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What The Banned iPhone Ad Should Really Look Like
Barence writes "To demonstrate just how misleading the latest (and now banned) iPhone television ad really is, PC Pro has recreated it using an iPhone 3G and a Wi-Fi connection — with laughable results. Apple was forced to pull the advert today after the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) decided it exaggerated the speed of mobile browsing. 'In the 30-second clip the iPhone is shown loading a webpage, finding its current location in Google Maps, opening a PDF from an email and finally taking a phone call. The ASA concluded that the iPhone cannot do what was shown in the mere 29 seconds afforded in the advert, ruling that it was misleading.' Try it for yourself and you'll undoubtedly agree."
Apple should really be slapped for repeatedly misrepresenting their products. I will buy a beer to anyone who can find a single photo of any of their products on the store website. Every single one has been hand generated usually with incorrect proportions.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
SOLD, bitches!
The commercial is done by the time they finish with Google.
Maybe if they'd put a warning similar to "screen images simulated, not really an iphone, 5x speed, etc." it wouldn't have been pulled.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
There's a similar advert for the app store here in the UK. It has some guy instantly downloading and using games, location software and so on. It has an amusing "actual sequence speeded up" disclaimer at the bottom, rather like those cosmetics adverts that say "some post-processing done on model".
Why don't they just say "this advert is a total lie, but it looks pretty and you're a gullible moron, so buy buy buy!"
What bugs me about the app store advert is that it finishes saying "this is going to change everything!" No, it isn't - it's another incremental improvement on smart phones, which is quite similar to many competing products. Ever since I found out about the reality distortion field I've started noticing that Apple try to use this in all their advertising.
You're telling me there's an organization that actually checks advertisements for false and misleading information, and has the power to pull blatant lies off the air? When did this happen?
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Who doesn't? Went to Wendy's the other day and got a #2 combo because it looked pretty awesome on the order board. Got back to the office and opened it up to discover something pretty gross looking, a mash of squashed bun and grey meat. Yum. This isn't a rare case, and is pretty much the norm of advertising.
Are you as awesome as your resume paints you to be?
Its a shame that the ASA doesn't come down with the same force on the incessant bombardment of beauty treatments we have with obviously fake material in them. I mean there is one for getting rid of deep set wrinkles, in the before shot the actress is frowning, in the after shot she's not. Viola! The wrinkles have gone!
I guess the problem is that the there isn't the degree of competitive scrutiny going on. All of the beauty companies pull the same trick so no one wants to upset the Apple cart.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
Advertisements not telling the truth.
Next up: Giant footsteps in Alaska not done by Yetis - Signs of prehistoric giantmice found.
Yea, well some of us don't believe most of the things we see on TV, so I have to ask, why is this news? I don't really think I can drive 60mph on a sheet of ice like I see in BMW commercials all the time, I don't think they should pull their commercials because they are not true.
The "actual" time was move twice the time of the commercial. Hard to believe a few fumbles could cause that much of an increase of time. It mostly was waiting on the web pages to load. Or the picture to load as it was moved.
https://www.speakservers.com/
Are you as awesome as your resume paints you to be?
I'm even awesomer! I left off all the parts about how I can play drums, my massive Spawn toy collection, and my mad pepper-growing skillz.
Haida Manga
Just to clarify, if the Apple advert says "Fast browsing" then you will most likely focus on the time it takes to browse in the advert, so it isn't immediately obvious that that might not be "true".
On the other hand, it's pretty easy to guess that you couldn't fix a light in another building from your phone. And that a Citroen C4 doesn't transform into a dancing robot
The disappearing pencil trick. Let me show you it.
The guy spent over a minute and a half fumbling around on keys? I don't think so. If I were a betting man I'd put a few cents on you owning an iPhone. I'd also put a few more cents on you posting the above message to rationalise your purchase to yourself. But then I'm cynical like that.
Notice that PC Pro had to unlock the phone, whereas Apple already had the phone unlocked. There are other instances in the video where the PC Pro demonstrator fumbled to press the right button. All of these things add up the time significantly. Apple didn't need any special effects at all to cut down on the time PC Pro gives us.
Oh please, you freaking shill. So he fumbled a few buttons... did he fumble FIVE TIMES AS LONG as the advert? Hell no, don't be an idiot.
The ad is a lie. Just like "It just works" campaign is a lie. Apple is full of lies.
Uh their ad showed it to be 4x as good as it really is. If i went to wendys and got a 1/16th pounder i'd be pretty pissed. If on my resume I said I could build a bathroom to finished in 4hours they would likely be disappointed. Beyond that their speed was the WHOLE advertisement.
Thats weird, because I saw the UK advert last night and it states quite clearly at the bottom of the screen that operations have been sped up etc, and does not appear to make any claims to the advert being true to life.... Is this the British ASA or is there an ASA elsewhere in the world (i.e. the USA)?
