Those in the know of how cellular antennas work have been expressing misgivings about the design of the iPhone 4’s antenna for a while now.

As a simplistic summary of the problem, with the iPhone 4, Apple chose to essentially make the stainless steel band wrapping around the phone act as the phone’s antenna by separating it into three distinct chunks delineated by the gaps in the handset’s frame. Superficially, that should give the iPhone 4 more reception bars, but as MAKE’s Dave Matthews said two weeks ago: “Having been in the cellular business most of my career, I think it’s really odd that you’d want an antenna grounded by a moist hand.”

It looks like this fear may have been grounded in reality. Numerous users are reporting — with video proof — that the iPhone 4 loses up to four bars of reception when it’s actually picked up. If you don’t touch the bottom of the phone, you’re fine, but as soon as you connect the left side with the bottom of the phone… reception goes in the toilet.

TomTom is a popular turn-by-turn navigational app for the iPhone that has recently been updated to support multitasking and iOS 4. The new app released on Tuesday is version 1.4 and TomTom has advised all users to upgrade to this version immediately if they are running iOS 4.

If you’re going to jailbreak your iPhone or iPad, the first thing you MUST do is backup your device’s SHSH blobs.

With the release of iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch G3, Apple added an extra layer of security to prevent hacking, jailbreaking and unlocking. Apple is constantly closing the exploits used by jailbreak hackers by updating the firmware of its iPhone/iPt and iPad. If you accidentally upgrade your jailbroken device to Apple’s latest firmware, you can’t re-jailbreak it until hackers release new jailbreak software.

You can, however, downgrade your device to the previous firmware version which can be jailbroken — if you have your SHSH blobs on file.

You can extract these SHSH records and save them with the help of a utility called Umbrella. Here’s how:

These records are firmware specific and each time you update, you should repeat this process to save the records for the particular firmware version.

Russian President Dimitry Medvedev toured Silicon valley today.

Medvedev, who works on a MacBook and recently started using an iPad, posted a pic from his newly-inaugurated Twitter account of his meeting with Steve Jobs at Apple’s Cupertino campus.

It’s great to see a photo commemorating the visit, though their expressions are a little awkward.

Hmmm. This calls for a caption contest.

Best caption wins something Apple-related and cool.

Leave them in the comments, we’ll pick the one we like best on based on staff guffaws.

Waiting in line outside an Apple store is no longer just for fans: it’s business.  Two enterprising guys have put up tent space and chair space on website airbnb for spots in line for the iPhone 4 launch

A spot in the San Francisco tent — for the full-on can’t-wait-for-it fanboy experience — will run you $400 a night, more than the price of the new iPhone 4.

And you have to share the tent, too:

“Rent the tent I pitched outside of the Apple store in San Francisco and be the first person to get an iPhone. I have a 2 person tent and figured that if I couldn’t get my friends to join me, I would rent out the extra spot. I’m hoping to earn enough to cover the cost of my phone!”

Another airbnb listing offered a chair outside an Apple store for $200. It’s no longer being offered.

Perhaps the chair has already been occupied?

Via airbnb

Apple:

White models of Apple’s new iPhone 4 have proven more challenging to manufacture than expected, and as a result they will not be available until the second half of July. The availability of the more popular iPhone 4 black models is not affected.

We have two deals on iPod shuffles from MidnightBox.com: grab a 2GB iPod shuffle for $35 or a 4GB model for $45. Also, we have the latest crop of App Store freebies, including “ShapeMind,” a geometry puzzle game.

Along the way, we’ll also check out a number of other Mac-related items, including MP3 albums, silicon laptop keyboard covers for your MacBook Pro and software for your iPhone or iPod touch.

As always, details on these any many more products are available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

About one-in-five (or 20 percent) of third-party Android apps available through its marketplace can steal and share private user data, researchers said Tuesday. Akin to spyware, the apps can place calls and send text messages without the owners’ knowledge.

As a result of the growth of smartphones and associated stores, “applications are currently available that have the potential to cause serious harm to devices, customers and to the broader cellular network,” Daniel V. Hoffman, technology chief for SMobile Systems, an Android security vendor.

A study by warranty provider SquareTrade found that 26% of all iPhones fail — break or suffer hardware malfunctions —  in the first two years of use.

Of course, SquareTrade sells warranties to cover all your iPhone health issues so the info requires a grain of salt. But their study of 25,000 customer claims did find that iPhone reliability is on the upswing. You can read the full report here [PDF].

Last year’s report covering the iPhone and iPhone 3G put the failure rate at 33%. For the iPhone 3Gs, they found most snafus came from power, followed by touchscreen, battery and button issues.

