The wonders of rubber – an iPhone 4 saga

.
I have always thought of mobile phones as very sophisticated and complicated electronic devices that used alien technology, tears from baby seals and something from the Mayan calendar to allow people to communicate with each other from just about anywhere on the planet. And with current high-speed data services that allow actual communications with aliens, extraction of tears from baby seals and tracking of the Mayan calendar, I feel my original inclinations have been confirmed.
It’s with this knowledge that I find it sort of odd/funny/strange/befuddling that the latest flap with antennas and mobile devices as hyped by Apple and its iPhone 4 was “solved” by the grand puppeteer Steve Jobs by telling everyone having an issue to put a rubber band around their spankin’ new device.
That’s right, a rubber band.

How in the hell does something that can barely keep a newspaper together and inevitably breaks at just the moment you are ready to shoot one at your stupid brother make it so that a device as complicated and sexy (that’s right, I said sexy) as the iPhone 4 either works or does not work. I thought the only time a rubber band was ever put near a cell phone was when one was needed to just keep it together after having been dropped for the 209th time.
Now we are to believe something as basic as a rubber band will cure all of our iPhone 4 ills? Like Desi Arnaz said, “It’s a conspiracy, I tell you.”
If Steve Jobs had strode onto the stage at Apple’s headquarters and told the assembled masses that all the ruckus being caused by the iPhone 4 having its communication abilities strangled out of it was caused by something like a nearby black hole, or solar flares or even turtles that use too much hairspray, I might have believed it.
But, trying to tell me that the ability to strangle the life out of a call placed on an iPhone 4 could be solved by a rubber band made me blow a fuse. (Luckily I had a spare rubber band lying around that I used to secure that fuse.) Sure I was born in the morning, but yesterday morning? Come on Steve.
Listen Mr. Jobs, you have all the money in the world (and flaunt it by running a multi-bazillion dollar corporation and yet taking no official salary) and all you could come up with was “Just throw a Sirco rubber band ‘round her and you can again talk with ‘dem aliens.” Nothing about hyenas or the ozone layer or health care reform? So disappointing.
I may not be the sharpest balloon in the box, but even I am not buying this “fix.”
Next thing you are going to tell us is that the short battery life of the iPhone 4 can be fixed by just running around on carpet with just socks on to generate some static electricity. Or that to fix any current and prevent any future scratches to the all-glass case all we need to do is rub some calamine lotion on it. Or that all you need to do to keep people from thinking you are a self-absorbed idiot because you are constantly telling people that you are calling them from your iPhone is to wear a Luchador costume.
These are high-tech devices that need to be revered and exalted by the masses or they will lose their ability to awe us with their very existence. By solving their design foibles using nothing more than a chewing gum wrapper and a toothpick makes it seem like any backyard yokel can fix himself up one of them walkie-talkie phones.
All we can hope is that the next time Apple, or any cellphone maker comes out with a way to fix something on their device, they use lots of complex charts filled with big words. Our cellphones deserve that sort of respect.
[Unplugged Editor note: See the following video to see Darth Vader’s iPhone 4 complaints]
You can read more from Dan’s “Worst of the week” over at our sister site RCR Wireless