alt Hacker News> There is a funny email that had been released after before Jobs's passing where a user complained of a spotty signal, and his advice was basically to not hold the phone in that direction (or with his hand over the top part where the antenna was positioned).
Is this a reference to “antennagate”[0], when Jobs dismissed an affected user telling them to “just avoid holding it that way”[1]?
> because 3G technology at the time wasn't robust, and one shouldn't have expected him to have all the solutions that were out of his control
If so, this is an incredibly bad take. Lots of other phones had implemented good 3G connectivity at the time, including Apple's own prior iPhone. Apple made a mistake here, and the takeaway should be that corporate hubris is real and companies aren't your friends, not some cockamamie prattle about how we should accept bad products because technology is hard, boo hoo.
> had Jobs lived to 70 or 80
Jobs' own death is another fine demonstration of his arrogance. Very ironic to refer to it in this paragraph.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_4#Antenna
1: https://www.macrumors.com/2010/06/24/steve-jobs-describes-ip...
Yes, I now realize it was the antennagate story. I included a link to a Slate article that featured an even more unsympathetic writer, which was in 2010, a year before Jobs died.
In retrospect, I think Jobs knew his time was limited, and telling a customer not to hold it that way wasn't an unforgiveable sin- in fact, there was some truth to it, even if they didn't have a better modem at the time (my article mentions Qualcomm).
And I agree, that yes, hubris is real. I like how Bill Gates told Jobs at the D7 Conference in 2007 that his charisma and spell wouldn't work on him because he was a minor wizard. https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-says-steve-jobs-w...
Btw, an in-house modem is something Apple us finally returning to, now that they are ready: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidphelan/2026/05/16/iphone-1...