At Apple’s press conference on the 16^th July 2010, Steve Jobs announced the statistic above. Impressive you may say – perhaps this issue isn’t that bad after-all. Well, like a lot of statistics, it’s worse than it looks. In-fact, the statistic proves that the antenna issue is complained about to AppleCare at an unbelievable rate…

Math lesson…

Assuming AppleCare are open 7 days a week, 12 hours a day and knowing that the iPhone 4 had been out for 3 weeks when Apple collected the said statistics – here’s something which may enlighten you to the factual extent of this issue:

AppleCare availability: 3 weeks x 7 days x 12 hours x 60 minutes = 15, 120 minutes
0.55% of 3 million iPhone 4 users: 16, 500 users

A meaning to the figures

Since the iPhone 4′s release, there’s been over 1 complaint to AppleCare every single minute regarding the iPhone 4′s antenna. Yes, that’s just the antenna complaints.

A simple pie chart instead of the boring Math:

So it seems there’s not enough minutes in a day to allow for the number of complaints Apple are receiving about this ‘out of proportion’ (S. Jobs, 16^th July 2010) antenna design issue. The statistics used in this post are official*; Jobs announced them at the press conference on Friday.

* The pie chart is not official, of course.

iPhone 4 – it’s not perfect

Steve Jobs – Apple’s CEO – immediately admitted at Apple’s press conference on July 16^th 2010 at 6:04pm GMT, that neither Apple or the iPhone 4 are perfect. To generalise this, Steve actually said “…phones aren’t perfect either”.

All phones suffer signal drops

Jobs then went on to provide statistics that ‘proved’ the Blackberry Bold 9700, the HTC Droid Eris and the Samsung Omnia II all suffered the same issue. However, on the photos provided, all of these phones were retaining 3G signal. Yes, bars were dropping when they were wrapped up in one’s hand, but the signal drop wasn’t even close to that of the iPhone 4′s. The iPhone 4 can go from full 3G signal to almost no service with the light touch of one’s little finger. The only conclusion that can be drawn from these photos is what the public already know – there’s a serious design flaw. Comparing it to other phones makes this even clearer.

0.55% iPhone 4 users complaining to Apple Care, 1.7% returning to AT&T

Ignoring the obvious, “You can’t call Apple Care without signal…” joke, the almost immediate letter from Apple promising a fix will have kept these numbers to a minimum. These statistics were backed up with no gross figures and no dates. They were just percentages on the screen making the iPhone 4 look more successful than the 3GS. No contradiction, just simple irrelevancy.

A ‘Bumper’ fixes the signal issue

This is the most prominent contradiction of the whole show. After attempting to prove that the issue occurs on all mobile phones to date; Jobs then agrees that an Apple Bumper fixes the signal problem in its entirety. Now, if a rubber band around the perimeter of the phone fixes this outrageous issue – the design is flawed. End of disucssion. Jobs has tried to convince us that there’s nothing wrong with the iPhone 4 – claiming it’s as perfect as a phone can be – only to follow up with the conclusion that a rubber band will significantly enhance the device.

Impossible to avoid signal attenuation

Jobs claimed no-one in the entire industry has solved this problem (src.) – but hang on, what about the magical Bumpers? Does that mean the absolute state-of-the-art technology for avoidance of signal degradation is in the form of rubber bands? Well, not far off – insulation specifically. A naked antenna does -not- work.

Contradictory Conference Conclusion

Percentage only statistics, inadvertently proving the signal issue, admitting to a design flaw, handing out free bumpers, telling us that the iPhone 4 drops more calls than its predecessor – it wasn’t Steve’s best show and this signal issue isn’t going to fade away.

If you’re an iPhone 4 user suffering from the, apparently rare, antenna issue – these are the choices you now have:

• Request a free case* from Apple in a few days
• Take your phone back to where you purchased it for a full refund

That is it. No recall, no changes. If you can live with the phone – enjoy it and get a Bumper if you experience signal issues; if you can’t – get your money back now and perhaps take a look at the HTC EVO. I’m personally undecided.

*Apple informed us that they cannot produce enough Bumpers so they will have to source some cases. Apparently there will be a choice of ‘free case’ on Apple.com in the near future.

Please note: O2 are currently deciding how they are going to handle any attempts to return your iPhone 4, I will update with the information they promise to release on Monday.

Just like websites, emails can be made up of HTML (with a slight change to the email headers). You can therefore have a website right in their email client.

Email Designs Lightwater & Bagshot

An email design requires some very simple code to create a layout. You can then add/change the content within this as you choose. You can then upload, or send, this to an email marketing company/website who will dispatch your emails in a huge batch. This is all low-cost, and is one of the most powerful forms of advertising.

I design, you edit, they send

I can provide you with the HTML template which you should use to add your own content. Once you’ve added the content, you should go to an email marketing company. Pay your fee, and dispatch your email to all your potential customers. You will need to provide them with an email list (all websites I design come with an email collection/subscription service).

