It appears as though Apple was deleting from their discussion forums any mention of Consumer Reports not recommending the iPhone 4 for a while. Now, while this may be perfectly within their right, as it is their discussion forums, they cannot control the whole Internet.
For those who may not be aware, Consumer Reports did their independent testing and concluded that it could not “recommend” the iPhone 4 strictly due to the antenna design and its inherit flaws when holding the phone in a ‘normal’ way.
Now there are those who may be questioning how Consumer Reports did their testing and may claim they are biased and just following the hype that is out there or even blame AT&T for their poor signal and network. Well, for your information, Consumer Reports did their testing in an RF dead-area. This means that no waves were able to exit or enter into the testing area. With the testing chamber completely closed off, Consumer Reports used their own device to simulate connecting to the cell tower. After testing, they were able to determine that the antenna issue is in fact real.
The failed testing with the antenna is the only reason that Consumer Reports cannot recommend the iPhone 4. Despite this, it is the highest rated cell phone that Consumer Reports has available.
I myself know that the antenna issues are real. As I was explaining to Macgasm’s Gerard Lagana over twitter, I am able to replicate the ‘dropping bars’ issue without any case. Along with not having a case, even with Apple’s Bumper case I am still getting bars to drop. Now, it is entirely possible that I’m in a poor AT&T coverage area. If that truly is the case, I’d like to test out a MicroCell at my home on a permanent basis.
As for Apple deleting discussions, I think this is a bad move, no matter which way you slice it. You’re looking at censorship and the inability to express your opinions. This is just plain wrong in my opinion. Anybody should be allowed and encouraged to say exactly what they want regarding a product. Here is a link to one of the removed threads.
Now, I’m not saying that Apple should just let the discussions forums become a free-for-all. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that Apple should allow those who wish to stay on topic express their feelings regarding the topic. If the comments are slanderous, libelous or even directed towards an individual then yes, remove them and ban the user. But do not arbitrarily delete discussions just because you fail to recognize that your product is flawed. That onus falls squarely on Apple’s reliance on marketing as the deciding factor in their products and removing all bad press from their website.
To be fair, if you do search on the Apple Discussion boards, you will find threads regarding the Consumer Reports article mentioned (as the screenshot below shows), but there were some threads removed.
Article Via Engadget
July 15th, 2010 at 10:23 am
“I’m saying that Apple should allow those who wish to stay on topic express their feelings regarding the topic”
The Consumer Reports thread in themselves were off topic which is why they were removed. The Discussions are for support related topics not discussing blog posts or rumors. If you look into Apple’s Terms of Use for the Discussion boards you will find this quite near the top under section 2. As far as them trying to hide things about problems with their products you might not visit the discussion boards very often as if you did you will see threads that can get up to 200 pages long when there is a problem. Since there are already threads about antenna, reception issues, proximity issues, and I believe even some Bluetooth issues on the iPhone 4 I really don’t know how removing some off topic threads could be construed as them hiding anything. If that was their goal they could just get rid of the discussions forum entirely. As far as a cover up, my grandma that doesn’t have a computer is aware that Consumer Reports said they can’t recommend the iPhone 4 ;)