The iPhone 4 ‘Antennagate’ Press Conference Q&A — Finally

Wednesday, 23 September 2026

The most extraordinary Apple event in the company’s modern history was the emergency press conference on Friday, 16 July 2010 to address “antennagate” — the out-of-control media narrative that the iPhone 4 had a defective antenna design. The event was only scheduled one day in advance — I got invited around noon ET on July 15 and was on my way to the airport about an hour later. It remains one of the most interesting press events I’ve ever attended.

The event was held in Apple’s Town Hall auditorium at the old Infinite Loop headquarters. Town Hall is a tiny venue but it wasn’t full. It opened with Jonathan Mann’s “The iPhone 4 Antenna Song” (refrain: “If you don’t want an iPhone 4, don’t buy it; if you bought one and you don’t like it, bring it back”), then Steve Jobs took the stage for what he said would be a 15-minute presentation but which took 30 minutes. Then Jobs had COO Tim Cook and hardware chief Bob Mansfield join him on stage to answer questions from the assembled members of the media.

Apple itself hosted video of the presentation — minus the Q&A — for some time after the event. But after a few years they took their copy down. There have been copies on YouTube, but the only one that seems to be left is this 14-year-old copy from the YouTube account Tech Knowology. It’s got Mann’s opening song and Jobs’s half-hour prepared presentation, but it cuts off right as Jobs invites Cook and Mansfield to join him on stage. To my recollection this is where Apple’s own official video cut off too — I think this version on YouTube is just a copy of Apple’s.

The Q&A was on the record (which is the entire point of a Q&A), and was reported widely, but I don’t think there’s ever been video of it. Here’s a report by Jeff Carlson at TidBITS, published the day the event was held, which states, “The video omits a long and interesting Q&A at the end.”

Then, yesterday, video of the Q&A hit YouTube. I don’t know what truck it fell off the back of, why it took 16 years, or how it came into the hands of “Sir Mix-A-Lot Rare Music”,¹ but I’m sure glad it did. There are parts of this Q&A that I remembered, and parts I didn’t. Carlson was exactly right: it was long and it was interesting.

One part I remembered was my own question, asked at the 18:45 mark, which was answered — by all three executives — visually, not verbally. It really was an answer best shown not told, but heretofore I’m not sure anyone who wasn’t in the room has seen this. There were photographs (e.g. AllThingsD and MacRumors), but not video. Now you can watch.

My main takeaway, though, watching the whole thing for the first time since I was in the room, is how goddamn thoughtful Steve Jobs was. He takes a long time to think before answering many of the questions. A few minutes after my question, Jobs was asked what he’s learned from this experience. Jobs takes several seconds to think and then his answer lasts five minutes. It’s a good answer.

I seldom suggest you spend 47 minutes watching a video, but this one is worth your time. (And, given that it clearly fell off the back of a truck, you might want to put a copy on your own truck sooner rather than later.) A lot of times with a long Q&A the whole thing gets repetitive, with the same questions asked in rephrased ways, and the same answers (or, worse, non-answers) regurgitated from the same set of prepared talking points. Not this one. In fact, one of Jobs’s most interesting answers comes over 40 minutes into the Q&A segment, when he re-articulates what Horace Dediu coined “The Cook Doctrine”. (Which Cook deserves credit for, having expressed it a year prior while Jobs was on a medical leave of absence.) Here’s part of that answer:

To understand Apple, it helps to realize that one of our biggest insights came about eight years ago. We didn’t want to get into any business where we didn’t own or control the primary technology. Because if somebody else owns the primary technology, they’re going to beat you in the end. Because you’re going to have to buy that from them and add your stuff on top. But if their technology is the most important one, they’re going to beat you in the end. So we wanted to own or control the primary technology for those businesses that we’re in. And in the computer business, even though we didn’t make our own microprocessors, we thought software was the most important technology. And we made our own operating system.

Our big insight about eight years ago was that for most areas of consumer electronics going forward, it was going to shift from big displays being the most important component, or electro-optical laser pickup heads for DVD drives being the most important component, or radios and cell phones being the most important component, to software being the most important component. And we realized that we were pretty good at software.

Watch the whole thing, I implore you. I mean if you’re only going to watch a minute, sure, skip to my question. But you should watch the whole thing — if only to hear Jobs pronounce “component”.