iPhone 4 Antennagate Update: Apple Knew About It For Two Years? This Changes Everything. Again!

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Well, of course Apple knew about it, it only makes sense! I’d be pretty baffled to hear that Apple isn’t 100% aware of what’s happening with their devices from initial R&D to the final pre-sale stages. The iPhone 4 has a tremendous flaw, the antenna placed on the outside, and Apple hasn’t been willing to admit it. And I suspect they will never admit there was anything wrong with the design in the first place. This changes everything. Again!

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves and remind everyone how Apple handled the iPhone Death Grip / Antennagate scandal:

1) Complete denial of the non-issue
2) Special 15-minute press event in which Steve Jobs and Co. explained for over 30 minutes how Apple loves their customers and how every other smartphone has the same attenuation problem and announced the Free Case Program
3) Free Bumper / Case Program – first cases and bumpers are shipped
4) Removal of other smartphone reference from Apple’s iPhone 4 antenna page
5) Firing / Friendly Resignation of Mark Papermaster, responsible for the iPhone 4 antenna, but not only.

So yeah that goes to show that the Death Grip has been a magical blow to Apple’s image. The otherwise perfect iPhone 4 is affected by this tiny design flaw that turned out to be a major thing. While Apple advertised the external iPhone antenna as the next thing for smartphones, they somehow failed to see the bridging problem. A problem, which should have been avoided, but wasn’t. Or did they see it two years ago?

The most disturbing fact is Apple not admitting the design of the antenna as the problem that did lead to these uncomfortable situations in the first place. And probably Apple will never acknowledge it officially as an issue and will continue to deploy the same kind of antenna in its future designs.

The word on the street is that Apple knew about it for two years. Of course they knew about it; they are Apple, a company that wants perfect products, even if they’ll say these products aren’t perfect. Of course they knew about it since they created the bumper, a protection solution that didn’t fit with the whole iPhone 4 keynote presentation to begin with. Nobody fell for the bumper back then, as a case alternative, and questions about the creation of the bumper only rose after the first Death Grip reports. Of course they knew, since they have those special testing facilities that are worth $100 million. Can they really say they didn’t know about the Death Grip threat? In which case it’s only logical to say that those antenna testing facilities are not working properly.

Which leads me to one important question: why not fire Mark Papermaster a long while ago? It’s clear that he wasn’t the man for the job and recent reports say he wasn’t one of Jobs’ favorites in the first place. And, subsequently, why not fix a design flaw you’ve known about for some time? Does Apple think its average customer is plain old stupid? In which case, why make smarter devices for him?

Oh, and since we’re talking about it again, I’d also like to know how Apple will fix this antenna issue in the following six weeks especially since they haven’t done it for two years now.