&lt;p&gt;A few follow-up points from yesterday&amp;#8217;s &amp;#8220;&lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/2010/07/antennagate_bottom_line"&gt;Antennagate Bottom Line&lt;/a&gt;&amp;#8221;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;Regarding the Delta in Dropped Calls Between iPhone 4 and 3GS&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;One theory to explain this would be that the iPhone 4 antenna is simply worse than the 3GS&amp;#8217;s antenna, perhaps even only because of skin coming into contact with the infamous spot. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Jobs&amp;#8217;s &amp;#8220;pet theory&amp;#8221; is that iPhone 3GS owners were far more likely to have a case than 4 owners, which, interestingly, implies that even the iPhone 3GS gets better reception when in a case. (I asked about this during the tour of their antenna labs; the answer I got was &amp;#8220;We don&amp;#8217;t know.&amp;#8221;)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#8217;s another one, though, suggested by at least a dozen DF readers so far. Quoting from one such email:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;In Antennagate Bottom Line, you mention the comparison of numbers of dropped calls, but I argue that this is not the right metric. What one needs to know is if the iPhone4 drops a call that would not be dropped by a 3GS. If the additional drops are in areas that the 3GS would have never connected in the first place, then the statistic isn&amp;#8217;t telling us what everyone claims it is. All that would mean is that there is a large drop rate in regions that were previously regarded as dead zones. That&amp;#8217;s an improvement, not a regression.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I&amp;#8217;ll go out and acknowledge that this line of thinking is arguing that the iPhone 4&amp;#8217;s higher dropped call rate is a good thing, which, on its face, sounds nutty. But is it outlandish? There are widespread reports &amp;#8212; &lt;a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2"&gt;none better than Anandtech&amp;#8217;s&lt;/a&gt; &amp;#8212; that the iPhone 4 gets usable reception in areas where previous iPhones got none. Those may well comprise many of the extra dropped calls.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It&amp;#8217;s also only fair to point out that I&amp;#8217;ve also gotten many emails from DF readers who say they drop more calls with their iPhone 4 than their previous iPhones, from the same locations. I&amp;#8217;ve gotten more such emails from readers claiming the iPhone 4 gets &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; reception, but for some, it&amp;#8217;s worse. One thing I&amp;#8217;d feel safe betting on: the extra dropped calls from the iPhone 4 are not evenly distributed among all iPhone 4 users. Some are getting a lot, and most are getting very few.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;Regarding Apple&amp;#8217;s Field Testing of the Antenna&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Over the last few weeks I&amp;#8217;ve probably gotten at least 200 emails posing the following theory:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;We know from the Gizmodo stolen iPhone that the prototypes were disguised in cases when outside Apple&amp;#8217;s campus. Maybe that&amp;#8217;s why Apple missed this flaw in the antenna: they never noticed it on campus because they have a strong AT&amp;amp;T signal, and never noticed it off campus because the iPhones were always inside cases, and cases mitigate the skin-touching-the-spot problem.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;That&amp;#8217;s just not plausible.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;For one thing, the strength of the AT&amp;amp;T coverage on Apple&amp;#8217;s campus has no bearing on the testing they perform in their lab. There is no signal from AT&amp;amp;T inside &lt;a href="http://www.apple.com/antenna/testing-lab.html"&gt;those anechoic chambers&lt;/a&gt;. There is no signal from any external wireless source in those chambers. That&amp;#8217;s the point of them. The way the chambers work is that they create their own little mini network &lt;em&gt;inside&lt;/em&gt; the chamber. They run tests where they create strong signals, weak signals, and everything in between. They also run tests with people holding the phones being tested.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;For another, they do test antennas in the field off-campus with no case. They do so using a fleet of about a dozen mobile testing labs. These are vans &amp;#8212; more like small buses, maybe &amp;#8212; which contain a slew of testing and measurement equipment.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The iPhone Gizmodo obtained was, in Apple&amp;#8217;s internal lingo, a Design Verification Test (DVT) unit. These are one step below production units. My understanding is that when DVT units are deemed ready to go, the factories start churning them out as actual production units. Those DVT field tests are the &lt;em&gt;final&lt;/em&gt; tests, certainly not the only tests. During the tour of Apple&amp;#8217;s labs, Ruben Caballero &amp;#8212; Apple&amp;#8217;s senior antenna engineer, who led the tour &amp;#8212; said the iPhone 4 antenna design had been in testing for two years.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Lastly, here&amp;#8217;s what Steve Jobs said during the press conference:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Again you have to build these rooms, because if you don&amp;#8217;t shield what you&amp;#8217;re testing from all the outside interference, you don&amp;#8217;t get accurate tests. And you can&amp;#8217;t put your equipment in the room either. The equipment&amp;#8217;s all got to be remoted outside the room. Now this is a state of the art antenna test facility. We have 17 anechoic chambers. These things are not cheap. We have invested over $100 million in antenna testing facilities over the past 5 years. We have 18 PhD scientists and engineers on our staff.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;And so the iPhone antenna went through all of this. We tested it. We knew that if you gripped it in a certain way, the bars are going to go down a little bit, just like every smartphone. We didn&amp;#8217;t think it&amp;#8217;d be a big problem, because every smartphone has this issue.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Honestly, I thought the entire point of the lab tour was to reinforce this point: the iPhone 4 antenna is behaving exactly as Apple expected it would.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;Laying It All on the Line&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;I posited yesterday that Jobs&amp;#8217;s peevishness while announcing the free case giveaway had to do with the profits Apple is going to lose, which I estimated conservatively at $100 million. (On the analyst conference call yesterday afternoon, &lt;a href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/215492-apple-inc-f3q10-qtr-end-06-26-10-earnings-call-transcript"&gt;Apple estimated the cost at $175 million&lt;/a&gt;.) What I didn&amp;#8217;t write about was whether I thought this was a good idea or not. I say yes.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#8217;s the thing. Early last week this antenna story was spinning out of control. Letterman made a Top Ten list about it. Consumer Reports was posting updates every day, each getting a lot of traffic. CNN.com had a front page story stating that iPhone 4 owners could &amp;#8220;fix&amp;#8221; their phones with strips of duct tape.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It&amp;#8217;s possible that if Apple had done nothing, the story would have died by now, perhaps drowned out by Apple&amp;#8217;s spectacular quarterly results announced yesterday. I think they decided it wasn&amp;#8217;t worth the chance &amp;#8212; that if they did nothing, the fire might have gotten worse rather than died out.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;And I think they decided, wisely, that if they were going to hit back in response to the story, they should hit back with everything they had. No use dribbling out responses one at a time. So: a live press conference, not just an open letter from Steve Jobs; a new section on Apple&amp;#8217;s website specifically explaining Apple&amp;#8217;s argument, and revealing their heretofore secret antenna testing facility; and, yes, free cases, for iPhone 4 users who are having signal problems that go away when the phone is encased.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In short: they weren&amp;#8217;t going to take any chances. Except they &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; take a chance, insofar as Jobs mixed in a second message: media criticism. The message Apple needed to make was about the antenna (&lt;em&gt;yes it has a weak spot, but it&amp;#8217;s a worthwhile trade-off and it isn&amp;#8217;t resulting in product returns, support calls to AppleCare, or a spectacular number of increased dropped calls&lt;/em&gt;) and about their concern for customers (&lt;em&gt;we want them to be happy, so we&amp;#8217;re waiving the restocking fee on returns and we&amp;#8217;re giving a free case to any iPhone 4 user who wants one&lt;/em&gt;). &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The extra message Jobs delivered was to the media: that they botched this story, that coverage was &amp;#8220;so overblown it&amp;#8217;s incredible&amp;#8221;. Surely that&amp;#8217;s what Jobs actually believes, and I think it&amp;#8217;s the truth. I don&amp;#8217;t think it was a good idea for Apple to make that case at the event, though. If the Antennagate PR problem was so dangerous that it warranted a significant response from Apple &amp;#8212; and I think it did &amp;#8212; then it was dangerous enough that it shouldn&amp;#8217;t have been mixed with a message that might further antagonize the media &amp;#8212; the very media whom Apple was clearly hoping would spread the facts Apple had presented regarding the antenna and its concern for customer satisfaction. It doesn&amp;#8217;t matter whether Jobs was right; it distracted from the core message, which was all about dissipating the meme that the iPhone 4 antenna is severely flawed.