I’ve not hidden in the past my dislike of certain aspects of Apple products that I don’t like.

And today’s news that there are reported problems with the iPhone 4′s data connection didn’t surprise me. It appears that they’ve embedded the antenna in the bottom corner of the phone and, held in hand, it rapidly looses signal (especially, it would appear, it you’re left handed). That’s not too good.

All of this is made worse, by the fact that the iPad also had (and may still have, as I’ve not kept up on this) wi-fi issues at launch, where weak signals appeared common place.

A work colleague bought an iPad this week and showed it to me. I wasn’t overwhelmed, I have to say – in particular it was a lot weightier than I expected. Anyway, he boasted how much better it was than his Netbook, whilst wondering why his wi-fi connection kept disappearing. The best he got was 1 out of 5 signal bars. Meanwhile, next to him was my Netbook, connected to the same network and showing 4 out of 5 bars of signal.

Hey, let’s make it slimline with more chrome? Yea. Connectivity? Who wants that.

Maybe if they spent as much time on the practical elements as they did on the desire and their ridiculous PR announcements, they’d have a great phone. Meantime, little things like connectivity and being able to change the battery matter to many people.

Update

An update on the iPhone 4 problems, courtesy of PC Pro..

Apple has played down dissent surrounding reception problems on the iPhone 4, telling buyers of the £500 handset that signal loss is normal in mobile phones and to hold it differently if they experience signal loss.

The reception issue emerged on launch day for the iPhone 4, with users reporting that holding the phone – particularly in the left hand – caused signal strength to drop, sometimes drastically.

Nice way to deal with the issue.

But according to Apple, signal loss is perfectly normal in handsets.

“Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas,” said Apple in a statement.

My Hero has the antenna in the base of the phone but you have to very specifically wrap your hand around the very bottom (and not in a natural way you’d hold the phone) to lose some signal. Holding it naturally, as if making or taking a call, the signal doesn’t drop.

Yeah, they are absolutely right, all mobile phones I’ve used have lost network connection as soon as I hold them. That’s totally normal!

PC Pro adds…

If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band.”

The casing of the iPhone is made from stainless steel, which Apple says also acts as the antenna for picking up wireless signals.

When Apple boss Steve Jobs first showed off the iPhone 4 at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, he described the integrated antenna as “really cool engineering”.

However, it appears naked flesh on the metal around the antenna can either cause a bridge between different sections of the aerial that disrupts the antenna or simply masks the signal.

That last statement does sound to be a design fault more than anything. As somebody else comments…

How could such a big fault slip through alpha much less beta testing?  If this is an engineering fault Apple need to fix this fast or the cool crowd will turn on them

I doubt the last bit, though. I suspect if Steve Jobs walk on stage and showed them a turd with an Apple logo on it, most would buy it. For £400. And they’d clap and whoop.

And what a great analogy for how the iPhone 4′s looking at the moment too?

The problem with touch screen keyboards are that they, for one reason or another, slow to use. If you’ve never come across the concept of “swipe” keyboards, the idea is that that you don’t life your finger and simply drag your finger across the keys – it’s quicker but the software has to be smarter as a result.

There are a couple in the market, ShapeWriter being my favourite (the other is SlideIT, but I found the GUI horribly off-putting). However, Swype (which is now being bundled on some phones at launch) is now available as a free Beta to try out. It’s not in the marketplace, so you have to get it via their website.

Swype is quick, but seems to lack some of the features of ShapeWriter that I like – for example, not needing to indicate repeated letters and one key to change case. I’ll try both and report back

Bit.ly Bookmarklet In Use

A bookmarklet is a browser shortcut that runs a small JavaScript script, adding useful and immediate functionality to whatever page you might be browsing at the time.

There are many, many to be found on the internet – the site marklets.com is a rather complete collection of around 1000 that you can use. Equally, the site centricle.com produces its own (mainly web development related) bookmarklets for people to freely use.

However, one of the most useful bookmarklet related sites is the Bookmarklet Combiner, which lets you generate your own Bookmarklet, consisting of links to others that you specify.

But, to save you the hassle of searching, here are 21 I’ve found to be the most useful. To use any of them, simply drag the name to your Bookmark list at the top of the browser.

Modify Page

1. PageZipper
This appends multiple pages together to form one, continuous page. Useful on blogs, for instance, where a post may be over divided into multiple pages. [Homepage]

2. PrintWhatYouLike
If you wish to print a page, this lets you modify exactly what you want – turn off background printing and images, for instance. You can even mark which part of this screen requires printing. [Homepage]

3. Readability
This lets you strip everything on a website you are viewing but the content of the article itself. Again, useful for blog reading. [Homepage]

4. Remove Bloat
This eliminates all occurrences of Flash, Java, music, and third-party iframes from a page. This can be particularly useful on those sites where browsing is reduced to a chore thanks to an over abundance of Flash animations!

Downloading

5. Bitlet
Click on the BitLet Bookmarklet when you want to add a “download by bitlet” link near a torrent you want to download. [Homepage]

6. ClipNabber
Download almost any video from any video sharing site. [Homepage]

Passwords

7. View Passwords
Display all passwords on the page that are otherwise not visible – e.g. those displaying as asterisks. [Homepage]

8. BugMeNot
Many sites often free access, but only after signing up to an account. BugMeNot is a service that provides shared signins to popular sites, saving you the hassle of having to sign up first. [Homepage]

9. SuperGenPass
SuperGenPass uses a hash algorithm to transform a master password into unique, complex passwords for the Web sites you visit. And because it’s a bookmarklet it never stores or transmits your passwords. [Homepage]

Web Development & Design

10. Design
Design is a suite of web-design and development assistive tools, encompassing utilities for grid layout, measurement and alignment. [Homepage]

11. Firebug Lite
This is a cut-down version of the well-known Web Development tool, designed to work on other browsers other than Firefox. [Homepage]

12. Ruler
Displays an on-screen ruler which you can use to identify the current pointer position and measure between two points. [Homepage]

13. WP Toolbar
Appends the default WordPress admin menu to whatever page you’re currently on (assuming you’re on a site that’s running WordPress) and styles it with CSS, fixing it to the top right corner. [Homepage]

URL Sharing

14. Email This
Email details of the current page to others. This doesn’t use your own email client, but the email is sent via its own site – simply provide your own email address. [Homepage]

15. Facebook Share
Send details of the current page to your Facebook account, read to share. [Homepage]

16. GmailThis!
Like Email This but uses your own Gmail account – a “Send” window appears with the site details pre-filled in. [Homepage]

Bookmark

17. TheThingsIWant
Save online product pages to the TheThingsIWant website, where you can share, view and buy. [Homepage]

18. Read It Later
Allows you to save the current URL to a special Read It Later account, which you can then view later. [Homepage]

Miscellaneous

19. FreezePage
Stores a copy of the web page that you’re looking at on their servers, for you to access later. [Homepage]

20. Translate
Use Google to translate the current page. [Homepage]

21. Bit.ly
The popular URL shortening service provides a neat sidebar where you can quickly create a short URL and even share it on Twitter [Homepage]