Apple recently revealed that there is a fundamental flaw in their method for calculating how many signal bars to display.  And we have the iPhone 4 (and its “learn to hold your phone the right way” fiasco) to thank for bringing this software snafu to light.

CNN Money shares the following details from Apple:

“Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong,” Apple wrote in a statement posted on its website. “Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.”

That means, for example, that iPhones sometimes display four bars when they should be displaying two. Apple said users reporting a significant drop in bars when they hold their iPhone 4 are probably in an area of “very weak signal strength” but were unaware of that because the phone displayed four to five bars.

“Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place,” the company said.

Perhaps most surprising, Apple disclosed that the problem is not confined to the iPhone 4.  The faulty formula has been present in every iPhone model since the 2007 original.  Questions remain about whether the issue is strictly software-related, or if it also involved hardware problems.  However, Apple has said it will release a free software update in the next several weeks to fix the glitch. It will use a new formula recommended by AT&T.

Yes, the storm clouds are gathering.  Off in the distance, we can see Safari 5, IE9, Chrome 5 and Firefox 4 in various stages of envisioning, development or launch.  And just like the good ole days, the combatants aren’t wasting any time in taking aim at the competition.  MG Siegler over at TechCrunch outlines the initial skirmish in what figures to be a protracted battle among 800 lb. heavyweights.

For those who haven’t yet waded in and taken a side in this looming battle, here are a few product reviews (or previews) from some well-respected sources:

• Safari 5 review from ars technica
• Chrome 5 review from ComputerWorld
• IE9 preview from CNET
• Firefox 4 preview from Wired’s WebMonkey

We’re just beginning to experiment with the betas here in the uTest offices, but I’m curious to hear if any testers or devs have started using these new versions yet.  If so, drop us a comment and share your thoughts. What’s clear is that the latest round of browser wars will be fought along the lines of speed, tab management & placement, extension management and HTML5 support.

Earlier this week, South Park lampooned the social media giant (along with Jim Cramer, chat roulette, Tron and Yahtzee) in an episode with major usability undertones. You can watch the entire episode here, but in case you’re at work, here’s brief synopsis from Wikipedia:

When Kyle, Cartman and Kenny make Stan a Facebook profile without his knowledge, he becomes frustrated with everyone asking him for friend requests. After he gets fed up with Facebook, Stan tries to delete his profile but is sucked into a virtual Facebook world. Meanwhile, Kyle starts trying to find ways to get more friends on Facebook after he drastically starts losing them due to his befriending of a third-grade friendless Facebook user, who everyone thinks is a loser.

Compared to other South Park “guests”, Facebook made it through the episode relatively unscathed, and for that they should be thankful. That said, it’s still South Park, a place where weaknesses must be exploited. So, here are a few feedback items I was able to relate to typical user feedback:

Security: Stan has an account created by his friends, without his knowledge. Embarrassing pictures of him are posted without his approval. Of course, in the real world, Facebook has developed numerous features to let users control such things. In fact, Facebook ranked #1 amongst all leading social media companies in this category during our Social Media Bug Battle from 2009.

Usability: Throughout the episode, Stan expresses deep frustration with the Facebook UI. He doesn’t know how to update his relationship status, much to the chagrin of his girlfriend, Wendy. He’s completely clueless about how to add friends; how and when to “poke” them, to say nothing of fertilizing Farmville crops. Deleting his profile is another story entirely. But shortly after being “sucked in” to the Facebook world, he’s a virtual pro, having amassed over 800,000 friends.

Content: Stan hates Farmville. He doesn’t want to get updates from his grandmother or her friends and he really, really doesn’t want to play Yahtzee. Of course, Facebook has made it incredibly easy to customize what you see in your feed, who’s updates you receive and what activities you choose to participate in. As soon as my mom starts sending me quizzes about which 80’s sitcom star I am, she’s blocked. Sorry mom.

Gawker says the episode explains “everything that is annoying with Facebook.” Perhaps from a cultural perspective – which I suppose would have to include all social media – but from a software and user experience point of view, this statement couldn’t be further from the truth.

Consider that South Park’s critiques of the Facebook application are nothing new. Similiar feedback on security, privacy, content and overall usability are likely submitted to the Facebook product team on minute-by-minute basis. This is especially true when Facebook decides to update its UI, as evidenced by the thousands of whiny posts from users, as well as a dozen or so front-page TechCrunch stories. In other words, there’s no shortage of this type of feedback.

The point is that Facebook is listening to its users. More importantly, it is incorporating these suggestions into each new version. Other software companies would be wise to emulate this practice (just leave Yahtzee out of it).

Lastly, you know you’ve arrived when South Park dedicates 22 minutes to you.  So congrats, Facebook!