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;What is not in dispute: the iPhone 4 antenna has a weak spot in the lower-left corner of the frame, marked by the black line in the frame. When covered by your hand, this antenna suffers from attenuation. This is much like other smartphones. Further, because the antenna is external, the iPhone 4 can suffer from a &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; kind of &amp;#8220;holding it wrong&amp;#8221; signal loss: &lt;a href="http://db.tidbits.com/article/11435"&gt;bridging the gap&lt;/a&gt; on the lower left corner of the antenna with your skin.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;This conductive bridging issue is either (a) a critical design flaw that never should have been released, and renders the iPhone 4 a dud product; or, (b) a minor problem resulting from a reasonable design trade-off, different but no worse, in practice, than the &amp;#8220;regular&amp;#8221; signal attenuation seen in most smartphones, including the iPhone 3GS, and weak spot or no, it&amp;#8217;s no reason not to buy one.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In short, (a) implies the iPhone 4 antenna is a design that Apple should regret; (b) implies it is not.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Apple, obviously, says it&amp;#8217;s (b). They backed this up on Friday with three pieces of &amp;#8220;hard data&amp;#8221;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Only 0.55 percent of iPhone 4 owners have called AppleCare to report problems with reception.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The return rate to AT&amp;amp;T stores for the iPhone 4 is 1.7 percent, compared to 6.0 percent for the iPhone 3GS during its first month on the market. (According to Jobs, even the 3GS&amp;#8217;s 6.0 percent return rate is considered good for a smartphone.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;According to AT&amp;amp;T&amp;#8217;s data, the iPhone 4 indeed drops more calls than the 3GS, but the difference is less than one call per hundred.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;Are there some iPhone 4 users for whom this problem is significant? Yes. Will the free cases and offer of a full refund suffice? It seems so. In terms of practical real-world effect, the worst you can say about it is that it tends to drop about one more call per hundred than the 3GS.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Now, you can argue that that&amp;#8217;s a euphemistic way of presenting the call-drop statistic. Farhad Manjoo, in his coverage of Antennagate for Slate (headline: &amp;#8220;&lt;a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2260619/pagenum/all/"&gt;Here&amp;#8217;s Your Free Case, Jerk&lt;/a&gt;&amp;#8221;), writes:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;While Jobs did admit this fact in his press conference, he mangled the stats to make the iPhone 4&amp;#8217;s dropped call increase look minor. &amp;#8220;The iPhone 4 drops less than one additional call per 100 than the 3GS,&amp;#8221; he said. As Jobs sees it, that&amp;#8217;s not a big rise in dropped calls. Yet that&amp;#8217;s not an obvious conclusion. Last year, an AT&amp;amp;T spokesman told me that AT&amp;amp;T&amp;#8217;s average iPhone dropped-call rate is 1 percent &amp;#8212; in other words, the old iPhone dropped one call out of 100. If the iPhone 4 drops nearly one additional call out of 100, that could be close to a 2 percent dropped-call rate &amp;#8212; or double the dropped-call rate of the old iPhone. That sounds a lot more serious, doesn&amp;#8217;t it?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Jobs stated during the event that, for competitive reasons, AT&amp;amp;T would not allow Apple to reveal the absolute dropped call rate &amp;#8212; only the delta between the dropped call rate of the 3GS and 4. I think it&amp;#8217;s safe to say most people would consider a number of, say, 5 percent to be shockingly high, even with AT&amp;amp;T&amp;#8217;s reputation. And at the other end, I&amp;#8217;d have a hard time believing that the 3GS&amp;#8217;s dropped call rate was significantly lower than 1 percent. So the increase in dropped calls for the iPhone 4 must range between twice as many to 1.2 times as many. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#8217;s &lt;a href="http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0210022"&gt;an academic paper by M.V. Simkin and J. Olness&lt;/a&gt; (PDF, &lt;a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1523761"&gt;via this thread on Hacker News&lt;/a&gt;) which estimates the mean industry-wide dropped call rate to be 2.4 percent &amp;#8212; all phones on all carriers. The paper was published in 2002, however, so it&amp;#8217;s impossible to say how applicable it is to the industry-wide dropped call rate in 2010. But it sets a reasonable baseline &amp;#8212; a baseline that suggests a &amp;#8220;less than 1 per hundred&amp;#8221; increase in dropped calls is, though disappointing, not particularly alarming.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;[&lt;strong&gt;Update, 21 July 2010:&lt;/strong&gt; According to slide 11 of &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/21/att-antennagate"&gt;this PDF presentation from AT&amp;amp;T back in January&lt;/a&gt;, their network-wide dropped call rate for 3G was 0.91 percent.]&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I have a theory, by the way, for why Jobs sounded a tad annoyed &amp;#8212; that is, a tad &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; annoyed than his already annoyed tone throughout the entire event &amp;#8212; when announcing Apple&amp;#8217;s offer of free cases for all iPhone 4 owners through September 30. I&amp;#8217;ve seen many argue that the existence of Apple&amp;#8217;s bumpers is an indication that Apple knew all along that the iPhone 4 had reception problems that were alleviated by a case (e.g. &lt;a href="http://www.mondaynote.com/2010/07/18/antennagate-if-you-can’t-fix-it-feature-it/"&gt;Jean-Louis Gassée yesterday&lt;/a&gt;). I think it&amp;#8217;s simpler than that, and requires no less cynicism to believe.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;After revealing that the iPhone 4 has a slightly higher dropped called rate than the 3GS, Jobs said:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;Even less than one is too much for us. We&amp;#8217;re trying to find out why. We want to drive this &lt;em&gt;lower&lt;/em&gt; than the 3GS. But this does put it in perspective. So, I have my own pet theory on this, which we have no proof of, but I&amp;#8217;ll give it to you anyway. When the iPhone 3GS came out, we did not change the design from the iPhone 3, and there was a healthy market of cases for the iPhone 3G that fit the 3GS perfectly because the design didn&amp;#8217;t change. And in our stores, 80 percent of the iPhone 3GS users walked out with a case. iPhone 4 has a radically new design; none of the old cases fit. Since we didn&amp;#8217;t show it to anybody, none of the new cases are ready, and we can&amp;#8217;t make enough of our bumper cases. And so in our stores, about 20 percent of the people are going out with a case. And I think that has something to do with this disparity.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;So for the 3GS, when cases were in plentiful supply at the debut, 80 percent of iPhone buyers at Apple stores walked out with a case. I think Apple wanted in on that market. And because the 4 needs different cases than the 3G/3GS, Apple had the iPhone 4 case market &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; to itself for a few weeks, and &lt;em&gt;mostly&lt;/em&gt; to itself for a few months. At $29 a pop retail, I don&amp;#8217;t think it&amp;#8217;s a stretch to think that Apple saw this as a $100 million opportunity &amp;#8212; say, 5 million bumpers at $20 profit apiece. They could have made money with their own cases a year ago with the 3GS, but nowhere near as much as they could have now, as the only case in town that fits the iPhone 4.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Put in context, the fancy secret antenna testing lab Apple revealed Friday cost, said Jobs, about $100 million. Now, Apple&amp;#8217;s a multi-billion dollar company. A few hours ago they released &lt;a href="http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/07/20results.html"&gt;quarterly results&lt;/a&gt; showing them making over a billion dollars in &lt;em&gt;profit&lt;/em&gt; per month. So $100 million isn&amp;#8217;t &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; big a deal. But the way you get to be a billion dollar company is by having a nose for opportunities. $100 million is $100 million. So if you want to know why Jobs sounded annoyed when he said (around the 25:25 mark of &lt;a href="http://www.apple.com/apple-events/july-2010/"&gt;the video feed&lt;/a&gt;), &amp;#8220;Why don&amp;#8217;t you just give everybody a case? OK. Great. Let&amp;#8217;s give everybody a case,&amp;#8221; well, I think you can explain why he sounds peeved by reading that quote as, &amp;#8220;&lt;em&gt;Why don&amp;#8217;t you just give away $100 million? OK. Great. Let&amp;#8217;s give away $100 million.&lt;/em&gt;&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Anyway, bottom line on the iPhone 4 antenna: it has a weak spot but there&amp;#8217;s no evidence that it&amp;#8217;s a significant, let alone catastrophic, problem in practice. It&amp;#8217;s telling that the criticism surrounding this issue has shifted, quickly, from speculation about a technical defect in the iPhone 4 hardware to &lt;a href="http://www.appleoutsider.com/2010/07/17/townhall/"&gt;criticism&lt;/a&gt; over the &lt;a href="http://unweary.com/2010/07/antennagate.html"&gt;tone&lt;/a&gt; of Apple&amp;#8217;s &lt;a href="http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/1321/surviving-success"&gt;response&lt;/a&gt; to it.