Apple has posted an open letter addressing the widely reported issues surrounding iPhone 4 antenna reception — how it drops or loses signal when held in such a way that the lower left side is covered.

Short version is, Apple’s claiming they are, and historically have been, miscalculating how they display signal strength as bars on iPhone. They repeat that all phones will drop some signal when held in certain place, Nokia, Android, BlackBerry, and iPhone alike, but because of the way Apple was displaying signal strength, the drop appeared far more dramatic on iPhone 4.

For example, if the signal drops two bars when you hold it, and you only really have two bars, you’d see no signal and understand the drop. If you have two bars but Apple is showing you 5 bars, and weighting the calculation far too heavily towards high bars, you could drop 2 bars and really have 0, but iPhone is still showing you 3, 4, or even 5 bars. There in lies epic frustration.

A software update, to be issues within a few weeks, will change the calculation to AT&T’s recommended method, and Apple will make the lower signal bars easier to see at the same time. So, in other words, your signal will still drop but it won’t look to be as good before it does so.

Apple also reiterates that both they and their customers continue to report that iPhone 4 has better than any previous model, and remind everyone that anyone unsatisfied can return an undamaged iPhone 4 for a refund within 30 days.

While this does seem to address the miss-reporting of signal strength Anandtech found in their tests, and acknowledging that iPhone 4 does get better reception and does drop fewer calls — when it works — it doesn’t seem to address the higher levels of attenuation seen in raw signals, or some reports that the baseband software wasn’t properly adjusting when that attenuation occurred.

A few weeks seems like a long time to push out an iOS 4.0.1 update just to fix signal bar strength reporting, so either Apple is just waiting until their usual late July window for their first update or are working on other bug fixes — related to the antenna or other issues like the proximity sensor — we’ll have to wait and see.

Full letter after the break.

Dear iPhone 4 Users,

The iPhone 4 has been the most successful product launch in Apple’s history. It has been judged by reviewers around the world to be the best smartphone ever, and users have told us that they love it. So we were surprised when we read reports of reception problems, and we immediately began investigating them. Here is what we have learned.

To start with, gripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by 1 or more bars. This is true of iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, as well as many Droid, Nokia and RIM phones. But some users have reported that iPhone 4 can drop 4 or 5 bars when tightly held in a way which covers the black strip in the lower left corner of the metal band. This is a far bigger drop than normal, and as a result some have accused the iPhone 4 of having a faulty antenna design.

At the same time, we continue to read articles and receive hundreds of emails from users saying that iPhone 4 reception is better than the iPhone 3GS. They are delighted. This matches our own experience and testing. What can explain all of this?

We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising.

Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.

To fix this, we are adopting AT&T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone’s bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.

We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.

We have gone back to our labs and retested everything, and the results are the same— the iPhone 4’s wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped. For the vast majority of users who have not been troubled by this issue, this software update will only make your bars more accurate. For those who have had concerns, we apologize for any anxiety we may have caused.

As a reminder, if you are not fully satisfied, you can return your undamaged iPhone to any Apple Retail Store or the online Apple Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund.

We hope you love the iPhone 4 as much as we do.

Thank you for your patience and support.

Apple

In the ongoing feud between Apple and Adobe, Adobe’s founders have posted an open letter, “thoughts on openess” and Adobe has begun rolling out a new ad campaign on Engadget — and presumably other geek-rich online sites — declaring their love for Apple, and then telling users how saintly Adobe, users like us, and little puppies are being hurt by Apple’s evil ways.

It’s smart, at least much smarter than Adobe’s initial responses to — and complaints to the federal government about — Steve Jobs’ “thoughts on Flash”, although it still pretends that Adobe isn’t as self-interested, controlling, and out for money and market share as Apple — which they absolutely are.

If the web fragments into closed systems, if companies put content and applications behind walls, some indeed may thrive — but their success will come at the expense of the very creativity and innovation that has made the Internet a revolutionary force.

[...]

We believe that Apple, by taking the opposite approach, has taken a step that could undermine this next chapter of the web — the chapter in which mobile devices outnumber computers, any individual can be a publisher, and content is accessed anywhere and at any time.

Interestingly, Adobe’s open letter contains three registered trademark symbols (®), including one on Flash. Steve Jobs’ contained none.

Flash is Adobe’s. Tell us how popular it is. Make a phenomenal mobile version that does things so well it makes HTML5 cry in its standards-based containers. Win the case that Flash is better and too important to ignore. But continuing to pretend Adobe and Flash are open and end-user interests are what Adobe is fighting for is insulting.

