OxCreative

Did Apple know about the signal issue before launch?

For those of you who are tech-savvy, designers, Apple fans or have been even been online in the last few weeks, you would have seen or read at least one thing about Apple’s magical mystical update of it’s iPhone, the iPhone 4. Those of you who bought an iPhone 4 or have seen the news since its’ launch will know there has been a lot of unhappy people when it comes to signal and even more after Steve Jobs offered the wonderful tip of ‘just don’t hold your phone like that’.

A few ideas and questions have been swimming around in my head and I am starting to wonder if Apple knew of the issues with signal before they sold the iPhone 4 and had foreseen the unhappy consumers and woes ahead. There are two things primarily make me think this:

1) The leaked photo

most of you will recognise the image above – it’s the iPhone 4 image taken by Gizmodo of the iPhone 4 prototype found in a bar months before the official release. Originally it was thought that Apple put a black ‘bumper’ style case on the phone to disguise the prototype from any onlookers. After the whole antenna issue, Apple has officially advised that their wonderful bumpers will prevent you from bridging the connection between the antennas and restore that oh so precious signal. Could this encasing be a early revision of a bumper used to prevent the signal issue during the prototype stage?

2)Thou shall not ‘bumper’

This leads me to my next point – when… since the days of Apple becoming design-conscious do you recall them actively pushing any accessories that may take something away aesthetically from their designs? Apple in the past have be very reluctant to do this but for the iPhone 4 they are ‘all go’ and marketing/promoting the bumpers heavily. Then, when people have experience signal issues, Apple say ‘sorry about that… but why not try one of our bumpers as it will fix the issue’ (nudge nudge wink wink)!

Perhaps I am looking into it too much but it seems awfully suspicious looking back and seeing these strange occurences.

I think it is possible that Apple discovered the fault in the late prototyping/early manufacturing stage, realized the sheer cost of the mistake and done what they do best – sell you a ‘fix’ or a feature that is standard on most other devices but persuade you that it is carved from gold!

We would love to hear what all you lovely readers think about this so feel free to drop us your comments or even some theories of your own!