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Source: &amp;#8220;&lt;a href="http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/07/02appleletter.html"&gt;Letter From Apple Regarding iPhone 4&lt;/a&gt;&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;The iPhone 4 has been the most successful product launch in Apple’s history. It has been judged by reviewers around the world to be the best smartphone ever, and users have told us that they love it. So we were surprised when we read reports of reception problems, and we immediately began investigating them. Here is what we have learned.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;We cannot believe we had to write this fucking letter.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;To start with, gripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by 1 or more bars. This is true of iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, as well as many Droid, Nokia and RIM phones.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;We cannot believe we&amp;#8217;re getting shit for this.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;But some users have reported that iPhone 4 can drop 4 or 5 bars when tightly held in a way which covers the black strip in the lower left corner of the metal band. This is a far bigger drop than normal, and as a result some have accused the iPhone 4 of having a faulty antenna design.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;(No translation necessary.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;At the same time, we continue to read articles and receive hundreds of emails from users saying that iPhone 4 reception is better than the iPhone 3GS. They are delighted. This matches our own experience and testing. What can explain all of this?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;It really is a better antenna and &lt;a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2"&gt;gets better reception&lt;/a&gt;, overall, than any previous iPhone. That&amp;#8217;s really the hell of this whole goddamn situation. It&amp;#8217;s like a &lt;em&gt;two steps forward, one step back&lt;/em&gt; design, except maybe more like three steps forward, because this thing is faster at downloading, &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/2010/07/iphone_4_3g_performance"&gt;10 times faster at uploading&lt;/a&gt;, and most importantly is better at not dropping calls with a weak signal. But, yes, there&amp;#8217;s that one step back, wherein it can suffer from unintended attenuation when you bridge the lower-left antenna gap with your skin, and frankly, we&amp;#8217;re a little pissed that this one step back is getting all the attention.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;We are going to blame AT&amp;amp;T.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;We decided from the outset to &lt;a href="http://fscked.co.uk/post/754590440/this-infographic-hopefully-shows-that-im-not"&gt;set the formula for our bars-of-signal strength indicator&lt;/a&gt; to make the iPhone look good &amp;#8212; to make it look as if it &amp;#8220;gets more bars&amp;#8221;. That decision has now bitten us on our ass.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Yes, with no case on the phone, your signal strength can drop by about 20 or even 30 percent depending how you hold the phone. We&amp;#8217;re going to change the bar algorithm so that you&amp;#8217;ll only lose one bar (maybe two, if you&amp;#8217;re holding the phone obnoxiously tight or have gross sweaty palms) if you&amp;#8217;re holding it that way.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;To fix this, we are adopting AT&amp;amp;T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone’s bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;We are braced for the backlash when, after installing this update, people who weren&amp;#8217;t experiencing any problems at all with their iPhones start complaining, loudly, that their phones which used to get five bars now only get three or two or whatever from the same locations, and we all know &amp;#8212; us and everyone reading this &amp;#8212; that Gizmodo will immediately declare that the update has made iPhone 4 reception worse, even though we&amp;#8217;ve just explained that we&amp;#8217;re not changing anything related to &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; reception, but rather only to how we &lt;em&gt;indicate&lt;/em&gt; signal strength.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;(No translation necessary.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;We have gone back to our labs and retested everything, and the results are the same &amp;#8212; the iPhone 4’s wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped. For the vast majority of users who have not been troubled by this issue, this software update will only make your bars more accurate. For those who have had concerns, we apologize for any anxiety we may have caused.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#8217;t fuck this thing up for us. We mean, have you &lt;em&gt;seen&lt;/em&gt; the Retina Display?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;As a reminder, if you are not fully satisfied, you can return your undamaged iPhone to any Apple Retail Store or the online Apple Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;We dare you.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;And take your &lt;a href="http://www.loopinsight.com/2010/07/01/apple-att-sued-over-iphone-4-reception/"&gt;class action suits&lt;/a&gt; filed four days after we released the goddamn thing and stick them up your fucking asses.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;We hope you love the iPhone 4 as much as we do.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Seriously, have you &lt;em&gt;seen&lt;/em&gt; it?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Thank you for your patience and support.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#8217;t hold it that way, or buy a case.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;After reading &lt;a href="http://www.suntimes.com/technology/ihnatko/2444024,iphone4-ihnatko-review-apple-062810.article"&gt;Andy Ihnatko&amp;#8217;s iPhone 4 review&lt;/a&gt;, I was intrigued by his comments regarding the phone&amp;#8217;s significantly faster 3G data performance, with improved &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Speed_Downlink_Packet_Access"&gt;HSDPA&lt;/a&gt; (download) support and brand-new support for &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Speed_Uplink_Packet_Access"&gt;HSUPA&lt;/a&gt; (upload). So I ran some tests using the &lt;a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fcc-mobile-broadband-test/id357119507?mt=8"&gt;FCC&amp;#8217;s free mobile broadband test app&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I tested three devices: an iPhone 4, and iPhone 3GS, and an iPad 3G. I ran three tests on each, and the numbers below are the average of three runs. (There wasn&amp;#8217;t much variance in the results.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;table&gt; &lt;thead&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;th style="text-align: left; width: 13em;"&gt;&lt;/th&gt; &lt;th style="text-align: right; width: 5em;"&gt;Download&lt;br /&gt;(&lt;span style='text-transform: none;'&gt;Mbps&lt;/span&gt;)&lt;/th&gt; &lt;th style="text-align: right; width: 5em;"&gt;Upload&lt;br /&gt;(&lt;span style='text-transform: none;'&gt;Mbps&lt;/span&gt;)&lt;/th&gt; &lt;th style="text-align: right; width: 5em;"&gt;Latency&lt;br /&gt;(&lt;span style='text-transform: none;'&gt;ms&lt;/span&gt;)&lt;/th&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;/thead&gt; &lt;tbody&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td style="text-align: left;"&gt;iPhone 4&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="text-align: right;"&gt;2.38&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="text-align: right;"&gt;1.26&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="text-align: right;"&gt;234&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td style="text-align: left;"&gt;iPhone 4 (handheld)&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="text-align: right;"&gt;1.61&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="text-align: right;"&gt;1.18&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="text-align: right;"&gt;235&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td style="text-align: left;"&gt;iPad 3G&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="text-align: right;"&gt;1.34&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="text-align: right;"&gt;0.14&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="text-align: right;"&gt;1254&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td style="text-align: left;"&gt;iPhone 3GS&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="text-align: right;"&gt;1.22&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="text-align: right;"&gt;0.09&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="text-align: right;"&gt;2119&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td style="text-align: left;"&gt;iPhone 4 (Wi-Fi)&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="text-align: right;"&gt;13.43&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="text-align: right;"&gt;4.33&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="text-align: right;"&gt;65&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;/tbody&gt; &lt;/table&gt; &lt;p&gt;(For download and upload, higher scores are better. For latency, lower scores are better.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I tested 3G performance on the iPhone 4 twice (three runs each) &amp;#8212; once lying on a table, and once while held in my left hand, with my palm spanning the infamous lower-left antenna gap. I also tested it using my home 802.11n Wi-Fi network, connected to a Comcast cable modem.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;So I&amp;#8217;m seeing download speeds twice as fast as on an iPhone 3GS, and upload speeds over &lt;em&gt;ten times&lt;/em&gt; faster. Latency is about an order of magnitude better as well. The iPad doesn&amp;#8217;t fare much better than the 3GS.