Smart users know better. They’ve used Adobe products. Words aren’t going to make a dent now; it’s time for deliverables.

[Adobe via Engadget]

Choosing a live interview as his platform of choice, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen fired back at Apple and Steve Jobs’ open letter “thoughts on Flash”.

Roughly addressing each of Jobs’ points:

1. Narayan chuckled at the thought of Flash being considered closed. “Flash is an open specification.” They’re using different meanings for “open” here. Clearly Adobe owns Flash but they’re fairly open about its use. It’s a dependent standard.

2. It does not appear as though he addressed the full web question this time, but has said in the past 75% of video runs on Flash. He also didn’t address the growing number of sites bypassing Flash and going directly to H.264.

3. Security and performance were addressed by blaming Apple for Mac OS X. Since security for Flash (and Acrobat) are an even larger concern for Windows users, we’re not sure how seriously we can take him on that. We’ve also had enough Flash-related crashes on our Windows machine to not buy that argument either. Certainly, until the most recent version of OS X, Apple didn’t provide the low-level hardware access Adobe needed for better performance.

4. Narayan called Jobs assertion about battery life drain for Flash “patently false”. Jobs was fairly specific in separating out software decoding as being the drain. Narayan said every accusation Jobs made could be explained by an Apple proprietary lock. However, we’re not certain when Apple locked Sorensen decoding out of every chipset on the planet…

5. Flash websites being designed for point-and-click mouse interaction versus multitouch gestures was not addressed.

6. In response to Jobs’ “most important reason”, Apple’s desire not to have an intermediary exist between developers and iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad devices in the form of CS5 Flash packager-like cross-compilers, Narayan pointed to 100 apps already created in Flash and already approved for the App Store. However, he didn’t address Jobs’ point, which was that while easier for developers, it created a barrier towards platform feature implementation.

Countering a carefully prepared, piece-by-piece massacre of your product by someone like Steve Jobs and Apple marketing during a live interview is gutsy but probably not the wisest course of action.

Narayan also didn’t try to counter Jobs fatal thrust — that there’s still no functional, full implementation of Flash on mobile despite talk of it going back to 2007. He didn’t have to — no one should think for a moment that, even if Adobe could deliver functional, full Flash for mobile at some point in the not-so-distant future, that Apple would allow it.

Again, Apple views Flash just like IE6 and ActiveX — something that was once needed but is being surpassed by better, standards-based alternatives. That Microsoft held ActiveX and Adobe is trying to share Flash is irrelevant. To Apple, it’s just another anachronism, and we know Apple’s record on those.

Either way, both Apple and Adobe have now gone all in. Either Adobe ships an incredible version of Flash that blows mobile socks off world-round and gets users flocking to Android, webOS, and other alternatives by the millions, or Apple gets all the sites that matter to serve them direct H.264 and port their games over to the App Store.

The ground war has begun.

[WSJ blogs]

Steve Jobs has posted his “Thoughts on Flash” up on Apple.com, and like his previous thoughts on (DRM) music, it’s a fascinating insight into the mind and tactics of Apple’s CEO. As background, this follows up iPhone, iPod touch, and now iPad shipping without Flash support, Apple’s recent change in license to prevent the use of cross-compilers like Adobe Flash CS5′s Packager for iPhone (which let developers make Flash apps and output iPhone apps), and Apple’s recent addition of Mac APIs to allow hardware accelerated Flash on the desktop.

Jobs begins by stating how close Apple and Adobe were and how they’ve drifted apart. He then breaks down his case against Flash on mobile into 6 key areas:

1. Flash is not open, it’s wholly owned and controlled by Adobe. While Apple also has proprietary products, they believe the web should be open, and Jobs singles out Apple’s support of WebKit (the rendering engine behind Safari, Chrome, etc.) as an example of this in action.

2. Flash is not needed for the “full web” because H.264 is becoming the standard and as sites update to support H.264 they automatically provide video supported by the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. He lists Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic as examples. Jobs also says Flash games aren’t needed because the App Store has 50,000 games, more than any other platform in the world, and many of them free.

3. Security and performance. Flash is increasingly an attack vector for malware, and Apple still claims it’s the number one cause of crashes on the Mac.

In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

1. Battery life, Jobs claims, would take a significant hit with Flash support. Since H.264 content already runs on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad natively and with full hardware decoding, that only leaves the older codecs for Flash, and these would require the much more “expensive” software decoding.

2. The move to multitouch is not supported by a mouse pointer-centric Flash sites that use rollovers and other desktop behaviors and since these will need to be re-written anyway, Jobs believes they might as well be re-written in open HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript formats.