On the heels of Apple’s recent announcement it has sold three million iPads in the first 80 days, comes a survey of developer interest showing the tablet device is the second most popular device, behind the iPhone. The survey, by the maker of a development tool, found 84 percent of developers asked named the iPad as holding their interest, a 26 point jump from April.

Developers expressed declining interest in other smartphone platforms, prompting Appcelerator to comment: “Apple and Google are now playing chess while everyone else plays catch-up.” Between March and June, RIM’s BlackBerry lost 9 percent of developer interest, with Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 (announced in February) had 7 percent fewer developers interest.

Conde Nast hasn’t given up entirely on food magazine Gourmet, it just plans on serving the leftovers in an iPhone and iPad app.

Gourmet, known for its literate articles and collectible recipes, hung up its apron in fall 2009. Conde plans to launch Gourmet Live, a free mobile version of the 70-year-old magazine title by the end of the year.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67PZjbDnBCI&feature=player_embedded
The app will offer a sampling of articles, recipes, video demonstrations and slide shows plus social media bells and whistles that will allow those grazing on the content to see which of their Facebook friends and Twitter connections have seen it and what they have to say.

Heavy users will be prompted to pay for a subscription, though the payment options haven’t been put on the menu, yet. It’ll be made in iPad-friendly HTML5, so perfect for propping up in the kitchen to execute that peppercorn roasted pork with vermouth pan sauce recipe.

Via WSJ

Like the Apple gear they love to dissect, iFixIt’s teardowns seem to just get better and better. Benefitting from the kindness of a customer whose iPhone 4 was delivered early yesterday by FedEx, the premier DIY evangelists took apart and photographed in beautiful detail a brand new iPhone 4, describing the many amazements Cupertino designers and engineers have rolled out with Apple’s newest portable communication device.

Among the discoveries this time out are:

• the ease with which the battery is accessed and removed.
• iFixIt’s CXO Luke called Apple’s integration of the UMTS, GSM, GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth antennas into the stainless steel inner frame something that can “only be described as a work of genius.”
• The 1.3mp front-facing and 5mp rear-facing cameras have independent boards, making it possible to remove the cameras without damaging the phone.
• 512MB RAM confirmed.
• 1 GHz ARM Cortex A8 core processor.
• Chips from Broadcom, Cirrus Logic, Numonyx, Samsung, ST Micro, Skyworks, Texas Instruments, and TriQuint.

A look at the photographs — and there are many more at much higher resolution available at the iFixIt teardown pages — really gives one a sense of the delicate beauty beneath the already gorgeous surface enclosure of the iPhone.

Kudos to Apple and its manufacturing partners for delivering such a well-made device, and to iFixIt for tearing the thing apart with such meticulous care and attention.

Although Apple had said it runs its App Store and iTunes at near break-even, we now know the App Store, while wildly popular with users, contributes just 1 percent of the Cupertino, Calif. company’s gross profits. That, and many other interesting insights into the App Store’s balance sheet come from Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.

In a research note to investors Wednesday, Munster wrote the App Store brought in $429 million since it was launched in July 2008. Apple has earned $33.7 billion in gross profit over the same period, meaning the App Store equates to just one percent of profits.

What it is: i2KQuickage is curiously named but unbelievably powerful photo panorama software from the genius minds at DualAlign, software developers whose primary markets have long been medical communities and defense sorts. There’s no reason to keep this software’s incredible charms from the broader photography market, though – it gives even the humblest talents and rigs (such as those possessed by this reviewer) the power to make arresting panoramic images with just one click of the mouse.

Why it’s cool: If you ever spent time using photo editing software to stitch together several photos into a panorama, you likely praised the heavens with the arrival of auto-stitching and panorama tools to Photoshop. But even Photoshop users — and users of other specialized software such as Double Take, which integrates well with both Aperture and iPhoto — still have to deal with quite a number of considerations to get the job done. Image registration, correction for exposure anomalies across the range of images used to build a panorama, distortion correction, seam selection and blending, and final image processing — Photoshop, Double Take and other solutions all require multiple user choices and steps to achieve optimal results.

i2KQuickage ends all that. Its proprietary algorithms produce stunning panoramas — with the user’s responsibility being no more than selecting the images to be used and clicking the “Create Montage” button. Even using images captured with a camera set in the “Auto” mode, which can led to dramatic differences in illumination and exposure between
images, even with movement of people and natural phenomena (such as waves on a beach) in the photos, the results produced by i2KQuickage are outstanding.

AT&T is still offering unlimited data plans for the iPad, weeks after the company discontinued its all-you-can-eat offerings, reader Vincent Fox reports.