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Holding the iPhone 4 in my hand drops the 3G download speed by about a third, but &lt;em&gt;it&amp;#8217;s still faster than the 3GS&lt;/em&gt;. Upload speed and latency didn&amp;#8217;t seem affected by holding it in my hand.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Really enjoyed this interview of Adam Lisagor by Dan Benjamin. Funny and very honest.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Adam Lisagor on The Pipeline’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/27/sandy-pipeline"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Thoughtful response to Jason Santa Maria&amp;#8217;s plea &lt;a href="http://jasonsantamaria.com/articles/a-real-web-design-application/"&gt;yesterday&lt;/a&gt; for a new web design app; in particular, how something like Interface Builder &amp;#8212; or at least &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; like IB &amp;#8212; wouldn&amp;#8217;t work for web pages.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Mark Huot: &amp;#8216;A Real Web Design Framework&amp;#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/27/huot"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Question for those who think commoditization is going to to relegate iOS to a Mac-sized niche: where is the $200 Android competitor to the iPod Touch? It&amp;#8217;s been a huge hit for three years, and still has no competition.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Dell Streak Pricing: $549 Without Contract’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/27/dell-streak-android"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Nice catch by Simon Beckerman.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Apple&amp;#8217;s Original Desktop Trackpad’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/27/20th-anniversary-trackpad"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;There are a bunch of Apple Stores in the Philly area, but this is the first in the city proper.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘First Philly Apple Store Opens This Friday’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/27/philly-apple-store"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Josh Halliday, reporting for The Guardian:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;The Times has lost almost 90% of its online readership compared to February since making registration mandatory in June, calculations by the Guardian show.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Dumb.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘London Times Loses Almost 90 Percent of Online Readership’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/27/london-times"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Multitouch trackpad for desktop Macs.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Apple&amp;#8217;s Magic Trackpad’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/27/magic-trackpad"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Replaces not just the old 30-inch Cinema Display, &lt;a href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/27/rip-30-inch-cinema-display/"&gt;but also the 24-inch&lt;/a&gt;. This will be Apple&amp;#8217;s only standalone display going forward. Doesn&amp;#8217;t go on sale until September, though.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘New $999 27-Inch LED Cinema Display’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/27/cinema-displays"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Another SSD option:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Customers of the 27-inch iMac have the option to order a 256GB solid state drive (SSD) as a primary or secondary drive. The iMac SSD supports up to 215 MB/s data transfer rates for faster startup and application launch times.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘New iMacs, Too’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/27/new-imacs"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;First update to the Mac Pro in over 500 days. Looks good. And they&amp;#8217;re finally pitching SSDs as being faster, not just more reliable:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;For the first time, Mac Pro customers have the option to order a 512GB SSD for the ultimate in reliability and lightning fast performance. With the ability to install up to four SSD drives in the system&amp;#8217;s internal drive bays, the new Mac Pro can provide ultra high-speed disk bandwidth and random disk performance, two times faster than the average performance of a standard disk drive.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Apple Unveils New Mac Pro With Up to 12 Processing Cores’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/27/mac-pros"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;I missed the &lt;a href="http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC500?mco=MTg1ODA4NzQ"&gt;AA battery charger&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Rare Video Footage of Yours Truly Making Predictions Regarding New Products From Apple’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/27/footage"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Reuters:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Yahoo Japan, Japan&amp;#8217;s biggest Internet portal operator, said on Tuesday it will adopt U.S. rival Google Inc&amp;#8217;s search engine and advertisement delivery system and provide Google with its data.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Not exactly a team player, I guess.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Yahoo Japan to Adopt Google&amp;#8217;s Search Engine’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/27/yahoo-japan"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Speaking of Khoi Vinh, I&amp;#8217;ll ditto his complaint about the excellent MLB At Bat app for the iPad: the &amp;#8220;Condensed Game&amp;#8221; videos are terrific, but they&amp;#8217;re very difficult to access without spoiling the final score of the game.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Settling Scores With MLB At Bat’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/26/khoi-at-bat"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Have a great idea? Roger that. For iPhone? Check. With iPad optimization? Check. Android version? Check. Social integration? Naturally. Companion website? Check. Desktop and mobile versions? Roger that. Next step? Call &lt;a href="http://sourcebits.com/"&gt;Sourcebits&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Sourcebits takes greats ideas and bring them to vivid life on all the key platforms: iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry and the Web. Whether it’s a mobile or Web app you’re after, we’ll complement it with a fully realized online presence, delivering an outstanding user interface with robust, state of the art code under the hood. &lt;a href="http://sourcebits.com/"&gt;Sourcebits&lt;/a&gt;. Building exceptional experiences for iOS, Android, BlackBerry and the Web.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;So I get another call from my payola rep at Apple, and she&amp;#8217;s like, &amp;#8220;Hey, thanks so much for all the antenna-related links over the weekend. I just wanted to let you know how much we appreciate it, John.&amp;#8221; They punctuate a lot of their sentences with your first name. Oldest trick in the book, but it works, even if you&amp;#8217;re aware of it. Seriously. Anyway, I&amp;#8217;m all like, &amp;#8220;No problem, it&amp;#8217;s my pleasure. You just keep those checks coming.&amp;#8221; Laughs all around.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;But then she gets serious, and says Apple will make it worth my while if I&amp;#8217;d close out this antenna saga with a &amp;#8220;Jackass of the Week&amp;#8221; piece responding to Dan Lyons&amp;#8217;s Antennagate story. So I say, &amp;#8220;Who&amp;#8217;d he write that for? I didn&amp;#8217;t see anything on the Fake Steve blog about it.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;She says, &amp;#8220;Newsweek, of course.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;I thought they went out of business a few months ago.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;No, they&amp;#8217;re still around. I swear.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;She sends me a link to Lyons&amp;#8217;s piece, &amp;#8220;&lt;a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/16/apple-s-rotten-reponse.html"&gt;Apple&amp;#8217;s Rotten Response&lt;/a&gt;&amp;#8221;, which starts like this:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I wonder if panic has started to set in at Apple yet. If not, it should. Because today’s hastily called news conference &amp;#8212; ostensibly to discuss problems with iPhone 4 and how Apple intends to fix them &amp;#8212; only did further damage to Apple’s reputation.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Which is a polite way to start, because, well, we all know just how panicked everyone at Apple is feeling these days about the company&amp;#8217;s prospects. (You&amp;#8217;d be surprised at how many of the senior VPs at last week&amp;#8217;s event reeked of booze, and it was only 10am. Nerves are frayed.) Lyons was kind to phrase it as a question.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;So what should Apple be panicked about? Lyons&amp;#8217;s thesis is that Steve Jobs has lost touch with reality, and the world is waking up to this. In this case, there&amp;#8217;s something terribly wrong with the iPhone 4 antenna and Steve Jobs won&amp;#8217;t admit it:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Some expected Apple might announce a recall of the phone. Others speculated it might announce some kind of software update that would improve reception problems. Instead, Apple CEO Steve Jobs came up with a two-part solution. Part 1: There is no problem. Part 2: Even though there is no problem, we’re going to give everyone a free case, which should insulate the antenna and prevent the interference that we just told you isn’t actually occurring.