The Curse of the iPhone 4

Is the IPhone 4 cursed? Before you laugh, consider the evidence: Apple's would-be star has been plagued by setbacks including a suicide, misplaced prototypes and, now, the antenna problems the company will address at a news conference today, notes the Los Angeles Times. These problems, they theorize, may have something to do with the number "4" itself—in China, where the devices are made, "4" is a homophone for "death" and is considered unlucky.

The Times consulted a China expert from Harvard, who said she grew up knowing the number 4 should be avoided. "I would personally never say it's the number 4 causing all of this," she says. But, she adds, "maybe people should avoid iPhone 13 when it gets here." Meanwhile the Wall Street Journal's sources blame the problem on something very different: Steve Jobs overrode internal concerns about the new antenna design months ago, they say, and his obsession with secrecy caused the company to roll out the phone with insufficient testing.
(More iPhone 4 stories.)