I recommend Mail Chimp for dispatching

Mail Chimp are a growing online email marketing business. I have been told only good reviews about them, so I would encourage you to take a look at what they offer.

I’m in the area, and am offering discounted prices to all local clients. I am available to visit you in person for meeting and to discuss potential project plans. I guarantee you won’t find better prices anywhere.

If you think you may be interested or you’re looking for a new website, visit my portfolio and get in touch. We can get going right away!

Websites for Lightwater & Bagshot

I offer elegant, functional websites powered by a popular Content Management System so you can edit/add to your site quickly and easily – without any HTML knowledge. You can add news, a blog, allow user comments, allow user registration and more.

Web Systems for Lightwater & Bagshot

I also offer advanced PHP powered web systems such as:

• Custom online booking systems
• Quotation request systems
• Customer management systems

If you’re looking for a new system – why not use an online system? Online systems bring with them the following benefits:

• Accessible from anywhere in the world, home or away
• Secure systems allowing for several users
• Customers can have their own areas too

I can design and implement almost any system you desire – regardless of how specific the system is.

Contact Andy Lockett

To contact me, simply follow this link to my portfolio and send me a message via the form to the lower right side of the page. I will respond within a few hours and we can get your project moving the same day!

What is AJAX?

AJAX simply means Asynchronous JavaScript And XML. But what does that mean? Well, it means you don’t need to refresh the page in order to carry out actions such as form submissions, item re-ordering, and so on. jQuery has made AJAX unbelievably simple, so why not give it a go?

In a rush to get a fancy AJAX powered contact form?

Download the files
In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create your very own AJAX contact form which, quite simply, just works. So without further-ado, let’s get started…

Let’s start with the simple XHTML form (I’ve created a full page but you can take bits from this!);

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
    <title><!-- Insert your title here --></title>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js"></script> 
    <script type="text/javascript" src="mail_js.js"></script>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="mail_css.css" media="screen" type="text/css" />
</head>
<body>
    <div class="form">
        <form action="mail.php" method="post" id="form">
            <div class="row"><div class="label"><label>Name: </label></div><div class="input"><input type="text" class="textbox" name="name" /></div></div>
            <div class="row"><div class="label"><label>Surname: </label></div><div class="input"><input type="text" class="textbox" name="surname" /></div></div>
            <div class="row"><div class="label"><label>Email: </label></div><div class="input"><input type="text" class="textbox" name="email" /></div></div>
            <div class="row"><div class="label"><label style="vertical-align:top;">Message: </label></div><div class="input"><textarea name="message" cols="30" rows="10"></textarea></div></div>
            <div class="row"><div class="input"><input type="submit" value="Send" name="submit" /></div></div>
        </form>
    </div>
    <div id="message"></div>
</body>
</html>

The above XHTML simply generates a nice form on a very basic webpage for us. The includes (mail_js.js and mail_css.css) don’t exist yet, so the page will look pretty ugly! Let’s fix that quickly with some nice CSS styling…

Save this CSS as mail_css.css in the same directory as your webpage above;

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.form{
    width:275px;
}
.row{
    padding:6px;
    border-bottom:1px dashed #999;
}
.label label{
    /* Label styling */
}
.input{
    padding:3px 0;
}
.input .textbox{
    border:1px solid #000;
    height:20px;
    line-height:20px;
    width:160px;
}
.input textarea{
    width:250px;
    height:100px;
}

Now you’ve got a reasonable looking webpage with a form on it. The form doesn’t actually do much yet – but nevertheless, it’s a form.

To explain everything so far; you’ve got some basic XHTML which tells the browser which elements to add to the page. These elements have then been styled by the CSS file which is imported at the top of the XHTML file using the following line:

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<link rel="stylesheet" href="mail_css.css" media="screen" type="text/css" />

Now we’ll add a few lines of jQuery code. jQuery is a JavaScript library which shortens JavaScript code so we can do more by writing less (their tagline).

The following should be saved into mail_js.js in the same folder as your webpage;

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$(document).ready(function(){
 $("#form").submit(function(){ //When the form is submitted by the user do the following...
  var dataString = $(this).serialize(); //Grab all the data input
  $.ajax({ //Start an AJAX request
   url: "mail.php", //We're using mail.php as a PHP script to send the email
   data: dataString, //This is the data we grabbed above
   type: "POST", //Well, we need to post the data to the mail.php file
   dataType: "html", //We will be receiving an HTML error/success message from mail.php
   success: function(data) //Once the AJAX request has been completed, do the following...
   {
     $('#message').html(data); //Display the message returned by the PHP script
   }
  });
  return false; //Stops the page refreshing/loading mail.php
 });
});

Not much to explain here. The JavaScript collects all the data from the form and puts it into a URL to be posted, for example;
name=Andy&surname=Lockett&email=example@example.com&message=Hey%20there.

