Mark Bridge writes:

They were a proud race. Proud of their individuality. Proud of the simple yet high-tech environment they inhabited.

But their population wasn’t growing as quickly as it had. They weren’t dying out – far from it, because they were committed to the cause – but there weren’t as many bright new faces as there’d been before. And now the Others were moving closer.

Yes, they’d done their best to resist the Others. They’d tried moving into new areas; not running away but expanding. It seemed to work. A new generation – a new race, some said – had been born. Different, yet the same. So why did they still feel as though the Others were getting dangerously close?

That’s not the opening of the worst science-fiction novel of all time. It’s the place where some people think Apple finds itself at the moment.

Apple's "antennagate" press conference, Microsoft lets developers see Windows Phone 7, Motorola sells much of its network infrastructure business, Vodafone goes open source with sat-nav software, the Spanish go mad for SMS when they win the World Cup... and much more!

Apple's admission that its iPhone 4 has reception problems when held a certain way – and its insistence that other manufacturers have the same issues – has prompted angry responses from other manufacturers. We've heard comments from HTC, Nokia, Motorola and Samsung… and the co-CEOs of RIM (Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie) have published a joint statement on the company blog:

Apple held a press conference yesterday evening in an attempt to draw a line under recent 'antennagate' complaints. The new iPhone 4 has been criticised for a dramatic drop in signal strength when it's held in a certain way; a problem the company says is a combination of software fault – signal strength wasn't being displayed accurately – and a hardware design issue that affects all mobile phones.

Mark Bridge writes:

I remember the launch of Carweek back in the 1990s. It was a motoring magazine produced as a weekly glossy newspaper; a novel format, although one that probably led to its demise. 'Spy shots' of prototype cars seemed then – as now – to be much sought-after, despite them often not showing much resemblance to the finished product. Indeed, I often wondered how you could possibly road-test the handling of a new car when it was covered with unflattering body parts that served to disguise its shape.