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iPhone Web Claims Draw Governmental Rebuke in UK
Wills writes "Apple has been running an iPhone ad saying 'all parts of the internet are on the iPhone', but it had to be withdrawn after Britain's Advertising Standards Authority ruled that it gave 'a misleading impression of the internet capabilities of the iPhone' because the iPhone cannot access Flash or Java – features that are essential to some websites. This raises an interesting issue of where do you draw the line between essential and non-essential features of websites. What should the web look like? Should government authorities be the ones making that decision?"
Who misses flash?
Those of us that use sites that are built with it. While I don't need it for most mobile browsing, there are some sites where it is required. If the device can play YouTube flash videos, why can't it load the flash sites too?
I will be purchasing an iPhone shortly and know of its shortcomings but to blindly support their decision not to include something that is so very popular on the web is a bit ridiculous IMO.
that may be.
however, by stating they can access ALL of the internet, they are misleading customers.
Thus I have no problem with them being forced to pull and reword their advertisement.
it's no different than forcing companies who use speed as part of their broadband marketing to say "up to x many times faster" instead of point blank stating their maximum speed as if it were the absolute truth and everyone ALWAYS received it.
Most people won't know the difference, but if you're going to use marketing, at least use it properly.
Source:http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/about/
That isn't raised unless you think it's quite alright to claim that a Prius is an "all terrain vehicle" (as long as 'all terrain' doesn't include deep mud, steep unpaved hills and stuff like that).
This isn't about the government making the decision that "this or that is an essential feature of websites", it's about Manufacturer A claiming that Product B can do Feature C when obviously it cannot do Feature C but only a subset of that feature.
Lying to sell your products is not allowed in the UK. It may be in the US or elsewhere in the world, but this is about the UK. And in the UK they have this pesky law about not claiming your product can do things that it cannot do.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
The Advertising Standards Authority is an independent advertising industry body; it is not government funded, and is not a 'government authority'.
It does not play "flash" YouTube videos. YouTube on the iPhone is a custom client app that does not use flash at all. It won't even play all the videos YouTube has to offer only the ones that can be accessed in h264 format so the app can use the iPod video decoding software/hardware to play it with their custom interface (flash only videos will not play at all).
"Should government authorities be the ones making that decision?""
The Advertising Standards Authority is not a government authority. It was established by the Advertising Association, a trade body representing (from the wiki) "advertisers, agencies, media and support services in the United Kingdom" The ASA's introduction on wikipedia reads:
This is how most media watchdogs in the UK are run. Important facts like this should really be checked before making very flawed summaries. For if Apple wanted, they could simply ignore the ASA's ruling. Most carriers would probably refuse to run the adverts, but it's most certainly not a "government decision".
"That comment about whether the government should really decide is very trollish."
Not only that, but it's also completely irrelevant to the story. The Advertising Standards Authority (who deemed the advert misleading) was setup by the advertising industry's trade body and has absolutely nothing to do with the British government.
The ASA ruling is non-legally binding although all major broadcasters and publishers generally adhere to it. The appropriate governmental agencies are Ofcom (office of communication) and OFT (office of fair trading) which have the relevant legal powers. Neither of which were involved here.
I am pretty sure the UK government has no such right. As others have pointed out, the Advertising Standards Authority is an independent industry body, not part of the government.
Actually, it displays it properly according to the W3C standards for HTML -- Safari even passes the Acid test.
i am a soviet space shuttle
And that's what they delivered.
No.
They delivered what the W3C says the Web should be coded to. They delivered email following the POP3 and IMAP standards for email.
Exactly. This is not the entire internet, nor should it be allowed to be advertised as such.
If the W3C/RFP documents that outline HTML, HTTP, HTTPS don't outline what "web and email" are, then nothing does.
Quite true. Nothing does. Like it or not, Flash and Java content is an important part of the Web, and were you to promise to deliver the whole Web (to say nothing of the internet itself, a far loftier claim!), you must deliver them. Period. If a Web site has it as content, you must be able to display it before you can say you deliver the whole Web.
I'm not saying it's unreasonable of Apple to not want to dick around with that, I'm saying they can't claim they're delivering more than they actually are.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Anything proprietary is not "The Internet" The internet is open source, defined as a small set of protocols for displaying online content. Protocols shifted over the IP network are not part of the internet. The internet is a subset of protocols, not an umbrella of all of them.
"The Internet" is accessed with a browser. "Internet Mail" is a web page that access e-mail through a browser, but is considdered diferent from e-mail, which uses IMAP, SMTP, POP, etc, and which requires other custom applications. Every e-mail server is on the net, but not all of them are on the "Internet."
Ansl, anything embeded inside of a web page is called content. Some of that content requires a 3rd party propprietary interpreter, API, or application. The Internet hands over content but displaying it or accessing it may require additional tools. These tools are not on the internet, but on your device, and hence are not part of the internet.
A file server gives me access to data files. There is no guarantee I can open the file it sends me, but I can acces sit nonetheless. HTML has built in rules for embedding 3rd party content in a site that is not capable of being displayed on the internet. If a plug-in or 3rd party external application is required, it displays such a notice. Seeing this notice (not a loading error, but an indication specifically showing the site loaded proerly, but some content will not be streamed), means the site was displayed properly, and thus, the iPhone accessed it correctly.
NO browser on the market supports Flash or JAva on its own. ALL of them require a plug in. The default configuration does NOT include flash or java for any browser. The iPhone is exactly that. It's up to the user to acquire these 3rd party plug-ins. It just happens that they are not available.
This is in complete contracts to other moble devices, which can not display the complete codeset of HTML itself, as all other browsers can, but require special "mobile" versions of websites to be created by site administrators. The ide here is that site admins need to do NOTHING extra to accomodate iPhoner users, thus we can access all of the internet the same as we do at home, provided we add support for 3rd party add-ins if site operators choose not to provide (as they used to) flash free versions of their sites (which they ALL should!!!)
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