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I went back through my notes on the press conference, looking for the part where Jobs said there was no problem. I think it was right around the 13:00 mark in &lt;a href="http://www.apple.com/apple-events/july-2010/"&gt;the video stream&lt;/a&gt;, where Jobs said, &amp;#8220;And so the iPhone antenna went through all of this. We tested it. We knew that if you gripped it in a certain way, the bars are going to go down a little bit, just like every smartphone. We didn&amp;#8217;t think it&amp;#8217;d be a big problem, because every smartphone has this issue.&amp;#8221; Or maybe it was a little later, toward the end, when Jobs said &amp;#8220;A lot of people have told us, the bumper solves the signal strength problem,&amp;#8221; where he claimed there was &amp;#8220;no problem&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;So, Lyons concludes:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;This is classic Apple behavior. No matter what the whole world can see with its own eyes, just keep saying that it isn’t true, and maybe, eventually, everyone will believe you. By refusing to acknowledge the problem, Jobs just reinforced the image of Apple as a company that is in deep denial and unable to admit a mistake &amp;#8212; a company that has for so long been able to bend reality to suit its needs that it now has lost touch with reality itself.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I read that paragraph aloud to my payola rep, and told her that it was exactly why I&amp;#8217;d be reluctant to criticize Lyons&amp;#8217;s coverage. Apple really should have acknowledged reality. Sure, they&amp;#8217;re giving out free cases because &amp;#8212; in Jobs&amp;#8217;s words &amp;#8212; &amp;#8220;A lot of people have told us, the bumper solves the signal strength problem&amp;#8221;. Sure, Jobs said Apple &amp;#8220;knew that if you gripped it in a certain way, the bars are going to go down a little bit&amp;#8221;. Sure, the overwhelming majority of iPhone 4 owners seems delighted with it. But where&amp;#8217;s the acknowledgement that the iPhone 4 antenna is this year&amp;#8217;s &lt;em&gt;Ishtar&lt;/em&gt;? Where&amp;#8217;s the product recall? Where&amp;#8217;s the &amp;#8220;KICK ME&amp;#8221; sign on Steve Jobs&amp;#8217;s black shirt? Why does Bob Mansfield still have a job?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Jobs also said all other mobile phones suffer the same problems when you hold them in certain ways, and that “it’s a challenge to the entire industry.”&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;That’s ridiculous. It’s absurd. But that’s nothing new. Apple has a history of making ridiculous claims and having them accepted by an adoring fan base and worshipful press.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;That&amp;#8217;s the uncomfortable truth. The last honest man is Dan Lyons. &lt;a href="http://www.apple.com/antenna/"&gt;Those videos from Apple&lt;/a&gt; showing other phones dropping bars? Fake. The &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/18/"&gt;similar videos&lt;/a&gt; on YouTube &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/19/"&gt;from owners&lt;/a&gt; of competing phones? Fake. Next thing Apple&amp;#8217;s going to tell us, the Droid X has a &lt;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/20/verizon-confirms-droid-x-screen-issues-but-says-theyre-not-wid/"&gt;flaky display&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;With the launch of iPhone 4, for example, Apple pretended it had invented video chat &amp;#8212; something that has been around elsewhere for years.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Lyons doesn&amp;#8217;t name all those phones on which people are video chatting every day, because he doesn&amp;#8217;t need to. Just look around and see them for yourself.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;The real issue here is how the product is perceived. If you need to put a rubber case on a phone to make it work correctly, there must be something wrong with it, don’t you think?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Exactly. I mean, if the truth were that, in practice, the iPhone 4 works just fine &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; a case for most people &amp;#8212; that it gets faster downloads and uploads and voice call quality is improved over the 3GS &amp;#8212; well, that&amp;#8217;d be a different story entirely.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Jobs clearly doesn’t. He seems scornful of customers who have complained. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;It doesn&amp;#8217;t show up on the video, but there was spittle coming out of Jobs&amp;#8217;s mouth when he talked about the 0.55 percent of iPhone 4 owners who&amp;#8217;d called Apple to complain about its reception. He seemed very upset about their gall.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Toward the end of the news conference, he blamed the media for blowing the problem out of proportion.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Apple’s rivals will have a field day with this.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Yes, one week out, this is looking like very good news indeed for Apple&amp;#8217;s rivals. Apple&amp;#8217;s goose is cooked and Lyons knows the score. People are going to look back at this piece a year from now and say, &amp;#8220;By god, Dan Lyons saw it all along.&amp;#8221; (Seriously: bookmark it.) It&amp;#8217;s bad enough that I don&amp;#8217;t have the courage to call Apple out on this blatant chicanery; the last thing I&amp;#8217;m going to do is put my name on the line and argue that he&amp;#8217;s a big dummy with a chip on his shoulder and that his work exemplifies the state &lt;a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/business/media/06newsweek.html"&gt;Newsweek is in&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;You&amp;#8217;re sure you won&amp;#8217;t do it? We really think you could knock it out of the park,&amp;#8221; my payola rep pleads.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;Sorry. Won&amp;#8217;t touch it.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Now with a dark shell, like the new DX, which helps make the screen background look more like white. The pricing is aggressive, and &lt;a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703940904575395433036454208.html"&gt;Amazon seems committed to focusing&lt;/a&gt; on the e-reading market, not the tablet computing (or at this point, should we say &lt;em&gt;pad&lt;/em&gt; computing?) market.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘New Amazon Kindles: $139 Wi-Fi-Only Version and $189 3G Model’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/28/new-kindles"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Walt Mossberg:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I’ve been testing the first two Galaxy S phones, the T-Mobile Vibrant and the AT&amp;amp;T Captivate, both of which cost $200 with a two-year contract. Neither has all the features of Apple’s latest model, like a front-facing camera for video calls or an ultra–high resolution screen, but they are worthy competitors. They have some attributes the iPhone lacks, like bigger screens and better integration of social networking.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;They sound like good &amp;#8212; maybe the best? &amp;#8212; Android phones. What I find interesting is that &amp;#8220;Galaxy S&amp;#8221; is Samsung&amp;#8217;s branding, but the phones aren&amp;#8217;t called that. Each carrier gives them their own names. How many real people will know that the T-Mobile Vibrant and AT&amp;amp;T Captivate are pretty much the same phone from different carriers? And &amp;#8220;Android&amp;#8221; doesn&amp;#8217;t get mentioned at all. The word &amp;#8220;Android&amp;#8221; doesn&amp;#8217;t get much play from the carriers, either. There&amp;#8217;s just one mention of &amp;#8220;Android&amp;#8221; on &lt;a href="http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/cell-phone-details/?device=Samsung+Captivate+(TM)+-+Black&amp;amp;q_sku=sku4760319"&gt;AT&amp;amp;T&amp;#8217;s web page for the Captivate&lt;/a&gt;, and it&amp;#8217;s near the bottom in the small print section.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Walt Mossberg Reviews New Samsung Galaxy S Android Phones’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/28/mossberg-galaxy-s"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Specifically targets iPad owners: &amp;#8220;Hello, iPad. Meet Evo, the first 4G phone.&amp;#8221; &lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://twitter.com/jsnell/status/19781872297"&gt;As Jason Snell pointed out on Twitter&lt;/a&gt;, they make a point of promoting the Evo&amp;#8217;s on-the-fly Wi-Fi hotspot feature &amp;#8212; something that pairs well with a non-3G iPad, and that the iPhone doesn&amp;#8217;t offer.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Sprint Evo Ad in Sports Illustrated&amp;#8217;s iPad App’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/28/evo-ipad"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Peter Kafka on Time Inc.&amp;#8217;s frustrations with the Sports Illustrated iPad app:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Last month, the publisher was set to launch a subscription version of its Sports Illustrated iPad app, where consumers would download the magazines via Apple’s iTunes but would pay Time Inc. directly. But Apple rejected the app at the last minute, forcing the Time Warner unit to sell single copies, using iTunes as a middleman, multiple sources tell me.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;The problem is not as simple as Apple not allowing third-party publishers to bill users directly, without going through iTunes so that Apple gets a cut of the pie, because:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Confusing the issue even more is that Apple already allows a handful of app makers &amp;#8212; like Amazon and the Wall Street Journal, which like this Web site is owned by News Corp. &amp;#8212; to bill customers directly. Amazon itself, meanwhile, has been sparring with publishers over subscriptions for its Kindle platform. Jeff Bezos keeps most of the data and money that those transactions generate, too.