Check out the results one Gizmodo reader sent in of speed tests while holding and not holding the phone:

Reception & 3G speeds drop like a stone when you touch the iPhone 4.

Of course, the latter issue was predicted (via Google Translate) a few weeks back by Danish Professor Gert Frølund Pedersen, who noted that not only was this concept quite old, but easily demonstrable with other antenna systems.

Maybe this is the result of overworking your Chinese slave labor assemblers to the point of suicide. I mean, they have to be assembly problems, because surely Apple wouldn’t release a new, highly-anticipated product with so many flaws, right?

Oh, wait. Yeah, they would.

One would think that if I imported a folder of wave audio in the structure, “In Flames/Colony”, iTunes might recognize that the artist might be In Flames, and that the album might be Colony. Instead, it does nothing but stupidly import the files into one huge directory, leaving it to the user to sort them all back out. Now imagine I imported 20 albums at once, and now they’re just all sorted by track title. Yeah.

“Your application duplicates the functionality of the built-in iPhone application Mail without providing sufficient differentiation or added functionality, which will lead to user confusion.”

Now, it seems that an awaited iPhone developer book is not going to be published, because of the iPhone SDK NDA. (Try saying that five times fast…)

“Normally, pre-release NDA’s such as this one are lifted when the product finally ships. We expected that this NDA would be lifted when the iPhone 2.0 software shipped, but it wasn’t. The September announcement came and went, and still the NDA remains in place.

It now appears that Apple does not intend to lift the NDA any time soon. Regrettably, this means we are pulling our iPhone book out of production.”

And now, it only looks like that NDA is getting more restrictive, as Apple has decided to make the rejection notices NDAed.

“Every time a user now gets a rejection, the message: THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS MESSAGE IS UNDER NON-DISCLOSURE is displayed clearly in the letter.”

This is just bizarre. Apple goes out of their way to create an incredible product, and then makes developers jump through flaming, constricting hoops if they want to create anything other than games & to-do lists for it. No applications that extend iTunes functionality, no service-specific email clients, and now, in a move that is blissfully ignorant of the Streisand Effect, you’re not allowed to post your rejection notices either.

All of these restrictions would be bad enough on their own, but they’re even more singular when viewed in comparison to Google’s Android.

It seems that Apple here is effectively pulling a Microsoft:

“Based on raw market share alone, the iPhone seems likely to remain the smartphone developer’s platform of choice — especially when ISVs can translate that market share into application sales.

Sound familiar? In this race, Apple is taking a page from Microsoft’s book, while Google looks suspiciously like Linux.”

When faced with the competition of an open-source platform (Android, Linux, etc.), proprietary companies need to be more open, not less. The HTC dream might not be as slick looking as an iPhone, but it’s going to be a damn sight easier to develop for. No Objective-C, open APIs that anyone can download, no membership requirements, no obtuse rules for what can & can’t be developed, and no rejections from the sole distribution channel at the last minute.

Apple is acting overly-confident in their platform, and it could wind up biting them in the rear down the road.

First and foremost, why did Apple remove the “Browse” button from the application entirely? In case you don’t recall the browse button, here are some previous incarnations:

Browse Button in iTunes 6

It’s missing in iTunes 8. Oh sure, you can use Ctrl/Command+B to bring it up, but iTunes doesn’t remember if you had it turned on for your iPod, so every time I connect it, I have to use a keyboard shortcut to show it. I have over 800 albums on my iPod, I’m simply not going to scroll through them all.

With iTunes 8, Apple added the Genius Sidebar, which will link you to music you might like on the iTunes store. Except it doesn’t work for music on your iPod, so if you’re someone like me who keeps all of their music on their iPod and none in their main library, you can’t use it at all. Same thing with Genius Playlists, the hyped Pandora-like feature that will let you create playlists based on song characteristics. I have 9000 songs on my iPod, it won’t work with any of them.

Similarly, Grid View & Cover Flow don’t work for music on your iPod either.