Most people would view this commercial and think, wow, you can do all that with a phone? I want one!
By the time they have bought it and figured out how to run it, they'll long since have forgotten how speedy it looked in the advert.
Ads aren't supposed to be starkly realistic. Just think how awful they'd all be if they were.
For example, most car companies don't show you the sad realities of operating their vehicles in traffic. I think a realistic portrayal should include an occasional collision ("note how our driver is relatively unhurt, versus the critically injured passengers in the competition's car!").
GM would be more honest if they illustrated "fit and finish" problems in their vehicles. For example, driver gets in new Chevrolet Malibu, turns it on. Engine dies. Cut to scene at dealer's--"We back up our cars, sir; we'll have you out of here within two hours, and at no charge!"
Similarly, show a grandmother trying to turn on her new HP laptop and this "CHECKSUM FAILURE, PRESS F1 TO CONTINUE" screen appears. She calls HP and a nice man with a south Asian accent talks her through the problem (which involves reseating a SIMM).
In general, you almost NEVER encounter the kind of courteous, perfect service and incredible product quality as illustrated in ads. Ads don't reflect reality; they're a kind of allegorical story designed to make you want to buy the product while lying as much as they can get away with.
I think overall that they were just picking on Apple and the ad should have run.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Don't start replies with Uh. It's combative and makes you look like a dink.
I'm hardly defending Apple here, but I think "4x as good" is rather ridiculous. While you seem to think a 1lb'r would be "4x as good" as a 1/4lb, in the Wendy's example I consider what I got 1/10th as satisfying as what's promised on the board (and it would be even worse if they just stuck more meat on it). Instead of a burger bursting with delicious veg, I got some piece of crap that I considered just tossing.
The ad had someone doing tasks at a rate that no one would ever do them. No, people don't jump around pages like that generally, scrolling a PDF for a second and looking up an address (with zero text entry) in milliseconds, instantly absorbing it.
Which is why it was an obvious exaggeration, which is pretty much the case for virtually all ads. I'd rather all ads were a lot more honest (in the case of fast food restaurants it should require random photos of randomly served dishes at regular intervals), but it seems a bit laughable to make such a big deal out of Apple.
This ruling was made in the UK. We have slightly different advertising standards to the US. In the UK, the sort of thing you're suggesting is not allowed:
I will give you all 1 million dollars* for reading this post!
.
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*1 million imaginary dollars
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
And he used wifi instead of Apple's lightning fast 3G network!
It is the norm. It should not be.
I believe that the standard should be that the advertisement must show an accurate representation of the average product as it will be delivered to the consumer. To do otherwise, is fraud.
That includes Wendy's and all the rest of the fast-food crowd. In fact, pretty much all food advertising. (Many years ago the Wall Street Journal had a very funny article about making food adverts. Jello was mixed at several times the usual concentration to keep it solid under the lights. Tensions got high on the set and someone hurled a jello chunk at someone else. The other person ducked and the jello rebounded off the wall like a superball.)
How about stores? I sure wish the nearby Safeway were bright, clean and open instead of old, dingy and cramped.
The before/after pics for weight-loss schemes would be pretty funny.
Oh, sorry. Lost myself for a moment there. Forgot that it is our Patriotic Duty to buy into the advertising fantasies in order to keep the economic fantasy growing.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
... was the instability of Safari - I'm currently away from the office on a week long business trip, with my iPhone acting as my primary browsing device during the day (while I'm away from the hotel - London has fairly extensive 3G and wifi coverage), and I have to say that I am getting at least one crash per browsing session.
I would expect this if I was visiting weird websites, but I'm talking about sites like Slashdot, BBC News etc. The entire page can be loaded, and I can be halfway through a Slashdot comments page and Safari will crash, I haven't even hit anything that should trigger Safari to do anything other than scroll down the page!
On another note, on every iPhone or iPod Touch device I have used (one first gen iPhone, one 3G iPhone and two iPod Touches), Safari has one hell of a difficult time picking up link clicks on the BBC News website - I haven't had any problems elsewhere, just on the BBC News site. It manifests itself as a total lack of registering the fact that I am clicking on a link, with Safari only reacting at all either after I have held down the click for several seconds, or zoomed right in and clicked then. Has anyone else experienced this?
You're HIRED!
Quite right.
It was 4.86 times faster, cooler and better. In the PC Pro video it looked like celebrities in one of those "with&without makeup" slideshows.
De-glamored and like just another mobile phone. Which nobody really needs.
Not at all like something hand-sculpted from pieces of the true cross and philosopher's stone by (female) virgins gently rubbing their pelvises over the aforementioned imaginary artifacts.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
On the other hand, it's pretty easy to guess that you couldn't fix a light in another building from your phone. And that a Citroen C4 doesn't transform into a dancing robot
Noooooooooo!