3. Most importantly, Jobs says Apple doesn’t want 3rd party cross-compilers sitting between developers and the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.

(Insert your Final Cut Pro jokes here).

Jobs ends with his characteristic “boom”:

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

After his “thoughts on music”, we slowly saw DRM get dropped and iTunes music go “free”. Will Jobs’ “thoughts on Flash” cause a similar evolution of the open web?

[Apple]

Longtime reader and tipster The Reptile wrote in to tell us about Fortune‘s coverage of the iPhone Amber Alert app and its problem getting into the App Store:

Now Jonathan Zdziarski, one of the original iPhone hackers and the author of several O’Reilly books, has hit on something that might work. It’s an open letter to Steve Jobs pleading with Apple’s CEO to speed up approval of the Amber Alert iPhone app that’s been sitting in the queue since February 14. The application uses GPS location information to funnel sightings of missing children to the nearest law enforcement agency as quickly as possible.

Has Apple dropped the ball? There doesn’t seem to be a duplicates functionality, or official Amber Alert app that could explain the problems this time (see PodCaster and StarPlayr), does there? Is Apple that understaffed and ill-prepared in the face of 25,000 apps, or are the $99 novelty apps and iPod touch-highlighted games making so much money, no one really cares about the rest?

Full text of the letter after the break…

To: Steve Jobs’ Executive Team
From: Jonathan Zdziarski
Subject: AMBER Alert Application

Steve,

The need to send this email represents everything that is wrong with your App Store review process. I’ve been working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to build an App Store application that revolutionizes how missing children are reported to law enforcement. By using the iPhone’s GPS and some geo-analytics, we’re able to build automated search radii and quickly relay sightings to law enforcement agencies. With an audience of millions of iPhone users, the missing kids that are out there stand to gain a LOT more exposure.

Yet nearly a month has passed since my February 14th submission, and the application continues to sit “In Review”. NCMEC has adapted their infrastructure to handle these submissions and has a call center trained to respond to them, as well as their CIO, regional directors, and many others ready to devote time to making this application successful – yet this entire team continues to wait on Apple to approve this application.

I won’t get into the politics of the App Store review process, or my beliefs about how this has hurt your relationship with independent developers. Instead, I’m simply asking that you pick up the phone and help push this application through. If you had to sit and look at these kids, as I have in the time I did developing and testing this application, you’d realize just how urgent it is to have an application like this be able to get information out (and sightings back in). As a developer and a human being, I’m anxious to see this application released. If I were the parent of one of these missing children, I would be unable to withstand the unreasonable delays Apple has taken in approving this application. The reprobate and fearful world these children are surviving in may very well be prolonged because of Apple’s lack of interest in independent developers like me.

Please feel free to contact me if you’d like to discuss this. Otherwise, I hope you’ll do the right thing and light a fire under someone’s seat in the App Store. If there is any application that should be getting reviewed today, this is it.

Jonathan Zdziarski

While the recent coverage of Steve Jobs and his health has ranged from the respectful to downright tabloid blogism, Apple and their CEO have remained their usual utterly-silent selves. Until now. In one of his rare open letters — and the first ever on personal matters — Steve Jobs says:

I’ve decided to share something very personal with the Apple community so that we can all relax and enjoy the show tomorrow.

The letter does not directly say he dropped out of Macworld for health reasons, and therefore technically should not vindicate some of the more disturbing speculation we’ve seen lately. Jobs concludes by reaffirming his goal of always putting Apple first, and hopes the Apple community supports him in his recovery. Apple’s Board of Directors put out a simultaneous release re-stating their support as well.

For TiPb’s part, we hope everyone joins us in wishing Steve Jobs a quick and complete recovery, and a healthy and happy 2009.

Not content to simply produce great (and great looking) software, Craig Hockenberry continues to knock it out of the park on his furbo.org blog as well, this time with an open letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs on App Store Pricing:

As an iPhone developer who’s been in the App Store since its launch, I’m starting to see a trend that concerns me: developers are lowering prices to the lowest possible level in order to get favorable placement in iTunes. This proliferation of 99¢ “ringtone apps” is affecting our product development.

This is something we’ve been following on TiPb, and something that both interests and concerns us greatly. The App Store is quite literally a killer app on the iPhone, but competition of revving up from all sides, including Android Market and the BlackBerry series of offerings.

Check out Hockenberry’s complete article, and let us know what you think Apple could do to properly incentivize developers to make the next Excel, the next Quark, the next killer app?

Or should they? Do you prefer your $0.99 apps, and don’t really care if we ever see anything more?