Mac-Apple.net

Here’s some good news for Korean Mac fanatics waiting on the latest iPhone. KTF has confirmed that the iPhone 3G S will indeed be coming to Korea although cutting short of revealing its exact release date and price. Word is that SK Telecom is also negotiating a deal with Apple to get the iPhone on their side as well, but this is yet to be verified and confirmed. Nonetheless, Koreans can rest easy now knowing that the iPhone 3G S will surely be available in their country soon via KTF.

[telecoms korea via unwiredview]

Is this week’s title in reference to silly technology pundits and their penchant for hyperbole when it come to Apple, the Windows 7 upgrade matrix, the App Store approval process, or the iconic ’60s song by the Temptations?

Sadly, just the first three.
People are strange

You may not have noticed this, but the Macalope is something of a media critic. Specifically, an Apple media critic.

Yes, it’s a niche market, but when you’ve got a classic Mac for a head there really aren’t all that many job options. The antlers don’t help either. And the hooves. The cud-chewing can also be off-putting. People can be so narrow-minded.

People at NASA, for example.

Anyway, this week brought the Macalope a veritable smorgasbord of criticizable Apple coverage.

First we have PC World’s Todd R. Weiss asking Is Apple’s iPod Dying — And Does Apple Care? Yeah. Dying like a fox, Todd.

Which is probably not a good analogy since foxes get hunted with dogs and die kind of miserably, but you get the idea. The iPod may be slightly less important to Apple than it used to be, but it’s still huge. Save the histrionics.

Then there’s ZDNet’s Zack Whittaker, who knows for a fact that the tablet that hasn’t been introduced yet is flawed from the start. Zack, Zack, Zack! We covered this material last week! Please, if you’re not going to do the required reading, just drop the class.

Finally, in the realm of more annoying than irresponsible, CBS gave ex-future Apple CEO Jean-Louis Gassée over 2,200 words to make lame “Jesus tablet” jokes (maybe they’re funnier in French) and give us a history lesson about the Newton and how he started Be. It’s not all about you, Jean-Louis!

The Macalope realizes that, for better or worse, this is the beat he was born to cover, but forgive him if he sometimes looks wistfully at his rejected application to astronaut training school.

You can’t always get what you want

The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg asked Microsoft for a matrix that would show the definitive list of combinations for upgrading to Windows 7. The result should not be viewed by pregnant women or people prone to seizures.

Now, to be fair to Microsoft, it’s not as confusing as it looks. If you already have Vista and you want to go to the comparable version of Windows 7, it’s an easy upgrade. Anything else, though and your whole weekend is shot. And if you were to plot it as a probability chart…

Oooh. Walt should totally ask them to plot it as a probability chart. And then he should ask them to plot it using a least-squares regression algorithm to account for seasonal variances.

Because it doesn’t mean anything!

It must be pretty nice to be Walt Mossberg and be able to call up Microsoft and absolutely ruin some poor intern’s week by forcing him to figure out that matrix. That’ll look good on a resumé, though. “Danced like a monkey for Uncle Walt.”

The Macalope did do a little math and going by Internet usage stats, about 80% of Windows users are looking at having to do a fresh installation instead of an upgrade.

It’s a good time to be glad you’re not a PC.
You’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’

Speaking of Microsoft, the pointy one has been seeing some commentary lately on how Apple is the new Microsoft. And that’s not really fair. While the company has gone through some growing pains of late, particularly with the App Store, the worst you could say is that it’s the new Microsoft, except with style. And class. And senior executives who aren’t nearly as sweaty.

It is, however, almost a truism that the bigger a company gets—whether it’s in terms of physical size or market presence—the more there is to criticize about it. That part’s just physics. It’s hard to run a big omelette-making business without breaking a few eggs.

So far the complaints are all coming from the developer side. In all this discussion of how screwed up the App Store is (and it is), it’s still easy to use for customers, and that gets the butts in the seats. This week, for instance, we all got incensed that Apple won’t let us have a simple dictionary until the developers get rid of the Seaward (which, apparently, was not really even the case), but does your average iPhone owner follow each app’s road to the App Store like we do? The Macalope suspects they don’t. They just know that practically everything’s a dollar and they’re real easy to download.

Apple’s pleading, “We know it’s not perfect. We’re trying!” Well…keep trying! Until developers start leaving en masse, they don’t have too much of a problem. But the crowd’s getting a little surly.

Are iPods exploding all over the place? According to the Times Online, an iPod touch belonging to 11 year-old Ellie Stanborough of Liverpool, England, started hissing and emitting vapor before an explosion sent it flying ten feet into the air. When Ellie’s father, Ken, contacted Apple to ask for a refund, the company agreed, though reputedly on the condition that the Stanboroughs agreed to not talk about the incident.

That didn’t sit well with Ken Stanborough, who declined to sign the agreement and subsequently talked to the Times:

“They’re putting a life sentence on myself, my daughter and Ellie’s mum, not to say anything to anyone. If we inadvertently did say anything, no matter what, they would take litigation against us. I thought that was absolutely appalling.”

Apple, meanwhile, disputes the claim, telling British news service Sky News that the letter in question was a standard settlement agreement. It also said that Stanborough refused to send the iPod back to Apple for investigation.

This isn’t the first time that an iPod has supposedly met with a fiery fate; like many electronic devices, the iPod uses a lithium-ion battery, a technology which can present a risk of fire, especially if the battery is damaged. In 2006, a number of laptop vendors, including Dell and Hitachi, recalled batteries manufactured by electronics giant Sony, which were known to be susceptible to overheating. Apple itself has issued battery recalls several times in the past, most notably in 1995 with the infamous PowerBook 5300 series, but also in more recent years.