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#8217;s the difference, I think. With Amazon and the Wall Street Journal, users set up and create their accounts on the web, not within the iOS apps. The WSJ app requires a subscription that doesn&amp;#8217;t go through iTunes, but you create, pay for, and manage that subscription on the web. Judging from Kafka&amp;#8217;s description of the Sports Illustrated situation, it sounds like Time tried to add its own direct billing subscription system within the Sports Illustrated app itself.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;(The Sports Illustrated iPad app is free, and from within the app, you can buy individual issues. Samples are free, most regular issues are $5.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Anyway, the whole problem would just go away if Apple would spell out what the rules are for subscription publications.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Time Inc. Frustrated by Apple Over iPad Subscription Issue’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/28/time-sports-illustrated"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Smart ad from Motorola &amp;#8212; the message is that the Droid X is better than the iPhone 4, but they didn&amp;#8217;t have to mention the iPhone by name. Maybe the biggest downside for Apple with the free cases offer is that it creates the impression that the iPhone 4 &lt;em&gt;needs&lt;/em&gt; a case.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Motorola Droid X Ad: &amp;#8216;No Jacket Required&amp;#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/28/no-jacket"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Shinhye Kang and Seonjin Cha, reporting for Businessweek:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Losses from mobile phones totaled 120 billion won ($101 million) in the second quarter, compared with profit of 620 billion won a year earlier, Seoul-based LG said in a statement today. The loss, the division’s first in four years, was triple the size projected by the average estimate of five analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;This shows the folly of thinking &amp;#8220;market share&amp;#8221; is a primary concern. LG sold over 30 million handsets in the quarter &amp;#8212; up 2 percent over last year &amp;#8212; but lost money because most of them were cheap low-profit models.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘LG Posts Record Handset Loss’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/28/lg"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Marco Arment compares:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Today’s overdue Mac Pro update is a welcome change, but for a computer that’s so expensive, why not just get an iMac?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;It&amp;#8217;s a really good question.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘iMac or Mac Pro?’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/28/marco-imac-mac-pro"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Derek Powazek:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I never realized how much web terminology had crept into my vocabulary. An iPad app doesn’t have &lt;em&gt;pages&lt;/em&gt;, it has &lt;em&gt;screens&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;views&lt;/em&gt;. You don’t &lt;em&gt;click&lt;/em&gt;, you &lt;em&gt;tap&lt;/em&gt;. You don’t &lt;em&gt;scroll&lt;/em&gt;, you &lt;em&gt;swipe&lt;/em&gt;. I spent much of our early meetings stumbling over my own words just to communicate the basics.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Derek Powazek on Designing for iPad’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/28/powazek-pad"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Coincides with the release of Safari 5.0.1, which is now available through Software Update.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Safari Extensions Gallery’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/28/safari-extensions"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;The buttons are in the front feet underneath.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Dan Frakes on the Magic Trackpad’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/27/frakespad"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Craig Mod on his experience using Kickstarter. (I just got my copy of &lt;em&gt;Art Space Tokyo&lt;/em&gt;, the book whose printing he funded through Kickstarter, and it&amp;#8217;s exquisite.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Kickstartup’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/27/kickstartup"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Not the computers, but their websites.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Neven Mrgan Compares the New iMac to All-in-Ones From Dell and HP’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/27/imac-hp-dell"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Back in November, I posted &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/2009/11/liberal_regex_for_matching_urls"&gt;a regex pattern for matching URLs&lt;/a&gt;. It seems to have proven quite useful for others, and, even better, based on feedback from those who&amp;#8217;ve used it, I&amp;#8217;ve since improved it in several ways. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The problem the pattern attempts to solve: identify the URLs in an arbitrary string of text, where by &amp;#8220;arbitrary&amp;#8221; let&amp;#8217;s agree we mean something unstructured such as an email message or a tweet.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;So, here&amp;#8217;s a pattern that attempts to match any sort of URL, using the extended multiline regex format that disregards literal whitespace and allows for comments, which explain a bit about how the pattern works:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(?xi) \b ( # Capture 1: entire matched URL (?: [a-z][\w-]+: # URL protocol and colon (?: /{1,3} # 1-3 slashes | # or [a-z0-9%] # Single letter or digit or '%' # (Trying not to match e.g. "URI::Escape") ) | # or www\d{0,3}[.] # "www.", "www1.", "www2." … "www999." | # or [a-z0-9.\-]+[.][a-z]{2,4}/ # looks like domain name followed by a slash ) (?: # One or more: [^\s()&amp;lt;&amp;gt;]+ # Run of non-space, non-()&amp;lt;&amp;gt; | # or \(([^\s()&amp;lt;&amp;gt;]+|(\([^\s()&amp;lt;&amp;gt;]+\)))*\) # balanced parens, up to 2 levels )+ (?: # End with: \(([^\s()&amp;lt;&amp;gt;]+|(\([^\s()&amp;lt;&amp;gt;]+\)))*\) # balanced parens, up to 2 levels | # or [^\s`!()\[\]{};:'".,&amp;lt;&amp;gt;?«»“”‘’] # not a space or one of these punct chars ) ) &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt; &lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#8217;s the same pattern in the terse single-line format:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;(?i)\b((?:[a-z][\w-]+:(?:/{1,3}|[a-z0-9%])|www\d{0,3}[.]|[a-z0-9.\-]+[.][a-z]{2,4}/)(?:[^\s()&amp;lt;&amp;gt;]+|\(([^\s()&amp;lt;&amp;gt;]+|(\([^\s()&amp;lt;&amp;gt;]+\)))*\))+(?:\(([^\s()&amp;lt;&amp;gt;]+|(\([^\s()&amp;lt;&amp;gt;]+\)))*\)|[^\s`!()\[\]{};:'".,&amp;lt;&amp;gt;?«»“”‘’]))&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;(And you thought the multiline version looked crazy, right?)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/misc/2010/07/url-matching-regex-test-data.text"&gt;Here&amp;#8217;s the test data I used&lt;/a&gt; while sharpening the pattern. Just like the pattern from November, it attempts to be practical, above all else. It makes no attempt to parse URLs according to any official specification. It isn&amp;#8217;t limited to predefined URL protocols. It should be clever about things like parentheses and trailing punctuation.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In addition to being liberal about the URLs it matches, the pattern is also liberal about which regex engines it works with. I&amp;#8217;ve tested it with Perl, PCRE (which is used in PHP, BBEdit, and many other places), and Oniguruma (which is used in Ruby, TextMate, and many other places). It should also work in all modern JavaScript interpreters. If you find a modern regex engine where the pattern does not work, please let me know.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Some of the advantages of the new pattern, compared to the previous one:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It no longer uses the &lt;code&gt;[:punct:]&lt;/code&gt; named character class. I thought this was universally supported in modern regex engines, but apparently it is not.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It does a better job with URLs containing literal parentheses, correctly matching the following URLs that the previous pattern did not:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;http://foo.com/more_(than)_one_(parens) http://foo.com/blah_(wikipedia)#cite-1 http://foo.com/blah_(wikipedia)_blah#cite-1 http://foo.com/unicode_(✪)_in_parens http://foo.com/(something)?after=parens &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It now matches &lt;code&gt;mailto:&lt;/code&gt; URLs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It correctly guesses that things like &amp;#8220;bit.ly/foo&amp;#8221; and &amp;#8220;is.gd/foo/&amp;#8221; are URLs. Basically: something-dot-something-slash-something.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;Included in the parentheses-matching improvements is the ability to match up to two levels of balanced, nested parentheses &amp;#8212; parentheses within parentheses. There are fancy ways of using dynamic or recursive regex patterns to match balanced parentheses of any arbitrary depth, but these dynamic/recursive pattern constructs are all specific to individual regex implementations. I.e., there&amp;#8217;s one way to do it for PCRE, a different way for Perl &amp;#8212; and in most regex engines, no way to do it at all. Hard-coding the pattern to support two levels of nested parenthesis should work everywhere, and, practically speaking, I only received two reports of &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; real-life URLs that had a second level of parentheses, and &lt;em&gt;none&lt;/em&gt; with more than two.