This is the Top News Stories section from My Yahoo start page. The first 4 stories seem quite appropriate for this section. These are important news stories that have real life altering impact to many people. The 5th story is just absurd. Honestly people, it's just a damn phone. People are dying in the world and the Gulf of Mexico is a disaster zone. Those are important stories. Whether a phone loses cellular signal just doesn't really seem that important in the grand scheme of things. Granted, Apple brings a lot of this upon themselves with the way they handle PR but I would hope that the powers that be that shape and deliver our news would have elected to push a story like this to Page 2. But in the ever growing chase for eyeballs, news outlets want to push what brings in the most readers. Who cares that only 3 million iPhone 4's have been sold versus the hundreds of millions of other phones on the market. There's only one thing that people love more than fawning over winners and that's to watch them fall.

For the record, I own an iPhone 4. Haven't had any issues with it - antenna related or otherwise. The damn thing does slip out of my hand more often than the previous model so I'm happy to cash in on my free case courtesy of Steve Jobs. If the outcome of all the hoopla is that I get free stuff, so be it. I just think we all need to gain a little perspective of what's truly newsworthy.

I'm not a fan of frivolous lawsuits (hot coffee in the lap) because they generally take time away from lawsuits with real merit (asbestos, guns, cigarettes, etc). Most recently lawsuits have been lodged against Apple for the iPhone - One for the antenna issue and the other for the AT&T iPhone exclusivity. The first one is clearly an idiotic attempt at a money grab. Sure it's proven that holding the phone a certain way causes you to lose bars (I can't seem to reproduce this issue but others I know have) but so what? If you don't like the way your phone behaves, return the phone for a full refund. You haven't been damaged in any way that would require redress via a lawsuit. That would be like me buying a pepperoni pizza that didn't have enough pepperonis on it. I'd either suck it up or return it for another one that had enough pepperonis. If the pizza place couldn't deliver me a pizza with enough pepperonis on it because of a design flaw in their pizza making process, I'd just go but a pepperoni pizza from another place that could deliver me a pizza with the required number of pepperonis.

The second lawsuit is one that definitely will be beneficial should it prevail. Having the iPhone on multiple carriers will create more competition in the wireless marketplace forcing AT&T (and others) to compete more on price, service, etc. If nothing else, it'll mean that iPhone users will be dispersed across multiple networks so that the strain won't be on one network. To keep with the pizza analogy, this would be like if you could only order a pepperoni pizza from one place. Not to say that the quality of the pizza or the pizza place was bad but it's easy to see that if more places could offer that pepperoni pizza to their customers, this would benefit everyone in terms of more options, faster service, etc.

Dang... I'm hungry now.

Picked up my iPhone 4 today. Have to say, it does live up to the hype. Gorgeous screen and a solid feeling in your hand (that's what she said). I haven't encountered the two major flaws that have been reported - the antenna hand block issue or the yellow spot on the screen. Guess I'm lucky in that respect.

Photos with flash are really nice. Not great but waaaaaaay better than on the 3GS in low light situations. Haven't done HD video yet but will post some examples when I do.

(with flash)

(without flash)

Guess it does...