Mark Papermaster, the Apple executive in charge of iPhone engineering, has left the company in the wake of ‘Antennagate’; leaving the company just weeks after the controversy caused falling share prices and negative headlines across the globe.

The antenna problem isn’t unique to the iPhone 4, but it may have been enough to force Mark Papermaster out the door.

The news of Papermaster’s departure was first posted by the New York Times over the weekend though it’s still not been officially confirmed whether the engineering expert – who arrived at Apple after controversially leaving IBM two years ago – resigned or was pushed out the door.

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Apple acolytes do try to defend the company at every turn but iPhone 3G owners will have a hard time standing behind the Cupertino-based company today after it was confirmed that it is not including iPhone 3G users in its latest mobile gaming network plans.

Jobs and Co have taken the decision not to offer support for the Apple Game Centre (which is Apple’s Xbox Live-esque project for online gaming) for the iPhone 3G, while the 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod Touch and iPad are all included in the plan.

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As it’s Friday – and as it’s damn slow news day – I thought you might enjoy finding out what happens when a Sith Lord decides to call Apple on the issues with his iPhone 4.

“Are you seriously defending the new phone by saying that it almost performs as well as the old phone? Is that what the plan is?”

Yep, Darth Vader’s complaints echo those of millions of iPhone 4 users – while there are also a few digs at the Droid X, HTC Evo, AT&T as well as a porky rank and file Empire guard. Enjoy!

One of the core points that Steve Jobs made at last Friday’s press conference over the iPhone 4 antenna debacle was that it wasn’t just his latest baby that had signal issues. Jobs said that smartphone makers such as HTC and Samsung faced similar problems with their handsets, and added that the antennae problem was “a challenge for the whole industry”.  His rivals however, disagree strongly.

An industry-wide problem or just a silly mistake from Apple?

Taiwan’s HTC said today that reception problems aren’t common on smartphones and Apple should address the problem on its own rather than blame competitors. “The reception problems are certainly not common among smartphones,” HTC chief financial officer Hui-Meng Cheng told the Wall Street Journal. “They (Apple) apparently didn’t give operators enough time to test the phone.”

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For those looking for a summation of the iPhone 4 antennae situation before tonight’s press conference, let’s help you out in musical form. It’s not astonishing, but it’s not astonishingly bad either, ladies and gentlemen… The iPhone 4 Antennae Song…

, but with a heartwarming message – if you don’t want an iPhone 4 don’t buy one, if you bought one and it’s annoying you, then bring it backA heartbreaking tale of one man, his phone, and lying signal bars. Ah, the wisdom of song.

Yesterday we though excitable reports of an Apple iPhone 4 recall were wide of the mark, after all millions were out in the wild and being used quite happily by consumers. However, in the wake of the much-publicised antennae issue – and the subsequent refusal by Consumer Reports to make it a recommended product – Steve Jobs et al have decided it’s time to act.

Will Jobs turn up at 6pm?

News has escaped this morning that that Apple has called a surprise news conference for tomorrow evening (around 6pm Irish time) to talk about the iPhone 4. The company has refused to give details about whether the event will address reception problems that some users have reported with the phone, launched just last month.

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Apple has sent a pretty embarrassing email on to its customers to try and explain all the recent iPhone 4 signal problems, admitting that the real problem is there’s an error in the display itself – with the company confessing that the network coverage displayed may be far higher than the handset is actually getting and promising a fix.

So, the signal has just always been rubbish.

Interestingly the statement actually says that this fix goes across all iPhones, not just the iPhone 4.  The company has apparently realised that it’s previous formula for measuring signal strength was “totally wrong”. The statement says: Continue Reading

Despite the problems with getting a reception if you hold it a certain way, the iPhone 4 is already a roaring success. Confirmation of that comes with the news today from Apple that it recorded sales of over 1.7 million units in the three days after its Thursday launch, a figure which dwarfs sales for previous generations of the phone.

“This is the most successful product launch in Apple’s history,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said. In the same time frame, sales for the iPhone 3GS last year hit 1 million. It took 74 days for the original iPhone to reach the million-sales mark. The iPad reached 450,000 in sales five days after its release. This time around though it wasn’t a US-only launch as some previous products have been so that must be taken into account as well. Continue Reading

What with the iPhone 4 pretty much taking over the world this week – queues outside the flagship store in London, units flying off the shelves in the US – it’s been a pretty good news week for Steve Jobs and co. However, one minor bug has been found with the new smartphone and as many left-handed people have suspected for a long time, this bug is more evidence that the world is against them.

‘Connectivity bars start melting away one by one after the skin of the palm came in contact with the lower left-hand corner of the unit’

According to a report in Dvice, “This could be the weirdest bug to hamstring a phone in a while. Left-handed callers are finding a serious drop in signal strength when using the iPhone 4. It’s thought that when one’s palm covers the bottom left corner of the phone it hampers the iPhone’s ability to make calls.” Continue Reading