iPhone engineers: study your math when in school!

Dear iPhone 4 Users,

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.

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. 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.

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?

We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising.

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. 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

More: http://bit.ly/dkXcsM

Senator Franken (D-MN) Gets It Right … Again

 
At today's confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, Senator Al Franken spoke eloquently about the Roberts Court's "Citizens United" recent 5-4 decision that opens the doors for corporations to control elections by dumping untold piles of cash in your local, state, and national elections. 

Now, you’ve heard a lot about this decision already today, but I want to come at it from a slightly different angle.

There is no doubt: the Roberts Court’s disregard for a century of federal law—and decades of the Supreme Court’s own rulings—is wrong. It’s shocking. And it’s torn a gaping hole in our election laws.

So of course I’m worried about how Citizens United is going to change our elections.

But I am more worried about how this decision is going to affect our communities—and our ability to run those communities without a permission slip from big business.

…

Citizens United isn’t just about election law. It isn’t just about campaign finance.

It’s about seat belts. It’s about clean air and clean water. It’s about energy policy and the rights of workers and investors. It’s about health care. It’s about our ability to pass laws that protect the American people even if it hurts the corporate bottom line.

As Justice Stevens said, it’s about our “need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government.

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Sent from my iPad

Happy Birthday Jacques Cousteau

Jacques Cousteau Centennial: What He Did, Why He Matters

Marking Cousteau’s hundredth anniversary—five successes, one great legacy.

Softly aglow, a jet-propelled diving saucer hovers over the sea floor.
One of Jacques Cousteau’s jet-propelled diving saucers scans the seafloor in an undated picture.

Photograph by Thomas J. Abercrombie, National Geographic

Oceanographer navigates at night.

French ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau (file photo) would have celebrated his hundredth birthday Friday. Photograph by Bates Littlehales, National Geographi.c

Ker Than

for National Geographic News
Published June 11, 2010

The late Jacques Cousteau’s hundredth birthday is inspiring headlines and, Friday morning, a Google doodle—perhaps the ultimate Internet accolade.

Why is the ocean explorer such a legend? Here are five good reasons.

Read article here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/06/100611-jacques-cousteau-100th-anniversary-birthday-legacy-google/

 

Apple vs. Microsoft

At the close of the final trading day of May, Apple’s share price (Ticker Symbol: AAPL) rested at $256.88, giving the company a market capitalization of $233.74 billion. Microsoft’s market cap (or sum value of all shares outstanding) sat at $226.11 billion.

For those of us who have followed the often bitter rivalry between Apple and Microsoft, this juxtaposition in market value is worthy of note. As publicly traded American companies, only Exxon Mobil commands a higher market value than Apple at this time.

Under the leadership of CEO Steve Jobs, Apple’s success in the handheld digital device markets with the iPod, the iPhone, and now the iPad has erased the effects of Apple’s fall from prominence in the mid 1990s when a succession of CEOs failed to return the company to its former glory. Apple’s resurgence during the first decade of the new century and its continuing development of exciting new products is reflected in the company’s market value.

Source: http://www.atpm.com/16.06/welcome.shtml