Linked List: July 14, 2010

Wednesday, 14 July 2010

Apple to Hold Special iPhone 4 Press Conference on Friday ★

Jim Dalrymple:

Apple would only say that the press conference would be regarding the iPhone 4. No other information was available when I spoke with them tonight.

Ascender Releases New OpenType Font Pack for Microsoft Office 2010 ★

They’re all horrendous — Comic Sans needed improved OpenType features? — but will likely prove popular with the sort of people who do “design” work using Office for Windows. (Thanks to Joe Clark.)

Billy Martin and George Steinbrenner ★

“You’re hired.”

Harry McCracken on the iPhone 4 Antenna ★

Harry McCracken:

All of which leads me to believe that the conventional wisdom that seems to be forming is true: The iPhone 4’s innovative antenna-wrapped-around-the-case improves reception. Except when you use the phone in an area with marginal reception, aren’t using a case, and bridge the gap in the lower left-hand corner with your hand. In that situation, it can be deadly.

Bingo — and even then, only sometimes.

Microsoft Executive Mocks iPhone 4 ★

Gregg Keizer:

A top Microsoft executive today compared Apple’s iPhone 4 to his own company’s problem-plagued Vista operating system.

“It looks like the iPhone 4 might be their Vista, and I’m okay with that,” said Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s chief operating officer, in a keynote speech at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), which runs through Thursday in Washington, D.C.

Laugh it up.

Engadget on Real-World iPhone 4 Reception ★

Engadget:

What’s more, at this point Apple’s sold well over two million iPhone 4s, and we simply haven’t heard the sort of outcry from users that we’d normally hear if a product this high-profile and this popular had a showstopping defect. Honestly, it’s puzzling — we know that the phone has an antenna-related problem, but we’re simply not able to say what that issue actually means for everyday users.

So we’re doing what we can do: we’ve collected reports from every member of the Engadget staff who’s using the phone, as well as reached out to a variety of tech industry colleagues for their experiences. As you’ll see, it seems like most of our peers seem to be doing perfectly fine with their iPhone 4s, but the people who are having problems are having maddening issues in an inconsistent way.

Ed Dale on Real-World iPhone 4 Reception ★

Ed Dale:

Here’s the thing, out the front of my home there is a vortex of Next G misery — every time I pull my car in front of my house for the past five years, Blackberry, Nokia, First three iPhones — the call was cut mercilessly. You could set your watch by it. Regardless of phone, on the best network in the world, my call dropped.

Enter the iPhone 4.

For the first time in four years, the call kept going