Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been spotted outside of flour + water, a little Italian restaurant in San Francisco.

Kim, the young man in the photo, is a huge Apple fan from Sweden and just happened to get in line at flour + water behind Steve Jobs. Steve politely declined Kim’s request to take a photo with him, but when the last available seat was taken by the customer in front of Steve, Kim’s friend captured this photo as Mr. Jobs was leaving. Kim was quite excited, to say the least.

[TechCrunch, flower + water]

Steve Jobs != flower + water is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak recently held an interview at the Campus Party in Valencia, Spain. He talked about the iPhone 4’s antenna problems, Apples relationship with Google, his roll at Apple, and his relationship with Steve Jobs.

Here’s some of what he had to say.

On iPhone 4 antenna

• “I have not really had a problem with the antenna… I think it’s a very tiny, tiny problem that is blown out of proportion because there are a lot of people who want to accuse Apple of a mistake only because Apple has been so good with its products, creating the products that we all love.”

• “Even though I can cause the problem on my iPhone 4, I don’t have the problem in real usage.”

• “A problem that is imagined to exist is that much greater the more you love the product that you’re afraid won’t work”

On Google

• “In recent times, I’ve been a little saddened to encounter the controversy between Apple and Google.”

• “I love Google, but I’m afraid it has a chance of becoming the Microsoft of the future. You remember how Microsoft used all of their ownership of the operating system to take over the browser.”

On his role at Apple

• “Although I receive a small salary from Apple, I do virtually no real work at the company.”

• “I like to be more on the outside of Apple, because I prefer to judge products objectively.”

On Steve Jobs

• “I chat with Steve Jobs now and then, from time to time, and we have never had an argument. We have always been friends. We are not close friends like we once were, spending every day together.”

What do you think? Is the iPhone 4 antenna problem blown out of proportion? Are you afraid of Google becoming the next Microsoft?

My follow up question to Mr. Woz is what exactly he considers a small salary!

Check out video of the interview after the break.

[TechCrunch]

Woz talks iPhone 4 antenna, Google, and Steve Jobs is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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One of the greatest tricks Apple pulled off at the iPhone 4 press conference was changing the dialog from death-touch — a single point of antenna trouble on iPhone 4 — to death-grip — a device-wide point of antenna trouble faced by the entire industry.

Apple for their part did cop to making iPhone 4’s point of attenuation very external and incredibly visible. Steve Jobs called it “x-marks the spot”, but then Apple very quickly moved on from this death-touch to a wider death-grip and demonstrated it on handsets from RIM’s BlackBerry to HTC’s Droid to Samsung’s Windows Mobile.

I initially thought this was a mistake on Apple’s part — that they were spending too much time deflecting onto the competition. Turns out I underestimated Apple, but not as badly as the competition. What Apple very neatly managed to do there was conflate their own widely reported iPhone 4 death-touch into the very real but widely under-reported death-grip phenomena that does indeed affect the entire industry.

What’s more, by those very competitors responding that the death-grip either didn’t affect their devices, was minimal at best, or wouldn’t affect future devices, they cinched it for Apple. They became part of the problem. Why?

Because their devices absolutely suffer from the death grip. Instead of pointing out that yes, Apple was correct, the death-grip was an industry-wide problem but the death-touch was thus far unique to Apple, RIM BlackBerry, Samsung, and Nokia denied the death-grip, thus ensuring everyone with the issue — or just an itch for attenuation attention — would fire up YouTube and make a video clearly discrediting their statements.

HTC for their part just said they didn’t have many reports of the problem. However, as David Chartier points out, HTC effectively white-labels their phones to Verizon and they didn’t make it clear whether the number of complaints they reported included Verizon numbers. This is similar to Apple citing AT&T return numbers for iPhone 4, not gross Apple return numbers. It’s what brought about the saying “lies, damn lies, and statistics”.

My original take on Apple’s press conference was that Steve Jobs should have just stressed that making the iPhone 4 antenna the way they did was a trade-off, better battery life and stronger signal in many cases in exchange for that single point of problem — the lower left hand corner death-touch. Andy Ihnatko made the same point, if more eloquently. Arguably a modern smartphone has any number of tradeoffs — AMOLED screens offer better color and blacks that utterly fail in direct sunlight. (Free sun-screens anyone?)

I still think Apple should have been crystal clear about that trade-off, but it’s looking increasingly like they didn’t have to. In their rush to get comments out in front of the media RIM, Samsung, Nokia, et al have let the conversation get changed from death-touch to death-grip, and they’ve let videos on their own handsets propagate across the web. One look at BlackBerry on Boy Genius, Nokia on Electronista, Samsung on InformationWeek, HTC on Engadget, many others via Daring Fireball, and even manufactures’ own warnings against touching their antennas in their own manuals via 1FPS shows how they’ve become part of a story that last week was all about Apple.

