Apple’s press conference on the iPhone 4 antenna problems revealed some interesting facts about Apple and their testing procedures.

One of the highlights of the conference was that we got to look at Apple’s “state-of-the-art” antenna test labs. Incredible images and an amazing video. But this video revealed more than just a cool, expensive, lab setup.

Notice anything from this still from the video (taken at around 45 seconds in)?

What is that? Is that a Dell PC?

And seconds later we see a close up of the screen – that’s Windows running there (can’t tell what version of Windows – it could be XP, though it could also be Windows 3.1).



This explains a lot really. Substandard testing hardware running substandard software. No wonder the iPhone has antenna issues!¹

But the most amazing leak comes from later in that video:

That’s right – those geniuses at Apple are working on a stargate!

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¹ Why would Apple be using a PC? My guess is that Apple bought all the testing hardware from an external company – the same company that supplies this stuff to other mobile phone manufacturers. And that hardware uses old serial ports – ports that Apple removed from their machines years ago but you can still get on Dell machines. The hardware probably also came with software written years ago that runs only on Windows. Still, you’d think Apple would be a bit more selective in what they show to the public then – though in this case they probably had to make this video in a hurry. Michael Dell probably finds this amusing.