AT&T discontinued its $29.99 unlimited data plan on June 7, instead offering customers 2GB per month for $25. Customers who signed up for unlimited plans before the June 7 deadline get to keep them.

However, Vincent signed up for his plan this weekend. Vincent writes:

“Today on my iPad 3G, I activated 3G for the first time. The “unlimited” option is still available! This was at 11:10 PST on June 19th 2010, long after the supposed expiration of this option. I purchase my iPad a couple of weeks after launch. Perhaps the older units are still allowed this choice? I was billed $29.99 and it clearly shows I am now on the unlimited plan. Perhaps others can take advantage
of this as well.

Has anyone else been able to activate an unlimited 3G data plan on AT&T?

While the white iPhone 4 wasn’t available from Apple or AT&T for pre-order last week, it’s started to look like those who want a more opalescent handset might have more luck local big box retailer: just two days after info leaked that Best Buy might have white iPhone 4s on Thursday comes indication that Walmart might have them as well.

Bluntly, I doubt you’re going to be able to get a white iPhone 4 anywhere on June 24th: if anyone was going to have them, it would be Apple and AT&T, and their refusal to take pre-orders for the white model strongly hints at some sort of supply chain problem. My guess is that while Best Buy and Walmart may have placed orders for the white iPhone 4 before this problem exhibited itself, they aren’t going to be getting any… this week, that is. If you’re optimistic or desperate for a white iPhone 4, though, it can’t hurt dropping by.

Line-sitting obssessive Greg Packer is at it again, camping outside of the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York City for the iPhone 4. And this time he’s got a sponsor!

The sponsor is Gazelle.com, a site which buys up your used gadgets based upon a cash offer from their dynamic pricing engine. They then either resell your used gadget or recycle it.

Packer himself — more enthusiastic about line-sitting than he is functionally knowledgeable about tech — doesn’t really seem to have a very nuanced understanding of what his sponsor does, describing Gazelle as an “eBay for electronics.” It’s not, really, but either way, it looks like a pretty cool site for individuals who don’t want to go the eBay or Craigslist route for selling their old gadgets… or at the very least, recycle their own tech easily and responsibly. Their sponsorship of Packer has certainly raised my awareness of what they do, so in that, their money seems well spent.

As for Packer and his motivation for sitting in line, “I was the first in the US to have iPhone 1, so why not do it again?”

Shhh! No one tell him that FedEx is already delivering iPhone 4s to customers, no line-sitting required.

Just in case the iPhone 4 thought it was going to steal the iPad’s thunder, Apple has shot out a preemptive press release proudly proclaiming that in just eighty days, they’ve managed to sell three million iPads.

That’s pretty incredible. To put that in perspective, a million iPads were sold within the first four weeks of the iPad’s (demand limited) availability. About thirty days later, that number had creeped to two million. Apple sold the third millionth iPad just three weeks later.

Demand is picking up… which only makes sense, with the device being more widely available in the United States thanks to increased supply, as well as the iPad’s long-awaited international launch finally putting the iPad in the swarthy, wildly gesticulating hands of those weirdo foreigners.

If anyone thought Apple’s “big iPhone” wasn’t going to be a success, these numbers should certainly help to garnish their steaming plate of crow.

While the ability to set a user background wallpaper under iOS 4 is a welcome addition to the operating system, the default wallpaper choices can be pretty, well, garish. Some of them are just too busy, too high contrast, too gross.

The wallpaper above, called Tranquil, is Jason Kottke’s brilliant send-up of the questionable taste Apple employed when picking some the default iOS 4 wallpaper choices.

Just tap and hold on the image until the “Save Image” dialog appears to apply it as the wallpaper of your iPhone.

Point well made, Mr. Kottke.

It should come as no surprise that with the iPhone’s early delivery the boys at iFixIt have already got their hands on one and are opening it up and exposing its innards for all the world to see.

The process is ongoing.

Kind of like getting advance notice of a trainwreck, isn’t it?

If your iPhone 4 pre-order was unceremoniously canceled by AT&T this week, you might have some notion in your noggin of pulling a Packer and waiting in line to get one.

Well, don’t wait in front of an AT&T store. The company that has managed to victoriously spike the FUBAR line each and every down of the iPhone 4 launch will not be selling iPhone 4s to walk-ins until June 29th.

Or won’t they? According to a TUAW reader:

I spoke with my local AT&T store this afternoon and they informed me that they had received over 50 calls today on the subject (apparently all since the release went out).

They told me that they WILL have iPhones available for folks who show up without a pre-order on the 24th. And that the 29th is when they will start taking in-store orders for those who do not have pre-orders.