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
KFC?
Lower than 3:1? It's 4.86:1.
PC Pro / Apple Ad = (2*60+21)/29 = 4.86.
That's closer to 5.
Just to make sure I have this right, do you mean to imply that telling people how they should express themselves is not combative and does not make you look like a "dink"? Or is this more of an "it's okay when I do it" situation?
I think the only reason why Apple might appear exceptional is because they were required to pull the ads. Normally advertisers use various propaganda techniques to give a certain impression that may be true or false but they do it without actually making verifiably false statements. They might say "9 out of 10 dentists recommend brand X toothpaste!" instead of "9 out of 10 dentists recommend brand X toothpaste after we paid them a large amount of money!" even though both would be true and even though they only asked 10 individuals instead of doing anything remotely like a proper study of a representative sample.
I very much like your idea about fast-food advertisements. I don't think the burgers in the ads are even edible most of the time (lots of plastic or other things you really wouldn't want to eat) although I regret that I don't have a source/reference handy. Advertising in general, or at least the way it is currently done, is something that I believe a more enlightened society would view as either a great evil or at least a corrupting influence. It's a happy smiling face on what is straight up manipulation and the power of its influence is often underestimated. If it were otherwise, then why the need to exaggerate, misrepresent, and selectively omit facts (not just talking about Apple)?
Healthy people who can think for themselves don't need to be constantly told what to eat, what to drink, where to go, what to buy, for whom to vote, etc. They just need to know what their options are, which is a far simpler affair. To give what I hope isn't a bad analogy, it would be more like "client pull" and less like "server push". I consider obsolete or irrelevant any business model that would collapse if this were the norm, no matter how large or widespread it may be.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
> 'Cause the iPhone doesn't have WiFi.
You sure about that, chief?
'cause I can somehow connect to the AP in my house, and I'm pretty sure it's not a 3G base station.
The grandparent DID miss one thing, though -- the location test. He can't do it properly on his touch, since AFAIK the touch doesn't have an adaptive GPS unit. It just tries to guess based on known locations of nearby WiFi APs.
I just tested mine, it took about 15 seconds to narrow down my location to a region about 1/2 mile in radius. And it won't do any better than that unless I stand near the window or go outside.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Son, if this is how you think a good cell phone is created... well, lets just say you appear to have a few serious issues that would be best dealt with in long term counseling.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Don't start replies with Uh.
Correct as you are, I can't help but giggle at the irony :P
If the advert said "Blackberry Storm - remotely fixes neon lights", then yes - the ad would be pulled. Apple says "look how quick this phone is", when it isn't anywhere near as quick as they say. That is clearly lying - not inferring some obviously impossible functionality, but straight-up lying about the ability of their handset.
It's more to do with complaints. People know Shampoo isn't going to turn crappy hair into fantastic model-esque hair, but Apple made claims that could feasibly be true, but which turned out to be far off the mark. That's going to get people irked, and they will bring it to the ASA's attention. Kind of like how Dr. Pepper used to write "Solves all your problems" on their bottles in Germany. That stopped for obvious, and similar, reasons.
Okay, that was BS.
I'm certain that Apple sped things up for the commercial. Big whoop. But I would have been a lot more sympathetic if PC Pro had done anywhere near a realistic comparison.
The ad starts with the phone unlocked, and the user opening Safari to a pre-loaded page. The fumbling PC Pro fingers slowly unlock the phone and go to Google to find the page, rather than even entering the URL or opening a bookmark!
How about a realistic comparison? I'd like to see how fast the iPhone can work, not how slow your damn sausage-fingers are at molesting it.
WARNING: iPhone 3G browsing speeds may be impeded if you're an idiot.
NO! YOU're HIRED!
Of Code And Men
The Grauniad has an item which gives some insight into how the ad came to be banned: Here
Seems to me Apple didn't really defend this one very appropriately, but then again, who cares?
The whole problem with "lying by omission" is that, if you accept that as a valid concept, it follows that no one ever tells the truth, given that practical communications require the omission of details. A complete description of what I did this morning would require the rest of our lives for me to relate to you if I didn't omit details. Communications are only practical when I omit most of the details.
Assuming I honestly include all details I feel are relevant, I think the statement that "the whole spirit of the resume is...lying by omission" is just plain false. A resume shouldn't be more than two pages, ideally it should be one page. It shouldn't include long lists of irrelevant details. Someone should be able to quickly scan it and see what qualifies you for the job in question. If it has your complete life story instead, it should be thrown in the trash without being read, since it demonstrates your inability to determine what's relevant.