Sure a few sites like Ars Technica and When Will Apple? will raise a fuss over it, but it’s done. Competitors dove headlong into it. And since Apple has now effectively priced the death-touch problem as one free case per phone, all that remains to be seen is if competitor’s denials + customers videos = free cases for other phones too.

So I underestimated Apple but they didn’t underestimate their competition.

Note: this editorial is based on a Twitter conversation with Seth Weintraub from 9to5Mac who is absolutely right, one day college courses will be taught on these PR tactics. Check out his article on Fortune.

Update 1: Dilbert’s Scott Adams comes to the same conclusion, which he calls the “high ground maneuver”, and wonders if Jobs has had hypnotist training.

Update 2: I said above that while many smartphones have the death-grip, only the iPhone has the death-touch. Daring Fireball links to a YouTube video showing the Samsung Galaxy S having, if not the death-touch, then at least the death-finger. Again, from now on no smartphone is safe.

How Apple moved the conversation from iPhone 4 death-touch to industry-wide death-grip is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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One of the big complaints of the iPhone 4 and HD video recording is that HD videos do not upload to YouTube in HD. However, it looks like we’ll be getting this feature soon.

Here’s the email that Chris T. sent to Steve Jobs:

I’m a HUGE fan of your products… MBP, Ipad 64gb WIFI, 2 iphone 3g’s and now 2 iphone 4’s… but I have a complaint… What’s the point of building in HD video capabilities when the compression upon uploading directly to youtube makes the video’s useless and not viewable? They’re not even remotely viewable!! I was so excited about this feature on the Iphone 4, but sadly to say, this is a serious disappointment. In today’s world, HD video is pointless if I can’t upload it “as is” directly to the net.

You can upload them via a Mac or PC today. Over the air in the future.

Sent from my iPhone

What do you think? Are you looking forward to the future which brings this feature?

[MacDailyNews]

Steve Jobs: iPhone 4 over the air HD video upload coming “in the future” is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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rfbandit/Mark wrote:

I love everything about the phone except my signal issues

Steve Jobs supposedly replied:

There is no reception issue. Stay Tuned.

Now as with any and all alleged Steve Jobs customer support email, we have no way of knowing whether any individual one is real or not. But if it is… Jedi mind-trick? Cruel pun? Or a sign that Apple knows what the problem is and has a — perhaps iOS 4.0.1 powered — fix in the works?

If so, it could signal a change from Apple’s last communication on the matter:

Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.

Let’s hold to hope.

[MacRumors, Gizmodo]

Steve Jobs: There is no iPhone 4 reception issue is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Soon after the launch of iPhone 4, the web is flooded with reports and discussions about iPhone 4’s antenna issue. You may already heard about the problem. Known as the “Death Grip”, when you hold iPhone 4 in a way that covers the steel bands, it loses the reception. In worst case, the signal weakens to the point that calls are dropped. Engadget has put up a great video to demonstrate the issue.

The problem is attributed to the brilliant antenna design of iPhone 4. C.K. Sample has emailed Steve Jobs about the antenna issue. Here is what Steve Jobs replied:

Gripping any phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.

It’s an interesting reply. The solution is to hold the iPhone 4 in a different way or buy an iPhone case. Does this make sense?

To me, the reception issue is a design issue or a limitation of the “brilliant” antenna design. However, as reported by AppleInsider, the “Death Grip” issue appears to be a software issue on the iOS 4 update. It’s also rumored that Apple will release a “bug fix” update next week (as early as Monday) to resolve the reception issue:

Readers report that Apple’s tech support forums originally confirmed that a iOS 4.0.1 software fix addressing the issue would ship early next week (as early as Monday), before the comments were subsequently taken down along with all the other related discussion about the matter.

The fix is expected to address a issue in iOS 4 related to radio frequency calibration of the baseband. Readers who saw the original forum discussions say that the issue is believed to occur when switching frequencies; because the lag is allegedly not calibrated correctly, it results in the device reporting “no service” rather than switching to the frequency with the best signal to noise ratio.

iOS 4 introduced some enhancements to how the baseband selects which frequencies to use, so it makes sense that the error may have crept into those changes. Additionally, this explains why iOS 4 has also caused similar problems for iPhone 3GS users.

At this point, Apple does not officially confirm the software fix. As a potential buyer of iPhone 4 (it’ll go on sale in my city next month), I really hope the reception issue can be fixed via software, considered that I used to hold the phone using my left hand.