Now, the statement from AT&T seems pretty darned clear on the subject. But the employee I spoke to seemed pretty darned convinced that they would have phones available.

In other words, who knows? It’s yet another example of Ma Bell’s garish ineptitude when it comes to smallest detail of handling the iPhone’s incredible demand.

iPhone 4s dropping on doorsteps around the country means that all bets are off when it comes to embargoes, so no surprise here: iPhone 4 reviews from many of the big boys are starting to go live.

David Pogue of The New York Times writes:

If what you care about, however, is size and shape, beauty and battery life, polish and pleasure, then the iPhone 4 is calling your name.

Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin:

The fourth incarnation of Apple’s iPhone is an incrementally improved, familiar device—not a new kind of device, as was the case with the recent introduction of iPad. Yes, the notable features with iPhone 4—both the device and the iOS4, which came out yesterday in advance of the iPhone itself—are mostly tweaks. But what tweaks they are: Apple’s focus on improvement is as much key to the quality of its products as innovation. Still, there’s one flaw it can’t completely eliminate: the unreliable quality of calls placed over AT&T, which remains the iPhone’s only U.S. carrier.

Engadget’s Joshua Topolsky:

We’re not going to beat around the bush — in our approximation, the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone on the market right now. The combination of gorgeous new hardware, that amazing display, upgraded cameras, and major improvements to the operating system make this an extremely formidable package. Yes, there are still pain points that we want to see Apple fix, and yes, there are some amazing alternatives to the iPhone 4 out there. But when it comes to the total package — fit and finish in both software and hardware, performance, app selection, and all of the little details that make a device like this what it is — we think it’s the cream of the current crop.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNGj9oNWrlw&feature=player_embedded#!

Pretty much nothing has gone right for Apple when it comes to the iPhone 4 launch, so it’s no surprise that the device that was leaked months early to Gizmodo, crept its way into the hands of a random Vietnamese forum and spontaneously materialized in the middle of the Czech countryside is now arriving two days early on people’s doorsteps, courtesy of FedEx.

This isn’t happening just to a few people: Twitter’s literally full of braggy new iPhone 4 owners, and Gizmodo’s got an entire repository of reports. According to one of these guys, activation of the iPhone 4 was initially fairly difficult, but a call to Apple sorted everything out.

Are you one of the lucky SOBs who got his iPhone 4 early? We hate you. Go to blazes. But now that our own seething jealousy is out of the way, seriously, congratulations. Could you hit the comments and tell us what you think of the iPhone 4? Noblesse oblige to all us non-iPhone-4-owning plebs, after all.

There are over 200,000 apps in the iTunes App Store now and everyone can agree that wading through all those apps trying to find the real gems is a big problem. We all muddle through somehow and find an app gem or two usually by word of mouth, a Cult of Mac review, or other means. I’m happy to announce that I’ve found another way to find good apps and this solution is entertaining to boot — Adam Curry’s Big App Show app.

NOTE: My bad. Apologies for screwing this up. Google Voice is not a VoIP service on the iPad, but a call-forwarding service. It only works as a VoIP app on the iPhone. I got confused with Line2 from Toktumi, which is what I used to make a call this morning, not Google Voice (see below). My memory is totally shot. I was convinced it was Google Voice, until I got a bunch of emails and comments. Again, apologies for being flaky.

Google just opened up Google Voice to the public, the company just announced. You no longer need an invite to use the free VoIP service.

This is very handy for iPad 3G iPhone users. Your iPad iPhone is now a low-cost VoIP phone that works wherever there’s service. It’s also very handy for adding voice call-management features to Wi-Fi-only devices like the iPad and iPod touch.

Google Voice is a free service that offers free calls to the U.S. and Canada and low-cost international calls (and SMS). The Google Voice app also features several advanced call-handling features. For example, when someone rings your Google Voice number, it will ring multiple lines — home, office, cell — until it finds you. It transcribes voicemails and emails or texts messages to you (very handy, but spotty). There’s also conference calls and Web-based voicemail.

Apple and Google got into a fight over the Google Voice app last year; a scrap that attracted the attention of the FTC. Apple refused to add Google’s Voice app the App Store, saying it replicates core iPhone features and may confuse users. Google responded by making a kickass web app that works great on the iPhone and iPad.

I’ve been using Google Voice for several months, and it works great on the iPad, even over 3G iPhone. I just used it this morning when I was too lazy to get up and find my phone. (I actually used Toktumi’s Line2 app to make the call on my iPad. Apologies for the mistake).

Here’s a quick tour: