If one thing was crystal clear from Steve Jobs’ remarks during today’s iPhone 4 Antenna Press Conference, it was that he blamed the tech press for “overblowing” the iPhone 4’s reception issues, and was downright contemptuous of tech journalists as a whole.

“I guess it’s just human nature that when you see someone get successful you want to tear it down…” Steve Jobs said at one point. “Sometimes I feel that in the search for eyeballs, [journalists] don’t care about what they leave in their wake.”

Fielding a question from Engadget about a recent New York Times report, Jobs further attacked tech writers. “Go talk to the Times, because you guys talk to yourselves a lot. They’re just making this stuff up.”

Even Steve’s parting shot was aimed at the credibility of the tech journalists. “Thanks for coming. I wish we could have done this [had the press conference] in the first 48 hours, but then you wouldn’t have had anything to write about.”

I’m certainly not here to defend the press against Jobs’ accusations of sensationalism. He may be right: the iPhone 4 Antenna Issue is the Amy Winehouse of tech right now. On the sensationalism of the press, I’d argue that the job of the journalist is not to report the status quo, but to report the exceptional. Over the past three weeks, the iPhone 4’s antenna issues have been an exceptional problem, and so we’ve covered it extensively.

But you know what else is exceptional? Apple and its products. And what Jobs has conveniently forgotten is that ever since he returned to Apple back in 1997, the tech press has collectively been the tireless advocate of both, and written about Apple’s excellence as the rule — not the exception — with every year that has passed.

Steve Jobs’ press conference this morning tried to address two problems: reception and perception.

He failed on both counts.

Asked if he has learned anything from Antennagate, Steve Jobs’ response basically boils down to one thing: haters gonna hate.

” I guess it’s just human nature, when you see someone get successful you just want to tear it down,” said Jobs.

“Look at everything they’ve created. Would you prefer we’re Korean companies? Do you not like the fact that we’re an American company leading the world right here?”

Am I reading that right? Did Jobs just say that people shouldn’t criticize Apple as much as other companies because they are Americans? Yeesh.

Luckily he followed it with a better argument:

“I look at this and think wow. Apple has been around 30 years. Haven’t we earned the credibility and trust that we’re going to take care of our users?”

“Of course we’re human, of course we’ll make mistakes,” admits Jobs. “But sometimes I feel that in search of eyeballs for these web sites, people don’t care about what they leave in their wake.”

Like dipped Apple stock value, perhaps?

“We weren’t just innocents in this. But the reaction has been so overblown.”

Jobs ended his answer with a plea. “Help us out here.”

[image, quotes via GDGT]

Answering a question about whether or not Apple will refund users who already bought an iPhone 4 case, Jobs candidly explained what should be obvious: Apple’s secrecy about new products is all about not tipping people off that they should wait for a new product before they buy.

“We’re not going to refund the 3rd party cases — it’s a very small number because we didn’t sell as many cases because we didn’t share the phone design with case manufacturers in advance of launch. But now we kind of wish there were more cases out there!” Jobs laughs.

“It’s really simple why: when people find out about your new product, they stop buying your old products. Sometimes websites buy stolen prototypes and put ‘em on the web, and we don’t care for that. But if we give the designs to case makers, they have a history of putting them up on the web as well.”

“The case vendors haven’t had a history of helping us through that. It’s a conundrum,” admits Jobs. ” We’ll consider things on a case by case basis.” Groan.

Steve Jobs is closing up the iPhone 4 Antenna Press Conference by re-asserting Apple’s love and commitment to its users.

“We love our users,” Jobs said. “We try very hard to surprise and delight them, and work our asses off doing it. But we have a blast doing it. What motivates us is for ours users to love our products and connect them with great apps and content.”

“When we fall short, we try harder,” Jobs says. “And when we succeed our users reward us by staying loyal. That’s what drives us. And when we have problems like this and people are criticizing us, we take it personally. Maybe we shouldn’t, but we do.”

“At the end of the day, we think we’ve gotten to the heart of the problem, and the heart is that smartphones have weak spots,” claims Jobs.

“But the data supports the fact that the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone in the world. There is no ‘Antennagate.’ There is simply a challenge for the entire smartphone industry to improve its antenna performance to where there’s no weak spots.”

Steve Jobs has just argued that all phones have a problem with the death grip. But he still says Apple is culpable of making a mistake.

“We went to a lot of trouble to put this beautiful line in the stainless steel band,” Jobs said, pointing to the iPhone 4 antenna. “This was to say, ‘Here’s where you touch it everbody!'”

“The problem is we had incorrect bars, so when it did drop the drop looked far more catastrophic.”

“We screwed up on our algorithm,” Jobs admits.

“To fix this, we decided to put the correct algorithm into iOS 4.0.1. Your bars will still drop in a death grip, but all smartphones seems to do that.”

[image via Engadget]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhbGgLOxc-Y

For those one-foot-in-one-foot-out Cult readers who have an iPad and a Windows machine (or running Windows on a Mac), there’s now an iPad app called Maxi Vista that lets users turn their iPads into a second display — just like Air Display, which we reviewed last month, does for Macs.

We haven’t tried it yet (we’re somewhat allergic to Windows devices) but it looks like it works practically the same way as Air Display does, seamlessly creating additional screen real estate wirelessly over a wifi network. At $10, it’s even priced the same as Air Display.

Apple may be able to avoid a PR disaster of recalling the iPhone 4 in favor of a software fix, according to a Thursday report. The problem of dropped calls “exposed a longstanding weakness with the basic communications software inside Apple’s phones” rather than hardware trouble, the New York Times reported.

The newspaper also became the latest to claim Apple will not announce a recall of its latest iPhone. The Wall Street Journal has also reported Apple will not unveil a product recall of the iPhone 4. The Apple insider also told the Times the problems with reception were caused by what the newspaper described as a “complex interaction between specialized communications software and the antenna.”

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZUSMkyCxvI

If you’re looking for a quirky puzzler to whittle away your time over the weekend, I can’t recommend Helsing’s Fire enough: a hysterically written and unique puzzle game with an astonishing amount of playtime for just $0.99.

Plot-wise, the game follows Dr. Helsing and Rafton in their attempts to save London from a plague of vampires, ghouls, werewolves and other monsters. The gameplay is based upon dynamic lighting puzzles: you are given a limited number of torches and color-coded tonics to kill a set number of monsters per level. By shining your torch upon a monster and then using a tonic on it of the same color, you hit any monster illuminated by your torch with a killer shockwave. But it’s not quite so simple: hit a monster with the wrong tonic and they gain a shield, some monsters are protected by multiple shields, and your tonics also have an unfortunate splatter effect on helpless Victorian babes whom you must protect.

In truth, I could recommend the game for the congratulatory fist bump performed by Dr. Helsing and Rafton upon the successful completion of a level alone… but the gameplay is truly captivating as well. With over 90 levels and three separate endless modes, Helsing’s Fire is an absolute steal of a value. Give it a whirl.

Quirky is a fantastic crowd-sourced community design site that takes strong ideas and turns them into real products. Their latest creation, though, may be something of a misstep, at least when it comes to design: the Tilt Bumper Case for iPhone 4 is utterly ghastly. And you thought the stock Apple bumpers bumpers were ugly.

That said, look beyond aesthetics and you’ll find the Quirky Tilt has some impressive functionality. For one, it works as a kickstand: the bottom of the bumper is hinged, allowing you to prop your iPhone 4 up in both portrait and landscape mode. Also, the indented portion in the middle is designed to allow you to coil your earbuds around.

If you want one, get in on the action quick: the Tilt will only be produced in a batch of 990 cases, and each costs $28.