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Lastly, I received several requests for a version of the pattern that &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; matches web URLs &amp;#8212; http, https, and things like &amp;#8220;www.example.com&amp;#8221;. Here&amp;#8217;s an extended format pattern that does this:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(?xi) \b ( # Capture 1: entire matched URL (?: https?:// # http or https protocol | # or www\d{0,3}[.] # "www.", "www1.", "www2." … "www999." | # or [a-z0-9.\-]+[.][a-z]{2,4}/ # looks like domain name followed by a slash ) (?: # One or more: [^\s()&amp;lt;&amp;gt;]+ # Run of non-space, non-()&amp;lt;&amp;gt; | # or \(([^\s()&amp;lt;&amp;gt;]+|(\([^\s()&amp;lt;&amp;gt;]+\)))*\) # balanced parens, up to 2 levels )+ (?: # End with: \(([^\s()&amp;lt;&amp;gt;]+|(\([^\s()&amp;lt;&amp;gt;]+\)))*\) # balanced parens, up to 2 levels | # or [^\s`!()\[\]{};:'".,&amp;lt;&amp;gt;?«»“”‘’] # not a space or one of these punct chars ) ) &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt; &lt;p&gt;And here&amp;#8217;s the same pattern in single-line format:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;(?i)\b((?:https?://|www\d{0,3}[.]|[a-z0-9.\-]+[.][a-z]{2,4}/)(?:[^\s()&amp;lt;&amp;gt;]+|\(([^\s()&amp;lt;&amp;gt;]+|(\([^\s()&amp;lt;&amp;gt;]+\)))*\))+(?:\(([^\s()&amp;lt;&amp;gt;]+|(\([^\s()&amp;lt;&amp;gt;]+\)))*\)|[^\s`!()\[\]{};:'".,&amp;lt;&amp;gt;?«»“”‘’]))&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;As before, suggestions and improvements are welcome, including just sending me example input where the current pattern fails.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Still the best calculator for iPhone and iPad.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘PCalc 2.2 for iOS’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/30/pcalc"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Gallery of iPhone-optimized web apps. Install it on your iPhone and it works like the App Store app. Interesting, but the fact that they clearly tried so hard to make it look good but that it still has janky scrolling and other visual rough edges says a lot about the technology&amp;#8217;s shortcomings vs. Cocoa Touch.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘OpenAppMkt’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/30/openappmkt"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Worth it for the ping-pong joke alone.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘IGN&amp;#8217;s Sarcastic Gamer on the Xbox 360 Kinect’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/30/kinect"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#8217;s cute how he still calls them &amp;#8220;slates&amp;#8221;. It&amp;#8217;s sad that their answer is still Windows 7.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Ballmer Concedes the Obvious to Analysts Regarding the iPad’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/29/ballmer"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Nice bit of open source iPhone code from Leah Culver, implementing Tweetie-style refreshing by pulling at the end of a list.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Here&amp;#8217;s another one, recommended by a developer friend: &lt;a href="http://github.com/enormego/EGOTableViewPullRefresh"&gt;EGOTableViewPullRefresh&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘iPhone Pull to Refresh’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/29/culver-pull"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Nice technical write-up of what&amp;#8217;s going on. It doesn&amp;#8217;t appear that any particularly sensitive data is getting transmitted, but it sure is curious why they&amp;#8217;re transmitting anything at all.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Lookout Posts Details of Their Black Hat Conference Presentation on Those Suspicious Android Wallpaper Apps’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/29/lookout-details"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Web app contest from An Event Apart:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;It’s time to get back to basics — back to optimizing every little byte like your life depends on it. Your challenge? Build a web app in less than 10 kilobytes.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘10K Apart’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/29/10k-apart"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Now in production: the final film in Gary Hustwit&amp;#8217;s documentary trilogy on design, following &lt;em&gt;Helvetica&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Objectified&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Urbanized&lt;/em&gt; looks at the issues and strategies behind urban design, featuring some of the world&amp;#8217;s foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers. Over half the world&amp;#8217;s population now lives in an urban area, and 75% will call a city home by 2050.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Urbanized’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/29/urbanized"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Interesting, but not surprising.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Apple Now Uses Its Own Location Service’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/29/apple-location"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;The comeback episode of Dan Benjamin&amp;#8217;s and my podcast, talking about this week&amp;#8217;s new Macs, the Magic Trackpad, Antennagate, and more. &lt;a href="http://www.mailchimp.com/campaign/5by5/"&gt;Sponsored by MailChimp&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘The Talk Show’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/29/the-talk-show"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Dean Takahashi, reporting for MobileBeat:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;The app in question came from Jackeey Wallpaper, and it was uploaded to the Android Market, where users can download it and use it to decorate their phones that run the Google Android operating system. It includes branded wallpapers from My Little Pony and Star Wars, to name just a couple.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It collects your browsing history, text messages, your phone’s SIM card number, subscriber identification, and even your voicemail password. It sends the data to a web site, www.imnet.us. That site is evidently owned by someone in Shenzhen, China. The app has been downloaded anywhere from 1.1 million to 4.6 million times. The exact number isn’t known because the Android Market doesn’t offer precise data.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I&amp;#8217;m sure this story will get just as much attention as if it had been an iPhone app that did this. I&amp;#8217;d like to see more proof from Lookout, though. Up to 4 million downloads?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; The article has been updated regarding what information the app captures: &amp;#8220;&lt;em&gt;Update: Lookout notes it does not capture browsing history and text messages.&lt;/em&gt;&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://blog.mylookout.com/2010/07/mobile-application-analysis-blackhat/"&gt;Lookout has posted details on their weblog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Lookout, a Mobile Security Firm, Claims Android App Downloaded by &amp;#8216;Millions&amp;#8217; Sends Personal Data to Server in China’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/29/lookout"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Smartest piece written yet on Antennagate? This one, by Watts Martin.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘The Emperor&amp;#8217;s New Antenna’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/28/antennagate-martin"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#8217;m drawing a blank trying to think of another long-standing Mac development shop that&amp;#8217;s so strongly committed itself to the iPad.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You want a review? &lt;a href="http://www.macsparky.com/blog/2010/7/30/ipad-omnifocus-review.html"&gt;See MacSparky for a detailed one&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘OmniFocus for iPad 1.0’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/30/omnifocus-ipad"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Smart piece by Fred Vogelstein for Wired:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;The true comparison is between Android and iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system. Android’s activation numbers are not device dependent. Apple’s shouldn’t be either.  If we are going to truly compare the two mobile OSs we need to include sales of iPads and iPod Touches. Add them into the mix and the data shows that Android is catching up but still isn’t close.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Something to think about: If Android unit sales surpass those of all iOS devices combined, can iOS remain the dominant mobile software platform? I think the mobile market is going to be more like the console gaming market, with a handful of major players each with a 20-40 percent slice, rather than the monopoly-dominated PC market. Raw market share isn&amp;#8217;t everything.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Fred Vogelstein: &amp;#8216;Doing the Math on Android vs. Apple&amp;#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/30/vogelstein"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Kevin Guilfoile finds a ticket in an old book at his parents&amp;#8217; house. (&lt;a href="http://twitter.com/Coudal/status/19909699798"&gt;Via Jim Coudal&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘You&amp;#8217;ll Never Get a Story Like This With an E-Book’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/30/guilfoile-ticket"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