Next up, those arrow links to the Apple iTunes Music Store next to your songs — they removed the preference to turn these off. Why they did this for any reason beyond just trying to drum up more sales, I haven’t a clue, but this is insanely frustrating. There are, fortunately, workarounds for both Windows & OS X, but there shouldn’t need to be. This is reminiscent of when Apple moved your browser preferences from the Sys Prefs into Safari itself, it’s a very Microsoft-esque move. And just like when Microsoft did it, it’s extremely irritating.

Sorry Apple, but this is not my “favorite iTunes ever”. The only new feature that I can really even use is the visualizer, and while it’s nifty in that “my eyes are glazing over” kind of way, I never use it anyway.

I have no idea what to make of this. As one of maybe six people in North America who actually thought the Seinfeld ads were kind of funny in a surreal, post-modern way (I also thought the use of David Costabile was great…), I don’t see how this new campaign is suddenly going to fix it. Using Apple’s exact marketing campaign is akin to John McCain taking Obama’s exact “Change” slogan & running with it. Ultimately, it feels transparent and is completely ineffective.

I simply cannot fathom how a company like Microsoft can get their advertising so wrong. Sure, Microsoft has never been strongly associated with fun, XBox aside, but surely they can do better than this.

Somewhat expectedly, Gruber disagrees.

I have to agree with Grannell here; unless the Pro line becomes something radically different under the hood, or turns into the ever-elusive “Mac Tablet”, there’s going to be little difference between the MacBook and the MacBook Pro with the exception of screen size and video card. That’s not enough of a reason to have a professional lineup.

Mid-October is going to be quite interesting, I can’t wait to see what Apple has in store. Particularly since my PowerBook has been sold and I need a new laptop while on the road. How else am I supposed to update from the track in North Carolina this weekend?!

Long story short, an application named PodCaster for the iPhone, which allows you to grab new podcasts live from the iPhone without using iTunes, was rejected by Apple on the grounds that, “it duplicates the functionality of the Podcast section of iTunes.”

Needless to say, it didn’t take long for the anger over this to spread through the “blogosphere”. (There needs to be a new word for that…)

It’s gotten so bad that Fraser Speirs, author of Exposure (a flickr client for the iPhone), is refusing to write another app for the iPhone with the App Store in its current state.

The outrage is palpable:

You have to wonder if Apple wants the App Store to be a museum of poorly-designed nibware written by dilettante Mac OS X/iPhone OS switcher-developers and hobbyist students. — Fraser Speirs

Consider this possibility. Next year Apple announces an app that does what your previously authorized iPhone app does. You have competition, so another competitor, even if it is the platform vendor, isn’t that big a deal, right? Well what if they de-authorize your app because it duplicates functionality of theirs? Think you could live with that? — Dave Winer

Exactly right. If you only find out at the end of the development process that your app has been rejected — not for a technical problem that you can address but because Apple deems the entire concept to be out of bounds — then who is going to put serious time and talent into an iPhone app? — John Gruber

Way back when, if software distribution for the Mac had been handled via a Mac App Store with a don’t-duplicate-Apple-products policy, Photoshop might have been refused distribution on the grounds that it was too similar to MacPaint. A Mac platform that hadn’t gotten Photoshop might well have been a Mac platform that died some time in the mid-1990s or so. — Harry McCracken

Here, however, Apple has gone too far. Rejecting an application because it might compete with Apple is simply indefensible. There’s so much wrong with it that I’m not even sure where to start. — Paul Kafasis

Apple had nothing in the terms prohibiting developers from duplicating features currently available on desktop application. I followed all the guidelines and made sure everything is in the correct place. — Almerica

Dave is absolutely correct, it’s not a platform if you need approval of the vendor to ship your application. Just imagine what would have happened to Windows if Microsoft had required that they approve each & every application before it can be distributed? Or on a larger scale, imagine what would have happened to the internet as a whole or the web if you needed approval to develop for it?

Ultimately, this is only going to encourage further jailbreaking. Apple developed an incredible device, but placing such restrictions on it will only lead to users breaking those restrictions, continuing the cat & mouse game Apple has with firmware upgrades.

At this point, development for the iPhone is becoming a wholly unreliable prospect. It simply is not worth the time or energy to write software for it, particularly if at any time, Apple can shut you down when they decide to incorporate your application’s functionality into iTunes.