When Steve Jobs held a press con­fer­ence on July 16, 2010 to dis­cuss the prob­lems with the iPhone 4’s recep­tion, the Mac­World was look­ing for answers. What they got was a spank­ing from a frus­trated CEO.

When the first iPhone was intro­duced in 2007, the rest of the world was left to try and catch up. Steve Jobs could do no wrong after iThis and Mac­That grew in pop­u­lar­ity and con­sumers con­tin­ued to put faith in the mock tur­tle neck and faded blue jeans that con­tin­ued to hit home runs.

Now, admit­tedly, I am writ­ing this on an iPad. I drew those pic­tures on an iPad. I edited them on my MacMini and then posted this. I don’t hate Apple or Steve Jobs or inno­va­tion or things that I think are cool. I just don’t like when the guy I respect for rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing the way we inter­act with tech­nol­ogy makes peo­ple who call his lat­est gift to the world “not totally per­fect” feel like they are stu­pid because they aren’t hold­ing the phone the way he believes they should hold it.

It’s never easy to admit there is some­thing wrong with your kid. When the rev­o­lu­tion­ary antenna seemed to be the rea­son behind the loss of recep­tion, users posted videos of bars going from five to flat when the aptly named “death grip” moniker became common.

Steve Jobs said part of the prob­lem was in the for­mula used to deter­mine the num­ber of bars rel­a­tive to the strength of the sig­nal. Well Steve, I’m no math whiz, but zero bars of ser­vice means pretty much what one would expect it to, regard­less of the formula.

Here is my for­mula: zero bars = zero service

Other phones have a sim­i­lar prob­lem in that depend­ing on how one holds their device they may expe­ri­ence a loss of sig­nal. Appar­ently this has never been para­mount to one’s smart phone pur­chas­ing deci­sion. Any flaw of a sim­i­lar nature in a sim­i­lar indus­try, say a com­pet­ing per­sonal com­puter devel­oper, would be imme­di­ately exploited, and made over­whelm­ingly pub­lic in the form of a series of com­mer­cials and self-branding. (I’m a Mac. I’m a PC.)

Agh, but Apple, in their unde­ni­able fore­sight, devel­oped a five cent rub­ber band that would alle­vi­ate the sig­nal issues. For a mere $30, iPhone own­ers would get nor­mal sig­nal, like all of their friends. Nev­er­mind the cou­ple hun­dred bucks shelled already shelled out per phone.

Steve Jobs decided to lis­ten to the will of the peo­ple and in that July 16 press con­fer­ence opted to give all iPhone 4 own­ers a free bumper. But he didn’t give them away like Oprah gives stuff away. “You get a bumper! And you get a bumper! And you all get bumpers!”

Instead, like a father who suc­cumbs to the nag­ging pleas for ice cream from his chil­dren, Jobs said went with the, “You want bumpers? Oh, I’ll give you bumpers, all right…”

Life is good, Steve. Peo­ple keep your phone rel­e­vant with loads of appli­ca­tions or apps that your com­pany gets a piece of. Thomas Edi­son didn’t get that kind of love from the bright lights of Las Vegas and you don’t see him being snooty in press conferences.

We aren’t going to riot. We aren’t going to hurt any­one. We ARE going to pre­tend to drop calls when we want to get out of con­ver­sa­tions with annoy­ing peo­ple. You’re phone’s fault is doing us a favor… There wasn’t an app for that.

Thanks, Steve.