Filed under: App Review, iPad

Medici is the latest in a growing, impressive line of heavy-ish board games to make the jump from the table to the iPad, and it's amazing to see this game - so carefully crafted and respected by the designer board game community - on a touch screen with an animated background. With Medici being a game of perfect information in real life, it works amazingly well as an iPad app, and if you've ever wanted to practice your Medici bidding skills for your next board game night, this digital version provides a lot of AI opponents of varying ability to challenge. The app isn't perfect (more on this later), but it does a fine job of bringing a 15-year-old board game to life for a new generation of gamers. Read on to see if you might be someone who enjoys this sort of thing.

TUAWApp Review: Medici ships good gameplay onto your iPad originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1007/blackberrystorm2-review12sm.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />A potentially major rumor today has pinpointed the launch of RIM's BlackBerry tablet to November. A pair of sources said the BlackPad name registered earlier is the final name and that its screen will be roughly similar in size to the iPad. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi would let it tether to a BlackBerry to get online, though Bloomberg didn't say how independent the device would be....


BlackBerry - Research In Motion - RIM - Bluetooth - IPad

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1007/craft.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Blizzard this week launched StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, the long-in-development sequel to its popular 1998 real-time strategy game. The new title follows Jim Raynor, who has become a rebel leader trying to bring down the Dominion for crimes of genocide. While the original StarCraft had Terran, Protoss and Zerg campaigns, the sequel revolves mostly around the Terrans in a 29-mission single-player mode. A few side missions give players a taste for Protoss units....


Jim Raynor - StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty - Species of StarCraft - Blizzard Entertainment - Real-time strategy

Filed under: App Review

The American Museum of Natural History on New York City's Upper West Side has released AMNH Explorer (free) for the iPhone and iPod touch. This app, funded by Bloomberg, is a tour guide and personal navigation system that allows you to easily traverse the museum's huge collection. You can search for an exhibit by popularity, exhibit hall, or an alphabetical listing, and the app will use the museum's free Wi-Fi to give you step-by-step directions to your intended destination (using either the stairs or elevators). You can also get directions to the closest restroom or exit as well as information about restaurants and gift shops.

If you want to know more about an exhibit, tap its card to see more detail. After you've seen an exhibit, you can mark it as visited, which puts a banner on the exhibit's information card. You can also bookmark exhibits, which will send you an email that details what you've bookmarked as a record of your visit. There is also an option to send exhibit information to Twitter or Facebook.

TUAWThe American Museum of Natural History's Explorer app for the iPhone and iPod touch originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple yesterday released Server Admin Tools 10.6.4, updating its suite of applications for remote administration of Snow Leopard Server systems.

The Server Admin Tools update is recommende...

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1007/macpro-sm.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Apple has confirmed that it will start selling the new Mac Pro on August 9. Phone customers are being told the option will be a true order campaign and not a pre-order, though it's not known whether retail stores will have the workstations the same day. It's also uncertain how quickly Apple will ship online orders....


Apple - MacPro - Macintosh - Hardware - Retailing

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1007/omnipad.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Omni Group has launched OmniFocus for iPad via the App Store. The title is a task manager, with distinguishing features such as map and contextual views, location-aware task lists and support for image attachments and voice memos. The iPad app is separate from the iPhone version, but syncs data between the two, and also to the OmniFocus Mac client....


Omni Group - iPhone - appstore - OmniFocus - IPad

Barence writes "Microsoft's Steve Ballmer has vented his frustration at the success of the iPad and said developing a Windows alternative is 'job one urgency.' 'Apple has done an interesting job of putting together a synthesis and putting a product out, and in which they've... they sold certainly more than I'd like them to sell, let me just be clear about that,' Ballmer told analysts. The Microsoft boss said the company plans to deliver a range of tablet formats in the next year, some based on Intel's next-gen Oak Trail processor. 'It is job one urgency around here. Nobody is sleeping at the switch. And so we are working with those partners, not just to deliver something, but to deliver products that people really want to go buy.'" In Microsoft's vision, slates will run a derivative of Windows 7.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Filed under: iPhone, App Store

The Screetch is a great game with a funny name. At its heart, it's a match three game; you want to match three of a kind for a certain round gem while you're constantly dropping them from above (Tetris style). The game's namesake is where things get slimy, though. The Screetch is constantly "infecting" gems that are dropped onto the board, and you can only clear it out by matching three gems and putting the slimy, oily dude into a flask.

It sounds complicated, but of course, it starts out simple and builds up from there. As the game progresses, the Screetch moves faster, requiring you to drop gems in the right places quickly. There are also lightning gems that will clear out whole lines of the board and quite a few levels to ramp up the difficulty as you play along. The Screetch element adds a fun, new twist to the standard match three gameplay, and the graphics are pretty well polished to boot.

The game is available on the App Store right now for US $2.99, and the addition of online league play and trophies extends the playability a little bit. If you're a fan of match three games or just want a fun thrill to pick up and play for a few minutes at a time, check it out.

TUAWTUAW's Daily App: The Screetch originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1007/barnesandnoblenook-boutique.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Barnes & Noble stepped up its e-reader efforts by taking a visibly Apple-like approach to selling the Nook. The company's bookstores will now have Nook Boutiques, or 1,000 square foot sections of the store dedicated solely to its devices. The areas will have tables with demo units arranged like its competitor's and will have a similar wall of accessories, such as cases....


Barnes & Noble - Apple - nook - Amazon Kindle - NOOK Boutique

Filed under: iPhone, iPad

Good news, everyone! The long-awaited Parrot AR.Drone (as seen being crashed into one of Parrot's PR reps by yours truly) is finally available for pre-order over at Brookstone. And as promised back at E3, the iPhone-controlled quadricopter will be available for US $299.

It's available in a couple of different color schemes, comes with a free "flight bag" (if you're within the first 300 orders), and requires a shipping fee of $10. Unfortunately, there's no shipping outside of the United States, and of course, the iPhone or iPod touch is sold separately. According to the pre-order page, orders are "expected to ship" on September 3rd, 2010; that's just over a month from now.

The $299 sticker price is a little steep if you ask me, but then again, if you have a need for an iPhone-controlled quadricopter with not one but two cameras on board, you probably have a couple hundred bucks to put into it. If you do order one, be sure to keep us updated on when it ships, and let us know what you think of the device. Happy flying!

TUAWParrot AR.Drone now available for pre-order at Brookstone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/3gssml.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />A French cellphone carrier, SFR, is now officially advising people against upgrading an iPhone 3G to iOS 4. The firmware "significantly slows" menu navigation on a 3G, the carrier says, adding that the upgrade is "irreversible." The upgrade should in fact be reversible, but only by more technically savvy iPhone owners....


iPhone 3G - IPhone - IPhone OS - SFR - Smartphone