
networks are much better. I wonder if there is actually some issue or
incompatibility in the infrastructure that leads to some problems.

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gojomo
I get much better AT&T coverage away from San Francisco. And AT&T customers
_not_ on iPhones don't seem to have the same level of complaint. (Lower
expectations, or better on-phone radio-link-management?)

Perhaps it's a little of both: AT&T's network is somewhat thin and overloaded
exactly where media and tech-influentials most notice, and the iPhone is more
fragile when facing that than other devices.

~~~
bensummers
iPhone users use data more than users of other phones, so if there are
problems they will notice them proportionally more than users of other phones.