Anyhow, let’s wait for a couple of days and see if there is any update of iOS 4. Stay tuned. I will keep you posted about the news.

Tip: If you want to learn more about the antenna issue of iPhone 4, check out this article written by an antenna expert from Antennasys Inc.

How do you place a call on hold when you’re both on iPhone 4 and Wi-Fi, and the FaceTime button has replaced the Hold button, but you’re not using FaceTime?

Jonathan Cowperthwait emailed Apple’s CEO to find out:

During many voice calls on my new iPhone 4, the “hold” icon has been replaced with a FaceTime icon, even when I’m not talking to a fellow iPhone 4 user. During such calls, how do I put someone on hold? Yes, there’s still a mute button, but these functions are discrete (which is why iOS ≤ 3 had both buttons…).

Steve Jobs’ answer:

Hold doesn’t do anything more than Mute.

Apple tech support also told him he could disable FaceTime in settings so the button wouldn’t show up, but that seems inconvenient if you do want to use FaceTime as well.

Acceptable answer? Do you miss the Hold button, or are you too busy FaceTime’ing people to have noticed its absence?

[Cowperthwait via TechCrunch]

Steve Jobs: During FaceTime, mute is the new hold is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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When it was subtly footnoted that iPhone 3G and iPod touch G2 wouldn’t be getting iOS 4-style wallpaper, our only guess as to why was CoreAnimation performance — Apple couldn’t do their transitions over the textured background at levels that met their auteur standards.

Erica emailed Steve Jobs to find out:

Hey Steve! I just upgraded my iPhone 3G to iOS 4 and was really looking forward to setting a background on my home screen. Guess that’s not happening, but I’d like to know why.

And Steve Jobs replied:

The icon animation with backgrounds didn’t perform well enough.

Jailbreak users have been theming since before there was an iPhone 3G, of course, just like they were recording video and multitasking, but Apple won’t put their brand on anything they consider sub-par in the performance area.

So there you have it.

[Gizmodo]

Steve Jobs: Why iPhone 3G didn’t get iOS 4 wallpaper is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher’s D8 conference interview with Steve Jobs has been posted in its entirety on iTunes for your higher quality, uninterrupted viewing and/or listening pleasure. It’s quite a good interview and we get to see Jobs excited, pensive, and — to quote him — pi$$ed off.

A few of the points I found most interesting, after the break.

[iTunes]

• He defended his use of the term magical for the iPad but said he hadn’t quite figured out why yet. The disintermediation of the keyboard and mouse, allowing direct interaction by the user on the screen was one reason, the 10 hour battery life breaking the bonds of power cords, and the small form factor allowing for new ways of movie and holding it were two more. Getting rid of what comes between users and apps/content is indeed powerful; magical is probably still in the eye of the beholder.

• His analogy concerning personal computers being trucks and iPad being a car seems to reflect the mainstreaming of computers-as-appliance (or becoming very personal computers), complete with automatic transmission, power steering, etc. It takes a lot of the hard work out of using the computer and the internet and opens it up to a much wider audience for whom traditional PCs (trucks) are difficult to use and hard to comprehend to the point of being hostile and/or scary (including Macs). Geeks forget the tyranny of viruses, complex installs/uninstalls, and confusing windowing systems under which their less tech-savy family members live (and for which they endlessly call for support).

• Jobs thinks current mobile ads “suck” and Apple is doing them because no else has done them well enough yet. Apple’s goal is to help developers of free and cheap apps make some extra money through advertising. (It’s worth pointing out it also binds them and their revenue more tightly to Apple’s iOS platform at the same time). Jobs repeated his charge that mobile users aren’t going to search (Google’s traditional strength) but to apps, and the experience their getting for in-app advertising is jarring. Given that Apple is focusing on content-driven, interactive ads and seems to have signed premium brands to platforms means they’re taking it seriously. Whether it works or not we’ll have to see, but iPhone usage patterns — interstitial as they are — make for a prime target. (No more tweets to read… but hey, look, Wall-E 2 is coming out and I can Eva cannon some human-blobs…!)

• Curation of the App Store, when it goes wrong, can’t be defended by saying 95% of apps get approved in 7 days, and the 3 top reasons for rejection are apps that don’t do what they say they do (though we’ll come back to that in a moment), apps that crash on launch, and apps that use private API (that could break in the next OS update). The price of exerting editorial control is editorial responsibility. Jobs chose to point out app reviewers (and Apple) were just people, and they make mistakes, and can’t foresee everything in advance — like a rule against defamation conflicting with apps making fair parody of public figures. It’s not that Apple is making mistakes (they are), its not that Apple is learning and improving (they are), it’s that they continue to do so in a black box using editorial ambiguity to shield them from the responsibility mandated by their control.

