Apple: "didn't know of antenna problems"

Oh yes they did, oh no they didn't.

That's the latest in the Apple "antenna-gate" story that, hopefully, should all be over by Friday - once Apple has had its say, at the company's emergency press conference, over the antenna reception issues with the iPhone 4.

The Cupertino company, which is not usually one to comment on stories in the press, has come out against Bloomberg's article on the phone's problems. In it, Bloomberg states that a senior engineer in the company told CEO Steve Jobs there were issues with reception on the iPhone 4, ahead of the launch in June.

"We challenge Bloomberg BusinessWeek to produce anything beyond rumours to back this up. It's simply not true", an Apple spokeperson told the Wall Street Journal.

Earlier on Thursday, the news service said it had spoken to two people, which it was not able to identify, who had cast doubt over the way Apple handled the early days of the iPhone 4. According to one of them, Ruben Caballero, senior engineer and antenna expert, informed Apple’s management that the device’s design may cause reception problems, but was ignored.

The other anonymous source stated that one of Apple's partner carriers also spoke about reception issues before the launch date of 24 June.

If that wasn't enough, democratic senator, Charles E. Schumer, deciding he wasn't that busy with work, penned an open letter to Steve Jobs urging Apple to come up with a "permanent fix" to the problem at no cost to customers, and wanting "a public commitment to remedy it free of charge."