When Steve Jobs told the world it was a non-issue, not to hold the phone like that, I chuckled a little, but still didn’t make too much of a big deal about it.  It’s Steve Jobs.  I suspect that over the years, his turtlenecks have slowly been restricting the blood flow just enough to cause him to act like the self-appointed God of fashion and function that he is.  It can’t be coherent thought causing it.  Even he’d be embarrassed by the way he acts.

When Apple told the world that the phone never got that many bars anyway, it started getting interesting.

When they told you to buy a $30 rubber band to wrap around the phone to prevent the signal loss, I began laughing outright.

When they held a press conference saying that they weren’t perfect and here’s a free rubber band, I was kind of sad.  It was like watching something that had the potential to be quite fantastic but whose life was cut short by common sense.

I needn’t have worried. It seems Apple has posted a page on their website to demonstrate that all smart phones had this issue.

So what have we learned from this video?  Well, I’ve learned that either all of the other phones in the video have less of a problem than the iPhone in this regard, since none of the phones featured had a ton of people freaking out over dropped calls OR the average iPhone owner is a big fucking whiner that likes to bitch about things that are really of no consequence.

As for Apple, with the release of the video, we no longer have to wonder which group they fall into.

Let me be completely honest.  I assumed this was a case of rotten grapes at first, and could picture Apple haters everywhere trying to pick the phone apart.  In the case of the yellow spots, it seems that might be the case, as the spots purportedly disappear as the adhesive between the plates of glass disappear when dry.  The cell signal deal seems to have teeth, however.  Tons of reports have confirmed that if you hold the phone while touching the antenna band on both sides of the face(the most common method of holding any phone), you’ll notice signal deterioration.

So 1.5 million early adopters have been rewarded with a phone that drops calls if they hold it a certain way.  Apple must be scrambling to fix this.  Well maybe, but if they are, nobody has told Steve Jobs.  When asked, he responded via email “Non issue.  Just avoid holding it in that way.“  The article continues to let you know that you can purchase a $30 rubber band to keep from touching the antenna in an effort to restore the functionality of the phone.

The whole thing makes me giggle.  Steve Jobs telling everyone that spent too much money on his phone was just told by him to quit their bitching and hold the phone some other way or buy a $30 rubber band for their new phone.

Which makes him the genius he is.  If anyone would pay $30 for a band of rubber, it’s someone that would stand in line for up to 48 hours for the iPhone.

It really isn’t much of a big deal when you take into account that getting into an iPhone is still much more expensive than a phone running Android.  Many people are choosing Android because they either can’t afford or don’t want to spend the money required to own an Apple product.  It hardly determines a superior product.

Who cares why it’s happening, right?  We should just be cheering that open source is finally trampling a proprietary product on it’s own turf!

Wait just a sec, you robe wearing, GNU-touting supernerd.  During it’s incredible rocket to popularity and stardom, Android is showing the world one of the main reasons open source sucks. Although I’ve made fun of it countless times, it seems that people are still surprised by the fact that if you have 400 versions of one thing with no interoperability planned into them, you spend much of your time frustrated by the fact that applications written for version 394 isn’t compatible with version 103.  In short, many applications written for Motorola’s Android doesn’t work with LG’s version of Android.  For that reason, consumers are growing wary that the Jones’ version of Android will be better than their own.  Unlike Apple’s OS, inequality abounds.

I have bigger things to worry about than this, however.  I’m working on creating a distrowatch site for the Android operating system so each phone owner can track the top five hundred versions of Google’s operating system in real time.  Given the linux user’s inability to see this as a huge shortcoming, it should be incredibly popular.

Twitter.  This is definitely one of those technologies.  Let’s not talk about a company that can’t even manage to turn a buck off of the most malleable and gullible of society.  No, let’s talk talk about a company that can successfully exploit those people.  Let’s talk about the iPhone.

See, I think the iPhone is a fantastic piece of technology.  When you remove the fact that it’s developers manage to remain egotists in spite of the fact that they can’t manage to foresee the most basic of needs from their users and integrate something every competing product already has. No, if it wasn’t a device developed by a company that makes their money by taking your consumer rights and squashing them flat, I’d own one.

But it is, so I don’t.  I do however watch the news for the latest apps, which leads me to my point.  See, a large majority of the people that own an iPhone will never come close to maximizing it’s usefulness.  No, they’re going to use the phone for some of the most asinine tasks imaginable.  Here’s some fantastic examples of what “Joe iPhone” might be doing with their incredible marvel of technology.

1) Order a pizza.

2) Throw your $600 phone as high into the air as you can.

3) Record and share your bowel movements.

4) Grow hair back.

5) Propose to your fiance.

I am telling the truth when I say that I’ve found hundreds more.  Too many to sort, really so I can’t even give you a sorted list.  I just grabbed 5 and ran with them.

I know what you’re thinking and your’e right.  There’s some fantastic apps out there.  It doesn’t change the fact that the number of useless apps far outweigh the useful and people are stupid enough to buy them.

If I look deep inside, I may just be angry that there’s not a bowel movement app for the Blackberry.

However, if anything could cause me to trample my beliefs, it would be this app. The police chief, Kathy Lanier calls it a cowardly tactic.  I call it the first useful iPhone app I’ve ever seen.

While she lets us know that the app  circumvents law enforcement put in place to protect ourselves, someone else had to mention that the prospected earnings for the cameras in that region for 2009 was just under $30 million. This of course, doesn’t take into account the increased revenue that the insurance companies would enjoy as well.

God bless the person that developed the app.  Although they are sure to rot in hell for all eternity for releasing it in the iStore, perhaps God will look down upon them favorably for their  good deeds and piss on them when He sees them aflame.

Japan never adopted the iPhone.  In spite of giving them away, they’re still the odd man out.  Why?  Because it’s half the phone at twice the price in comparison to what they’re used to.

Why is Japan’s market such a dipole to ours?  Well, Steve’s pearly whites, domineering persona and witty monologues during press releases just don’t have the same effect on the Japanese as they do here.  iSheep are a minority there and owning one so you can tell people you own one seems a bit silly to them.  We however, think that’s an incredibly dandy reason to own one.  Think I’m kidding?  I don’t have to go any further than this blog to make my point:

A while ago, I told you all what a steaming pile a certain app geared for lil’uns was.  One of the app’s developers came to the rescue of his application and told me that I was mistaken, it wasn’t a smouldering pile of poo in a brown paper bag.  In closing his missive, he wrote:

(blogged from iphone apologies in advance for any typos)

Not “texting while riding with smelly people on a bus” or “writing this from my phone during a meet & greet with the president”.  No sir, we were to be made aware that he wrote it on his iPhone.

Who on earth would think to form that sentence?  My thoughts are someone that would like us to know that he owns an iPhone.  He’s not alone. Millions of Mac, iTunes and iPhone iSheep go so far as to buy the t-shirt.  Why?  Because it’s not enough to own something they feel is superior.  They need you to know that they own something that they feel is superior.

Apple has made millions of dollars on this need.  When you have devices that get sold simply because it’s cool to own one, you can almost rest assured that there are people around the world thinking you are an idiot.

In this case, they are right.