In 2008, the government of Japan asked Apple to investigate a sparking iPod nano; Apple attributed the problem to faulty batteries. A recent investigation by Seattle news station KIRO revealed 800 pages of information on iPod fire mishaps documented by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, though it only listed 15 distinct incidents. In March of this year, an Ohio woman filed suit against Apple claiming that her son’s iPod touch exploded in his pants.

Of course, part of the reason that the iPod is so prominent in this kind of case is its overwhelming popularity: the device is almost eight years old, and Apple’s sold more than 150 million iPods in the last two years alone. Even a single batch of flawed batteries could have huge repercussions. In addition, the trend towards miniaturization of devices means that electronics manufacturers and battery makers are trying to pack more and more power into smaller spaces.

Any electronic device is imperfect and subject to problems; that doesn’t mean Apple doesn’t need to hold its suppliers to high manufacturing standards. But it isn’t surprising that Apple wants to keep a lid on the negative PR that can come out of a situation like this—no manufacturer would be thrilled to say its products catch on fire, even if it’s a one-in-a-million occurrence. It’s also likely that the company investigates such claims to try and figure out the root cause of the problem and, if necessary, issue recalls. It’s most certainly not a good situation, but the other alternative leads to panic and accusations, which are usually counterproductive.

Long-term, the solution may be to move away from lithium-ion batteries as power sources. That’s an expensive proposition and one that requires a large investment into research and development, especially since it’s been the predominant battery technology for consumer electronics devices for over a decade. Apple’s certainly put a lot of work into battery technology for its most recent line of laptops, and while it understandably doesn’t say anything about reduced fire or explosion risk, one would hope that’s part of the package.

I warn you at the outset. This is not going to be one of those Bugs & Fixes with a neatly defined set of symptoms and a iron-clad solution. This one’s a bit messy. Here’s the deal:

Almost immediately after getting my new iPhone 3GS, I noticed that it spent more time connected to the EDGE network, rather than the faster 3G network, than did my prior iPhone 3G.

As my old 3G was still in use (it’s now my wife’s iPhone), I could conduct a test. Turning off Wi-Fi on both phones, I tracked their behavior. I confirmed that there were numerous occasions when the iPhone 3GS connected to EDGE while the iPhone 3G hooked up to a 3G network—even when the two devices were side-by-side. The reverse virtually never happened. Most of the time, the two iPhones connected to the same network, but a difference was definitely detectable.

Checking online, I found others reporting a similar situation. So I contacted Apple Support for an explanation. They said they were familiar with this matter and that there was nothing wrong. At least not with my iPhone 3GS. According to Apple, the software behind the status bar on an iPhone 3GS does a better job of showing when a switch from 3G to EDGE has occurred than does the comparable software on an iPhone 3G. The status bar on the older iPhone 3G may persist, at least for awhile, in showing the 3G icon even when the phone is actually on an EDGE network. In other words—again according to Apple—both iPhones are likely on the same network at the same time, even if their status bars don’t always agree.

This iPhone 3G-vs.-3GS difference is most likely to occur when you are on the edge (sorry for the pun!) of a 3G network coverage area. This is where the signal strength is borderline, thus resulting in switches to the EDGE network and sometimes frequent switching back and forth.

While this made sense, it still left a couple of questions unresolved:

Why does an iPhone 3GS sometimes switch from 3G to EDGE even when the listed 3G signal strength is high (4 or 5 bars)? For this, Apple Support claimed that the cause is an increase in network traffic. As more users connect to a 3G network in a given location, the bandwidth and network speed declines, similar to what when traffic goes up on a cable modem node. This too can cause the iPhone to switch to EDGE.

Apple also contended, although I cannot confirm, that the network gives priority to those who joined most recently. The result is, as network speed slows down in a given location, those who have been connected to 3G the longest will be the first to to be switched to EDGE. If this is true, then disconnecting from and reconnecting to the 3G network should temporarily improve matters. To test this out, I went to Settings -> General -> Network and turned off Enable 3G. After waiting a few seconds, I turned it back on. This typically had an effect, but not a predictable one. The iPhone sometimes succeeded in shifting from an EDGE to 3G connection. At other times, it shifted to No Service! No matter what happened, the connection returned to its prior EDGE state within a few minutes. Powering off and turning the iPhone back on led to similar results. As a result, I am skeptical of Apple’s explanation on this point.

Finally, some iPhone 3GS users are convinced (as noted in this Apple Discussions thread) that the strength and consistency of their 3G network connections on an iPhone 3GS is less on average than on an iPhone 3G. This would be consistent with an iPhone 3GS shifting to EDGE more often than an iPhone 3G, as the newer phone would more often be near the “shift point.” On the other hand, this could just as well reflect that the iPhone 3GS reports the network status more accurately, as described above. As I said at the outset, this one’s still a bit messy to sort out.

If there is ultimately a signal strength problem that needs solving here, I am optimistic that a iPhone firmware update will do the trick. We’ll have to wait and see.

Finally, at least for AT&T phones, you can get a more accurate numerical indicator of the iPhone’s current signal strength by manually dialing *3001#12345#* followed by a tap of the Call button. This brings up Field Test mode. The signal strength bars in the upper left are replaced by a negative number. The less negative the number, the better your signal strength. For a reasonably reliable signal, the number should be less negative than -100. Ideal strength would be somewhere around -50.

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