iPhone 4 News Roundup

We have a slew of iPhone 4-related stories this morning, so I'm lumping them together for easier consumption/ignoring, depending on your personal feelings on the subject. Here is a blog entry proclaiming that iOS 4 multitasking sucks and why. Here is a sketchy summary of privacy violations by Apple and AT&T — apparently they are reporting back jailbroken phones. Skunkpost has a story about the lines and sales of the new phone. But the big news of the morning is the reception problems that apparently only affect people who hold the phone in their left hands.

Re:Left handed

[yyxx]

Apple prefers if you use your phone with both hands, in particular while visiting certain web sites; it keeps you out of trouble and prevents the moisture sensor from triggering.

You forgot one

[0xdeadbeef]

The screens have yellow spots [engadget.com]. Apparently these "retina" displays have cataracts.

It's Official

[organgtool]

Steve Jobs doesn't care about left handed people. - Kanye

iOS4 = Windows 3.0?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Remember?

Cooperative multitasking, rather than preemptive multitasking. The burden of "playing nice" (pun intended for the Unix literate) falls upon the application.

State of the art for desktop computers, circa 87-92.

Re:Left handed

[Monkeedude1212]

They couldn't justify cutting my Apps out of the market place. I had left-handed solitaire, left-handed minesweeper. I was starting a smorgasbord of left handed products. With no justifiable reason to keep me out, and with all the bad press lately about them selectively choosing their App store, they've decided to lock me out at the hardware level.

Those dastardly fiends!

phone-hand issues

[demonbug]

Apparently Apple's testers discovered some new way of using phones that does not include holding it in your hand.

Also;

You mean you have to use your hands?
That's like a baby's toy!

Queuing in Hampstead this morning at 6.30

[QuatermassX]

The queue in Hampstead this morning was 23 strong at 6.30 this morning (I was number 23), though by 7.00 it extended fairly far down Hampstead High Street. Mercifully, Samir in his white Apple iPhone 4 t-shirt came around, checked we were O2 customers and fetched everyone tea, coffee and juice from Gail's on the other side of the road. I didn't dare ask for one of Gail's scrumptious cake (had a slice of birthday cake there a few weeks ago and it was heavenly). I wasn't blessed with the Divine Device until a little past nine, but it all went smoothly with nary a cross word. That's a lie, a rather brash young lady sashayed up and attempted to sweet talk the two chaps behind me into allowing her to queue jump. Her lousy manners were challenged by a whingy American-sounding fellow. She then said "what are you going to do about it? Hit me?" She was Spanish and looked for all the world like some demented Almodóvar-esque creation. She had the good sense to eventually leave. So far the iPhone 4 has been brilliant. Fingers crossed the decent reception will last!

Re:You forgot one

[iceborer]

That's angel urine. They don't allow bathroom breaks on the iPhone's heavenly assembly lines.

Re:Here's your roundup

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that with a car there are very few situations where you would need to go 90 MPH +

I can tell you don't live west of the Mississippi River. There's a LOT of open country to cover out here. Most Interstate Highway speed limits are 80, which means you'll get passed a lot if you do 80.

And your phone will drop calls faster since you move out of range a lot faster.

Pff, I can be sitting in traffic in Lower Manhattan going 5mph~ and still drop calls. Beat that!

Re:iOS4 = Windows 3.0?

[morgan_greywolf]

Geeks will go and argue whether this is "true multitasking", app switching, etc, but in the end all that will matter is that what end users want to do will just work (play some music in the background, have a voip call come through, keep a gps app navigating, whatever).

1995 just called. They want their pro-Macintosh argument back.

Re:It's still mostly used for calls...

[jmitchel!jmitchel.co]

I see it as eliminating one of the biggest disadvantages of carrying a mobile phone. If I don't have reliable inbound / outbound calls then I don't have to make the pretense of answering calls I don't want.

Re:Here's your roundup

[Scaba]

I can tell you don't live west of the Mississippi River.

Everyone does, if you keep going.

Re:Privacy Violations are BS

[amicusNYCL]

MuscleNerd, one of the, if not THE foremost Apple device hacker out there has implied he has done code inspection and just through common sense says its all BS.

Oh. Well that settles it then. If "MuscleNerd" tweeted it, then that's enough for me.

Re:They did

[Anonymous Coward]

only if your right handed, whats next Steve, blue eyes and blond hair?

Re:Here's your roundup

[tomhudson]

1) no front-accessible access panels, 2) that needs special tools to open.

Flip it upside-down and attack it with a hammer, screw-driver, knife and vice-grips. There's nothing that can't be "fixed" with those 4 tools.

And if you make it worse - it was broken anyways. You now have spare parts.

Re:Here's your roundup

[not already in use]

Uhh, yeah. You remember back in the eighties when Apple had a closed platform that sold really well, and then someone came through with an open platform and consumers and developers flocked to it? Deja Vu.

Re:You forgot one

[Idbar]

You're wrong. This is a feature as this "retina" display also has floaters [wikipedia.org]. They just get more realistic. I'm waiting to see if iOS 5 promises STDs.