
John Gruber about Papermaster and "That Damn Antenna" - barredo
http://daringfireball.net/2010/08/papermaster_damn_antenna
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buster
It's so boring to read Grubers fan posts over and over again.. Why are they so
popular on HN? They are usually full of subjective opinions on how great Apple
is, nothing more.

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tptacek
(a) A significant chunk of HN'ers tend to agree with Gruber, (b) a significant
chunk of HN'ers at least tend to learn things from Gruber posts (ie, the
scuttlebutt that antenna-exec-guy was canned), (c) Gruber tends to be
addressing issues that have captured the attention of HN, (d) Gruber captures
the "quasi-official" "pro-Apple" side of those issues better than any other
blog, and (e) Gruber's posts are extraordinarily well-written and people like
reading them for that reason.

It's incredibly boring --- almost daft --- to complain that Gruber takes
Apple's side in these posts. No shit, really, Gruber's pro-Apple, you say?
Gruber has absolutely no incentive to be more fair to Apple's opponents than
he is. He's not writing for HN; he's getting posted here by people who think
he writes interesting stuff.

~~~
buster
I get that, but that's a shame. It's like stating that the Sun (the magazine)
or the "Bild" (german magazine) are well written and respected journals
because they are read by millions of people. I always hated how those
magazines can be read by so many people.

Or to rephrase that: If it's news (it's Hacker NEWS, right?), the first and
most important point is that the article is objective and neutral. Atleast for
me. And that's why i don't like those links on the frontpage, just as i don't
like the suns, the mirrors or the "bilds" frontpage.

Or to put it yet another way: daringfireball.net is the subjective opinion of
a single person who seems to rephrase a lot of apples marketing talk. It's not
journalism, it's not news, there is often no objective proof, no scientific
proof, just the personal opinion of a single person. It doesn't belong on a
page that has a certain quality. In a news magazine, i'd rate that as bad
journalism, bad news. And again, this page is for news, i thought.

~~~
tptacek
You just ignored 2/3 of my comment to focus on "yes, Gruber is pro-Mac".

------
CERTIORARI
Truly, Apple has become the most boring tech company of today. Months and
months of discussions about _phones_ , _antennas_ , _internal policies_ ,
_petty theft_ , and now business executives. It must be hard being an Apple
blogger, and feigning excitement over such trivialities.

~~~
mgw
Apple is about as boring as every other tech company when it comes to those
issues. The big difference though is, that people talk about it when these
things happen there. With every other company everyone just ignores it. That
makes Apple one of the most (or the most) exciting tech company to many
people.

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ergo98
Gruber claims that Apple caught the antenna bug two years ago. Why then, after
all of the reports, did Apple claim to be working tirelessly around the clock
for some 22 days to find the issue? Secondly, it isn't "one spot": Touching
the antenna anywhere attenuates and detunes it, which is why no other phone
has an antenna in places that you touch. The whole bridging antennas thing is
a red herring.

I fully expect an upcoming revision of the iPhone -- perhaps even the white
version and then a Rev.B black version, to have a coating on the antenna.A
simply layer of epoxy and it would still look groovy and would eliminate
almost all of the issues. The downside is how that will wear over time, which
I'm sure they're testing right now.

~~~
mlinsey
Reading your comment on my iPhone 4 made me curious: after a few minutes of
trying, I can't make the signal drop enough to lose bars by touching it
anywhere besides the gap between antennas, which makes me lose two bars every
time. Even if touching it anywhere should theoretically cause a problem, it's
definitely much more pronounced when you bridge the gap.

~~~
tptacek
Agreeing and adding the data point that having band-aided the "death gap" on
my antenna, I get significantly _better_ reception on my i4 than I did on my
3G. I think the original commenter's point is a crock.

~~~
ergo98
Just to confirm: You believe that touching an external antenna doesn't detune
or attenuate the signal. That's a fascinating belief that goes completely
against all antenna design.

It's interesting that the iPhone 4 is the first device with a touchable
antenna, and that was done purely to reduce the size of the device. Must be
magic.