The final part to this form is the script which will actually contact you! This is written using PHP; a hugely common server-side script which the likes of Facebook use.

Save the following PHP into mail.php in the same folder as the rest;

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<?php
 
//Change the line below to your e-mail address and chosen email subject title
define ("EMAIL_TO", 'you@yourdomain.com');
define ("EMAIL_SUBJECT", 'Form Submission');
 
$error = 0;
function clean($text)
{
    return strip_tags(stripslashes(htmlentities($text)));
}
function isName($text)
{
    if (!ctype_alpha(str_replace(array("-", "'", ".", ",", " "), "", $text)))
    {
        return false;
    }
    return true;
}
function isEmail($text)
{
    if ((strpos($text, "@") <= 0) && (strpos($text,".") <= 0))
    {
        return false;
    }
    if (!ctype_alpha(str_replace(array(".", "-", "_", "@", "1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "0"), "",  $text)))
    {
        return false;
    }
    return true;
}
foreach ($_POST as $key => $value)
{
    $tempValue = clean($value);
    if ((empty($tempValue)) || ($tempValue != stripslashes($value)))
    {
        $error++;
    }
    if ($key == "email")
    {
        if (!isEmail($tempValue))
        {
            $error++;
        }
    }
    elseif ($key == "name" || $key == "surname")
    {
        if (!isName($tempValue))
        {
            $error++;
        }
    }
}
if ($error == 0)
{
    $name = clean($_POST['name']);
    $surname = clean($_POST['surname']);
    $email = clean($_POST['email']);
    $message = "Form submission from my website\nSent on: ".date("l j F, Y")."\nFrom ".$name." ( ".$email." )\n\n".clean($_POST['message']);
    $headers = "From: $name $surname <$email>";
    if (mail(EMAIL_TO, EMAIL_SUBJECT, $message, $headers))
    {
        die('<span style="color:green;">Successfully sent. Thanks '.$name.'!</span>');
    }
    else
    {
        die('<span style="color:red;">Something went wrong when sending, try again!</span>');
    }
}
else
{
    die ('<span style="color:red;">Invalid or empty inputs, please fill out honestly.</span>');
}
?>

The above script will clean and validate all the user’s inputs and, if valid, send you the email. At the top of the script there are two settings you may change;

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define ("EMAIL_TO", 'you@yourdomain.com');
define ("EMAIL_SUBJECT", 'Form Submission');

Change them as appropriate to suit your requirements and the rest is good to go. Do NOT edit the capital letters unless you know what you’re doing. You can also change the email text or error/success messages as you wish.

So there you have it – an AJAX contact form which just works.

Your webpage (or form if you extracted it) should now be fully operational across all browsers. Even more beneficial, if the user doesn’t have JavaScript enabled for whatever reason – the form will still operate.

I hope you found this post useful. Feel free to use and manipulate the code in anyway you wish. Claiming it as your own is not allowed.

Still don’t believe it?

I do. Why? Well, take a look for yourself on Apple Jobs. The day before the release of the iPhone 4, Apple posted 3 jobs for antenna engineers. Apple have since claimed that their algorithm is incorrect; so why the hardware engineers? It’s a design defect.

So, you’ve got an iPhone 4?

Well firstly, count yourself lucky. There has been a huge shortage of stock of these new iPhones with phone/network shops in the UK selling out within the hour of new deliveries. I personally got forced into settling for the 32GB version from a very secluded O2 store in my area – even they had sold out on two previous visits.

I can personally say that caging the phone tightly in my hand does cause a drop in signal, though only by 1 or 2 bars. I don’t intend on holding my iPhone with such rage in the future, so it won’t be a problem for me. Thinking about it logically and fairly, it’s not going to be a problem for many people, but hopefully a firmware update will come around soon enough to maximise signal. Either that or a devastatingly large-scale recall is inevitable. I think we know which one Apple will be looking towards…

Get yourself comfy, here’s a little more about me…

I’m 19 years of age and have been working (yes, real work) in the web design & development industry for over 4 years now. I’m completely hooked on all things web-based and am one of those people who truly despises Facebook. I took a Computing course from 2007-2009 to further my programming skills and expand my knowledge in the general IT field. I’m currently at Portsmouth University studying Computer Science; I’m starting the 2^nd year in October of this year (2010) after achieving a First in my 1^st year. I’ve got a perfect girlfriend (see post image) who has supported everything I’ve done in the past two and a half years, she’s the reason I started freelance work; I couldn’t thank her more.

That’s it from me for now; though you’ll see a lot more blog posts very soon. I have stories lined up already and have some dramatic ones to kick start the show. Thanks for taking the time to read – I genuinely look forward to meeting or hearing from you. Bye for now!