• New York Times, Wired, Wednesday, July 14, 2010 12 PM

Pride goeth before the fall in stock price, Robert Cyran tells us this morning. Apple has "has never done humble or open particularly well," he writes, and its lack of any eat-crow DNA cost it about $5 a share in market valuation yesterday. It all started when Consumer Reports declared that dropped calls on the iPhone 4 were not the result of a software bug, as Apple has claimed, but rather of a flaw in the design of its antenna.

CR testers offered up an admittedly inelegant duct-tape solution to the problem and Cyran says Apple should consider offering free plastic bumpers that would achieve the same effect. But, that might be asking too much of "a company that prides itself on sleek design and flawless technology," he writes.

Over at Wired's "Epicenter" blog , Eliot Van Buskirk reports that Apple has apparently reversed an early decision to expunge references to the CR findings from its message boards after it was caught in the act by intrepid gotcha types using the [Microsoft] Bing search engine. He also points out that CR "has egg on its face," too, having ranked the iPhone 4 as the best smart phone out there before deciding that it was unworthy of a recommendation.

Read the whole story at New York Times, Wired »