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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writes "Apple has been running an iPhone ad saying 'all parts of the internet are on the iPhone', but it had to be withdrawn after Britain's Advertising Standards Authority ruled that it gave 'a misleading impression of the internet capabilities of the iPhone' because the iPhone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?"
When I hear the phrase..
'all parts of the internet are on the iPhone',
I tend to think I can access just about anything. I think expecting java or flash to work isn't asking much yet that's not available so I do think saying 'all' is a little misleading.
I think a simple re-wording would get their point across and yet not be invalid.
From the summary: "Apple has been running an iPhone ad saying 'all parts of the internet are on the iPhone'"
followed by: "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?"
What the hell does that have to do with anything ? I didn't RTFA but it sounds like the problem is that they said that ALL parts of the Internet are accessible via the iPhone ... not "all but flash and java" ... which has nothing to do with "essential vs. non-essential", what-so-ever. Sounds like a simple case of false advertising to me.
Should government authorities be the ones making that decision?"
Should Apple?
You're modded funny, but this IS another valid reason it's false advertising. If they want to decide what runs on the phone, they really can't claim it supports the whole internet. You can't have it both ways.
That comment about whether the government should really decide is very trollish. Supply and demand have in fact decided that many sites require flash*. The government is only enforcing truth in advertising. Not everything they do is automatically wrong, ok?
*no matter how much it may annoy us.
My Sig: SEGV
Has Ubuntu created an advertising campaign where it implies that it's the only operating system that works properly on the internet, despite the fact that many others have more solid support apart from the user interface?
My Sig: SEGV
It turns out that it's not much different from the iPhone in the US, then.
The iPhone can access flash and java content perfectly.
That it can't render it is a different argument entirely. It's particularly specious for proprietary shite like Flash which subverts the whole paradigm of the web being built around open protocols and formats.
Jeez, I suppose my Linux/PPC box can't access "all of the web" because fscking Adobe haven't been gracious enough to release Flash for it yet, and Gnash doesn't work perfectly on all flash "content".[0]
Utter bollocks.
[0] "content" in used here its loosest possible sense, which includes "effectively content-free content".
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
No, the advertisement authority did the right thing here. "The entire internet" is a lofty claim, and Apple isn't living up to it. I don't give a damn if 99% of the population doesn't care about the entire internet, Apple is still responsible for being factual in their claims.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
99.9% of the population don't know what Gopher is, let alone expect it to be on the iPhone
Gopher is a contrived example, but what about other protocols? The average user might not use NNTP, but they probably do use some kind of IM protocol, whether it's something proprietary like MSNM or AIM, or something open like XMPP (e.g. GTalk). They might use VoIP, again with either a proprietary protocol like Skype or a open one like SIP. They may not understand the protocols, but they know that they use these things over 'The Internet' and if something advertises the whole Internet then it should allow them. As it is, it doesn't even support the whole web.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Essential web services?
ftp?
gopher?
ssh?
IRC?
NNTP?
SMTP?
Here is a better idea, if only there was a law that required any company doing commerce to design their "store/web-site" so that entry, egress, navigation, and information were easy to access by EVERYBODY regardless of physical ability. Or wait there is. ADA (US-Centric I know, but I am making a point so bear with me) states that even web-sites should use correct tags so Blind people can still use them. Text-to-speech an brail readers only work when there isn't crap in the way.
Heaven forbid an option to view/use the WWW in plain-text would exist. The only purpose all this eye-candy serves is to advertise something.
Proposal: make every web-design student use a text-only browser (like lynx) for the first 2 years of school.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
It will do what most people want it to do.
Yes, but this doesn't make the advertisement true or acceptable. The same argument can be made for ISPs' advertisements of "unlimited Internet" (unless you consume too much) or "6 Mbps download" (for the first 3 seconds) -- these are both misleading even though most people will not suffer from these statements.
No one lives up to that claim... but then again, they aren't making it. Apple is the one stupid enough to have made the claim, so it only matters if they live up to it.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
You're modded funny, but this IS another valid reason it's false advertising.
Well whether or not it's false, I think the key issue is whether a reasonable person would find it misleading. What I mean is, even if you give Apple the benefit of the doubt and say it's not intentionally deceptive, and even if you think Apple is trying to say something that's true, I can still see how it would lead someone to assume things that are false.
And therefore it seems fair to me that it would be labeled "misleading". Apple should rework the ad to make it more clear.
It could be argued, by this logic, that no device can access 'the entire internet' with the possible exception of Windows based PC's because only a Windows PC will run ActiveX controls (wine hackage not withstanding).
Indeed. Which is why companies shouldn't make stupid, pie-in-the-sky claims like Apple did. That easy.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
The better concern should be why pick on Apple when some much other false advertising get through the system...
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
The Internet is a packet-switching network. As far as I can tell the iPhone has just as much connectivity as any home computer, it's not sandboxed into some crappy WAP corner nobody cares about. In that sense the advert is true.
The complaint is actually about the Web, which is not the Internet and not what Apple were claiming to have all of. Besides, Flash and Java are not really part of the Web, they're applications which are accessed via the Internet. If the Java and Flash files can be saved to the iPhone, even if they don't run, their claim is not misleading.
This is actually a pretty scary prospect, since WebKit is one of the most standards compliant browser engines there is, and it's drawing fire for not running proprietary (at least when the iPhone was being developed) third-party applications just because those things happen to work "at home" (ie. on a desktop/laptop probably running IE).