• Calling some developers whose apps were rejected “liars” rankled the feathers of some other developers since they couldn’t tell to whom Jobs was referring. The complete interview makes that clearer. He was referring to people who deliberately tried to game the system and get apps approved that did things they weren’t supposed to, and game the press into writing about them — and taking Apple to task — when they were rejected. My guess is he was referring to those who tried to swipe personal information from users, who presented an app with web-based image content they switched to porn after approval, or who used private API. (Steven Frank pointed out Opera could be on that list as well, if indeed they complained publicly about their App Store approval process before even submitting their app).

• When asked about content creation on the iPad, Jobs mentions movie editing — and this was before iMovie for iPhone (but not yet iPad) was revealed. Being able to finger paint with productivity is going to be both a huge challenge for Apple and a huge potential immersive win for users.

• When asked about tethering to sync iTunes media to iPhone and iPad, Jobs reframed the question saying what users want to do is not sync but share their content — bought or otherwise come across — from their library to all their devices. He said Apple is working on this. Maybe, like copy and paste and multitasking it’s taking a while but will work well. Rumors persist they’ll use their Lala acquisitions to move iTunes to the cloud (if the media companies allow it). However, local wireless transfer would also be appreciated.

• Likewise, when Sugar Sync asked about access to the file system to better “round-trip” the wireless syncing process for users (move their docs from the cloud to the device and back), Jobs said they should talk. So coy.

• Privacy was big for Jobs, and something that might be a competitive advantage against companies like Google, Facebook, and Adobe (now owners of Omniture) whose revenue depends on aggregating and selling against user data. He was adamant that users be asked before their personal data gets used — again and again until they deliberately decide they don’t want to be asked any more. As fired up as Jobs got about app rejections — and the Gizmodo iPhone 4 incident — when asked about the new rules in the iOS 4 license that limit “advertising” he almost got out of his chair. The idea that Flurry could get developers to embed code in apps that reported device, location, and other user information back to their analytics to the extent they could tell Apple was testing iPad and iPhone 4 months before release shocked Apple and provoked an immediate response. Likely the thought Google could do the same, and use that information for competitive advantage with Android, is why the new rules are phrased exactly how they are.

• When speaking about gaming, Jobs mentioned that iPhone and particularly iPod touch, had created a subset of casual, inexpensive gaming. He particularly stressed iPod touch sales during the holidays. Apple is pretty much alone in offering a high-profile, fully compatible, non-smartphone version of their smartphone platform. That they’ve been pretty much alone in this going on 4 years is remarkable. Every other player has totally conceded the early teen market to Apple and let those users grow up immersed in iOS, ready to graduate to iPhone and/or iPad. Staggering. (Then again, what would a non-smartphone, fully compatible BlackBerry device be, and how would it play in the gaming space?)

• We’ve gone over what Jobs said about the difficulties surrounding Apple TV’s go-to-market strategy and why it’s still a hobby, but its irksome so it bears repeating. Jobs thinks it’s hard to sell users another box to add to their TVs. Cable and satellite companies will need to be taken out of the equation the way big box stores were for music and carrier control was for phones. Regionalism and lack of standards doesn’t help. Mac Minis with HDMI-out don’t help either when Front Row pales in comparison to Apple TV UI and Apple TV UI pales in functionality compared to the various XBMC forks and even iOS. Rumors of a cheap Apple TV running iOS are interesting. iOS replacing Dashboard and Front Row across the line is transformative. (Assuming an elegant control scheme, which isn’t an easy assumption to make).

There’s a lot more to the interview, of course, so give it a listen and let me know what you think.

Complete Steve Jobs D8 interview now on iTunes is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Apple invited a developer from TenCent, China’s most popular instant messaging client, to WWDC 2010. During his stay in San Francisco, the developer got mugged for his iPad. He escaped with a few injuries and his completely smashed iPad. Afterwards, he went to an Apple Store and told his story. The Apple Genius was totally awesome and hooked up the developer with a brand new iPad. News of the incident eventually reached Steve Jobs and he sent the developer a very quick Steve-like email:

Safe travels home.

Steve

This story leaves me speechless. It’s wonderful that Apple replaced that developer’s iPad. It’s also great the Steve sent him an email, but should he have at least said more than 3 words?

More images after the break.

[9To5Mac]

WWDC attendent gets mugged. Apple gives him new iPad. Steve wishes him safe travels home. is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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