Apple has built a reputation of mass-producing exceptional industrial designs and it appeared that Apple exceeded itself with the iPhone 4. By integrating the antenna in the visible casing of the device it appeared that Apple had found a way to overcome form follows function limitations. Of course that is, as we know now, not the case. Apple chose to compromise function in favor of form.

In any other product, the antenna is would be considered a design flaw. For Apple, it’s a feature: If you cover the black slit in the lower left corner, or worse, the two slits in both lower corners, your iPhone 4 will immediately suffer a substantial loss of reception. Apple said it knows about this issue, but it has no intention to change it. The advice: Just don’t hold the phone like you normally would hold it and don’t cover the black slits with your hand. Or, even better: Buy a case for $30. Huh?

Hey Apple, why don’t you give me that case for free to make the phone work as you promised it would?

And what exactly makes Steve Jobs think that I would want to use such a case? Don’t we buy that phone mainly because of its appletastic product design, and not just because of its faster processor? What’s the point of the iPhone 4, if I can’t see it in all its glory? Seriously.

Can we just drop the exaggerated excitement for the iPhone 4 and step out of Apple’s reality distortion field for a moment and return to the real life?

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I admit that I have serious issues with some of Apple’s claims that are on thin ice at best and are deceptive at worst. If I remember the iPhone keynote, Steve Jobs described these “slits” - there are actually three of them – as “part of some brilliant engineering”. The two lower slits support UMTS and GSM reception, while the upper slit supports Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS.

Brilliant engineering? If it requires me to hold the phone in a way I am not used to? Steve Jobs went on to say that “it has never been done before”. Duh! Could there be a reason why it has never been done before? Maybe Apple has found a way to make this approach work somewhat, but it’s clearly not perfect. It’s perhaps a prototype. Perhaps. But it’s not appropriate in a product that costs, without contract, up to $700.

“It’s really cool engineering,” said Jobs. May I disagree? Ok, it may be really cool design, but cool engineering would actually require this design to work. To me, it’s the best example of Apple’s arrogant and selfish product design philosophy yet. Product design, in this case, has taken priority over function and user needs. If the user matters, someone should have stepped in and corrected this flaw.

I don’t buy that Apple did not know about this problem and since the company has not shown any signs that it will offer solutions to fix the issue you are simply stuck with the fact that you have bought a product from an arrogant company.

Hey, it’s Apple. Deal with it.

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