Steve Jobs' script for Friday's iPhone 4 press conference!

By Richi Jennings. June 15, 2010.

This is interesting. My super-secret-squirrel mole inside Apple PR has handed me a smoking-hot leak. The mole, known to me only as Rodapy, managed to get a draft of that script -- the one Steve Jobs will be using tomorrow at the iPhone 4 press conference. Let's take a read, in The Long View...

• See also: What if there's more to iOS 4.0.1 than meets the eye?  

It's a blurry cameraphone snap and the tail end of the script seems to be missing. I've done my best to transcribe it here; any typos are mine, but I'm sure you'll get an idea of what Apple has planned for tomorrow... 

Good morning everyone, and thanks for coming, especially at such short notice.

You're all busy people, so I'll get straight to the point.

We have positively and incontrovertibly determined that there is no design flaw with the iPhone 4's antenna. However, we have managed to get to the bottom of what's causing occasional problems for a few users.

This is a complex area, so please keep your questions to the end.

As we have already communicated, all cellphones show some signal loss when held in the hand. This is a fact of life -- not even Apple can change the laws of physics.

[Smile. Pause for sycophantic laughter.]

However, it's clear that the iPhone 4 design delivers incredible antenna performance. In fact, holding the phone makes much less difference than in lesser designs.

So why are people saying they're experiencing a problem? Two reasons.

First, the bar display.

As we said before, we got our math wrong when calculating how many bars to display. This has confused people into thinking there's a problem with their iPhone 4. Which there isn't.

The confusion comes from a combination of ill-informed, unscientific tests and a misunderstanding of what the antenna bar display actually means.

iOS 4.0.1 fixes this issue. And I'm pleased to announce that we're already rolling it out via iTunes this morning.

That's my first announcement today.

Second, a manufacturing glitch in a few early iPhones.

We have discovered that a few early batches of iPhone 4s are very slightly out of spec.

This manufacturing glitch is limited to less than one percent of the iPhone 4s that we've sold. If you own one of these few iPhones, you may experience signal issues.

*** TODO: verify 1% -- is that right? Seems a bit low considering all that noise from the blogosphere. ***

We have already removed all of the remaining out-of-spec iPhones from the channel. If customers are experiencing problems, they can now visit an Apple Store Genius Bar for a remedy.

*** TODO: confirm publicized remedies -- just free bumpers, or replacement units??? ***

However -- and this is important -- when making appointments, customers will be asked to confirm that they have first updated the firmware.

Why is this important? Because we can't confirm that a particular phone is affected by the glitch unless the new iOS is installed. We've included additional troubleshooting features in iOS for our Apple Geniuses to verify...

...at which point, the end of the script is cut off. Gah! Just as it was getting interesting.

Oh, and in case anyone is in any doubt as to whether this script is genuine, my mole can be contacted at rodapy@richij.com. He'll be overjoyed to hear from you...

Yes, it's a parody, geddit? But there's a serious point here, which I've covered in my next post: what if there's more to iOS 4.0.1 than meets the eye? 

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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and security. A cross-functional IT geek since 1985, you can follow him as @richi on Twitter, pretend to be richij's friend on Facebook, or just use good old email: TLV@richij.com.

You can also read Richi's full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.