And with the apparent ubiquity of the iPhone, one can only assume that Apple’s mobile market share hovers somewhere between 97% and 109%.  Unless, of course, you look at those pesky “statistics”, which is exactly what the fine folks at Comscore do each month. As  Jason Kincaid (@jasonkincaid) discussed recently, the latest mobile market share stats might surprise you:

• RIM and their family of Blackberry devices continue to hold the pole position.  In fact, their actually gaining ground, picking up 1.3% since Q4 of 2009 to its current position of 42.1% of the market.
• Android continue to gain market share rapidly jumping from 3.8% of the market in Q4 to 9.0% in Q1.  Android still has a lot of ground to make up to catch up with Apple and RIM, but a few more quarters like this and they’d catch (and pass) the leaders.
• Despite the high-profile product launches, Apple’s share of the market was actually flat (down .1%)
• Microsoft and Palm continue to shed market share (down 4.0% and 1.8%, respectively)

For those of you who have switched phones in the past few months, I’m curious to know if these stats are in line with the recent purchasing decisions you and your friends/co-workers are making.  What say you?  What smartphone are you packin’ these days?

• uTest Finds 908 Bugs In Web Apps Of Major U.S. TV Networks

• uTest Rates Best TV Network Web Sites, And Catches Bugs

• uTest Finds 1,000 Bugs in Web Properties of TV Networks

• “Battle of the TV Networks” Uncovers Nearly 1,000 Bugs

Additional press coverage includes Radio Business Report, NewTeeVee, Broadcast Newsroom and VentureFizz.

Thanks again to all of our cunning uTesters for exploring these web and mobile apps voraciously and hunting down some very crafty bugs. And congratulations to all the winners of the Bug Battle of the TV Networks!

Until the next Bug Battle, happy bug hunting!

There are more than a few skeptics, including Jason Kincaid (@jasonkincaid) over at TechCrunch.  As Kincaid states (with a bit of help from Google’s Andy Rubin):

If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it probably is. Andy Rubin, Google VP of Engineering (and the man in charge of Android) has already shared his skepticism, saying, “There is always a dream that you could write [a program] once and [have it] run anywhere and history has proven that that dream has not been fully realised and I am sceptical that it ever will be“. To put it another way, this is a pipe dream from carriers looking to loosen Apple’s stranglehold over mobile applications and there’s very little chance that it’s going to work.

The reasons Kincaid thinks the WAC won’t work out include:

1. Fragmentation:  Every device maker and carrier rolls out the latest system upgrades at their own pace.  Will they really coordinate their schedules so closely that developers don’t have to tweak their apps to work with each configuration?
2. App Trade-Offs:  Will app makers really trade horsepower for compatibility?  It sounds good in principal, but that’s always a tough pill to swallow for developers who want to create the next killer app.
3. App Store Arms Race:  Beyond PR and marketing bragging rights, does it really matter if your app store of choice has 10,000 apps or 100,000?  In short, no.

This is an interesting concept (who doesn’t love open, unified standards), but there’s an enormous gap between theory and practice.  And that gaping chasm is filled with failed industry standard initiatives that looked great in the press releases that announced them.  What do you think — will WAC work?  If not, why?

And while it’s widely accepted more apps = more users = more impressions = more revenues, how about some updated financial figures that are closer to the top line?  Well, Jason Kincaid over at TechCrunch outlines a recent report from AdMob that shows that the number of mobile ad impressions doubled in just TWO months:

Some more stats from AdMob’s latest post:

• Increased device diversity: In December, 7 devices generated more than 3% of requests each: the Motorola Droid, HTC Dream, HTC Magic, HTC Hero, Motorola CLIQ, HTC Droid Eris, and the Samsung Moment. This is up from only 3 devices in October (HTC Dream, HTC Magic, and HTC Hero).
• Droid Invasion: The Motorola Droid is already the leading Android handset in the AdMob network and generated 30% of requests in December.
• US leads Android adoption: 90% of Android traffic was in the US in December, up from 84% in October. Top countries by requests are the US, UK, Germany, France, and Canada, respectively.

It’s an understatement to say that mobile was hot in 2009 — from our vantage point, mobile app testing was the fastest growing segment of uTest’s business.  But a growing number of trends are pointing to 2010 growing at an even faster rate.

Is it possible that this year will make ‘09 look like the quaint, simple, slow times in the world of mobile apps?  Based upon what our customers (hundreds of app developers of all shapes and sizes) are telling us, the answer is a definitive ‘yes’. What say you?

UPDATE 1/5/10: And if all the above stats didn’t convince you, Apple just hit the 3 billion download mark! In just over 3 months, Apple went from a record 2 to 3 billion downloads by iPhone and iPod Touch users. Simply incredible.

Also helping Android’s case are some great new smartphones from manufacturers like HTC, Motorola and Samsung.

