Best Phone Blog

According to Gary Marshall of Tech Radar, “maybe Steve (Jobs) should blog”.

The man has a point, not that Steve Jobs needs to start blogging sometime soon (though that would work too), but that Apple needs to change the way it interacts with the world.

Sure, they make decent enough products to become one of the largest developer-manufacturers in the world, but that does not mean that the world likes them. Steve Jobs has personally earned a reputation in the industry as the cranky old man who has a distorted view of reality, and the folks at Cupertino under him are not falling far from the Apple tree (and yes, pun intended).

They even went as far as telling the world that they forgo having PR, which is why they take things to a personal level –which is outright unprofessional and bad for their company. They have the option of taking things personally, but that does not mean they can lash out in the very same way.

It would be silly to believe that they have taken 22 days tackling the iPhone 4’s antenna issue and have only come up with such a crude solution. While a free iPhone case has been on the list of solutions early on, it is not something that a company that considers itself a rival to Microsoft and Google would waste so much time on.

There is no excuse that is acceptable at this point. While users will certainly appreciate a full refund, this does not bode well for those avid Apple supporters who have been hoping to use the iPhone 4. These people have remained loyal users to the Cupertino based company, and are willing to stick it out even with a faulty smart phone, and the best that Apple can do is a cheap free case (not even the slightly better looking iPhone bumper).

Just about a week ago, it was made known that Apple was looking for antenna experts and engineers. At that point, the clamor over the antenna issue was still at a low point and nobody had been pestering the Cupertino based company to move into action. Now, it appears that all the lights are on Apple as over a million iPhone 4 users wait what the decision of the company may be in regards to solving the antenna issue that is plaguing iPhone 4 users.

Recent reports indicate that this all could have been avoided at a much earlier point before the device has been mass produced: Apple was already warned by their own employees that the antenna had design issues.

According to unnamed sources from within Apple, senior engineer Ruben Caballero had already identified the issue early on –presumably, during the testing phases of the prototype. He already aired the issue to superiors, including Steve Jobs (whom we can all assume responded by telling Ruben that he was simply “holding the phone wrong”).

Now it seems that Apple has been taking their people for granted and getting in on the action now is a little too late.

Naturally, Engineer Ruben is not allowed to talk to the public on behalf of Apple, but we certainly would want to know what Apple’s initial reasons were for completely ignoring the warning. In the end, the iPhone 4 ended up with one of the biggest design blunders that have ever happened to the smart phone industry.

For those who have never heard of the iPhone 4 antenna issue, here is a quick summary of the problem. Basically, the iPhone 4’s antenna comes with a weak point –and when this point comes into contact with human touch, it will not be able to receive signals from the network.

Web developer and author Jonathan Snook is man with plenty of experience and know how; and he knows that Flash is far from the dead format that Apple is proclaiming it to be.

In his recent blog, he points out one of the key factors regarding Flash technology today:

“Flash’s downfall, however, has more to do with those wielding its power—the web developers and designers who misuse it—and less to do with the technology itself.”

Simply put, Flash has not only become the main media format for web games, apps and video, but it is also the medium of choice for many of those annoying things on the internet –mainly pop up ads and other recurring forms of annoying media content.

At the same time, Flash websites are being criticized as being touch unfriendly (as so Steve Jobs says), but the fact of the matter is that badly made sites are badly made, regardless if they are made in plain old HTML, Flash or HTML5. It has been shown several times that Flash content is something that works well with touch-based controls.

The bottom line here is that there is no reason to believe that Flash has finally met its end, or that browsers need only be compatible with HTML5. There is simply too much content online that uses the Flash format to think that it would be practical to browse the internet without being able to see a large chunk of online content.

Of course, Snook also knows that Flash is not the end all; even Adobe has announced that they will also be creating HTML5 development tools.

“Right now, HTML5 is slowly becoming a viable alternative to Flash for a greater variety of situations. However, Flash will continue to fill in the gaps for years to come because it continues to solve problems that web developers have and that can’t be solved with any other client-side technology.”

It will be a long time before the full transition from Flash to HTML5 actually happens. For now, the internet will evolve in its’ own way –without being dictated by Apple.