Robin Waulters from TechCrunch wrote a great piece today detailing the milestone and making some predictions for 2010:

2010 is going to be a big year for the Android operating system, with many new handsets finding their way to stores around the world (including Google’s own phone) and an increasing number of developers building tools, games and the likes for the fast-growing platform.

One way of noticing that the OS is poised for a big breakthrough at the expense of Windows Mobile, Symbian and other operating systems designed to run on various mobile devices, is the number of applications already available for download in the platform’s own application store, Android Market.

Waulters cited recently published data from AndroidLib, which showed an wildly impressive growth line for the Android Market (see the chart after the jump):

This prompted a bold prediction from the TechCrunch writer:

My guess Android Market will be serving 50,000 apps as early as Q2 2010.

What do you think?  Can the Android Market double in six months?  Will Android be able to challenge iPhone?

Stump outlines a problem that he had with Chess Wars, the Facebook Connect-enabled chess game that came out in July. After catching a show-stopping bug soon after the initial release, his company Blunder Move promptly issued an update. Soon thereafter they noticed another bug, which they quickly released a fix for. Unfortunately, this second update has sat in App Store purgatory for many weeks now, and Apple has gone silent on when it will be approved.

What struck me — other than the string of bad press that Apple has earned via the lousy treatment of its developers — is that THIS is a new cost of bugs.

Not to lay blame at Stemp’s feet.  We, of all people, know that bugs happen.  Plus he mentions utilizing 50 beta testers and 200 unit tests, so they’re doing more testing than many.  But IF these showstopper bugs had been caught in the initial version or even in the 2nd version of Chess Wars, then Chess Wars wouldn’t have its nose pressed up against the window of the App Store, waiting for the powers-that-be to bless the new version.

Chalk it up as another real-world reason to achieve maximum professional testing coverage to eradicate all quality, security and privacy defects before your app goes live.  Have other stories of software bugs causing havoc in interesting, scary or funny ways?  Drop us a comment and tell us about it.

And similarly, we witness product missteps that make us wince, rant or just shake our heads.   One such case emerged today with DiggBar (Digg’s URL shortening service) under the bright lights of a TechCrunch article titled, DiggBar Commits Career Suicide, Starts Redirecting To Digg Homepage.  In the words of  TC’s Jason Kincaid:

…clicking on a DiggBar shortlink will send anyone who isn’t already logged in to Digg to Digg.com’s list of comments about an article rather than the article itself. So, if I linked to TechCrunch.com using the DiggBar, users would first have to go to Digg’s page about TechCrunch.com before they could actually make it over here. In short, this is totally ridiculous.

This move comes just months after DiggBar caused an uproar among owners and users alike with its decision to skim the hard-earned link love of others.  Whether or not you’re a fan of Digg or DiggBar, it’s a story worth watching.  And not because it’s fun to criticize the decisions of other companies, although that is the favorite pasttime of far too many.

If you’re involved in shaping your company’s online products, there are several lessons that can be learned from the tale of DiggBar:

1. Resist the temptation: There’s no such thing as “pulling a fast one” in today’s online world — at least not when you have a high profile like Digg does.  Companies must fight the urge to cut corners or claim more than they should (whether it’s pageviews, SEO ampage or dollars).  As Michael Arrington stated, “this is extremely shortsighted of Digg“
2. Stay on the same page:  This article mentions that Digg’s founder, Kevin Rose, was not aware that this change was going live (he was on a two-week vacation).    Huh?  How does a feature like this (one that’s sure to get noticed and not in a good way) get launched without the knowledge of the company’s founder and face?
3. Not sure?  Ask someone:  There’s no way that these decisions weren’t heavily debated among the bright minds within Digg.  And yet, they’ve made multiple hihgly public missteps in the past 100 days.  I find it hard to believe that if the DiggBar had asked (and really listened to) users, partners or even friends in the media, they would’ve made these choices.
4. Know thy enemy:  As Arrington points out, Bit.ly may be Digg’s biggest direct competitor soon.  Their focus has been on creating a “clean experience that is predictable and creates user trust. With Digg, you can’t be sure where people will end up once they click the URL. And the constantly changing policies only add to the uncertainty.”
5. There is such a thing as bad PR:  This one speaks for itself, but when you show up in TechCrunch, Mashable, Forbes, PC World and others… and they’re using words like “uproar”, “hate” and “career suicide”, well that’s a rough day in the PR trenches.

We all make mistakes, but when you keep making them — and they’re of the self-inflicted variety — it’s time to take a step back and seek out the root cause.  Certainly a lesson we can all learn, but hopefully without the pain and bad pub.  What do you think about DiggBar’s decision?  Is it healthy capitalist hunger, or overreaching and bad strategy?