And yes, I am significantly more awesome than my resume would suggest. ;) A complete description of my work history would not be readable, even quickly, in the 30 seconds max you get before an employer throws your resume into the keeper or toss-out pile.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
You forget that those burgers are paid professional models (I mean, take a look at their buns!) Do they have to be taken up close? And those bottled drinks...do they always have to glisten with small drops of sweat?
I heard some of them were real bitchy divas too...
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
and I'd thought transformers was a documentary!
Everyone around me is getting iPhones. How can you guys that buy the smartphones/iPhones and afford the usual 30+ monthly for the data plans?
I mean, no one has told me this but if you are in fact getting laid because you have an iPhone, I will certainly get the iPhone and data plan. Can anyone confirm this?
Until then I'll stick with ebaying my phones.
There advertising is deceptive. As mentioned above, yes you do go to Wendy's and get a shitty looking burger compared to the picture, but it's still food and your not buying it for looks.
If they said my Junior Bacon cheeseburger could download 5 pdfs and browse google maps while uploading pictures all at the same time and it didn't. I'd be a little pissed.
iPhone are neat but I hate the way there the new Moto Razor.
The problem is not that apple was lieing about the performance of the iphone, it's that the ad doesn't have the legal loophole words. 'performance may vary', 'closed course, professional driver', etc either printed or spoken.
Actually, I did the whole test and did it in 42 seconds on 3G. Here are the results:
14 seconds to load the apple iphone page (the main google page loads in about 8)
10 seconds to load my location on gps
10 seconds to load a pdf attachment from an email (exchange, 100KB pdf)
8 seconds to call my house (I dialed it directly).
The same test took about a minute an a half on wireless (my iphone doesn't gps well on wireless and took over a minute).
My iphone is not unlocked either, and I am on Rogers in Canada. Maybe our 3G is different, but I doubt it. Also, the same pdf from a pop3 account took 36 seconds, so that might also make a difference.
I think it's an evolutionary result, though. Industrial manufacturing introduced a glut of consumer goods to the world, and made it possible that multiple players could be in the same market trying to sell essentially the same thing, or at least the same thing with normally imperceptible differences. One company who advertises could take a market-share far disproportionate to the comparative advantage they have against a company with a similar product, but no advertising. Increased publicity ability gave the means, and anyone outside the competition really just can't compete.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
I can do all those things on my iPhone 3G and at the same time drive my car at 100 mph over twisty mountain roads while an exhausted super model runs her hand over my ultra smooth face (which I shaved in one stroke with my 9 bladed razor) and tells me how great I shag since I started taking Erectzor.
Anyone who can't is a pansy.
Life needs more saving throws.
I once saw a documentation about how they make the photos you see on convenience food packaging. The tomato soup with a cream swirl was actually 100% toxic-if-ingested wall paint. Other dishes were either made by cooks (of course using completely different recipes) or weren't food at all. Don't think only models get airbrushed; food does, as well. With clear varnish, during the shoot.
I mean, some car manufacturer recently ran a TV ad in Germany where they deconstructed the usual car ad by gradually switching off the humans (all professional models), the beautiful scenery (completely computer-generated), the brilliant highlights on the car (ditto), the majestic music and finally the street. I don't remember which car it was but the ad strikes me as insightful - it shows just how much of the ads you see has to do with the actual car (not much at all, not even the car's appearance is realistic).
Ads lie. Ads lie all the time. Do not expect anything you hear in an ad to be remotely true, apart fom "product XYZ exists".
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
...Dishonest, or just incompetent. The same goes for the UK Ad council responsible for demanding the ad be pulled. I couldn't help but make a video this morning to see what the results should really look like...
Try 48 secs and that is with me flubbing a bit, waiting for GPS to lock and timing a call to myself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwbZkkJhfcA
I don't even like my iPhone that much, but there are better reasons to dislike it than simply fabricated, untruthful criticisms.
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
That's why the ad had a countdown timer at the bottom of the screen showing how long it took to perform those tasks. Oh, wait. It didn't.
What it did do is claim that you can accomplish these tasks quickly by using an iPhone communicating at 3g speeds.
I have an iphone and a supermodels hand on my cock right now. There are no mountains near me though, I am so not cool.
This isn't a rare case, and is pretty much the norm of advertising.
While technically true, I'm more of a glass half-empty sort of guy: I say that the norm is for poor product delivery - and seems to apply to more than just the fast food gang. The trouble isn't that advertising exaggerates (which it does) - the problem is that the products are lousy and rather than improve product, the dollar-dollar-bill-y'all goes to advertising.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
In real life the iPhone is a little slower, but not really even 2x from the ad - the PC pro actions had the following errors in a test that meant to duplicate the ad:
1) Pc Pro started with screen locked.
2) The Apple ad started with a web page that was previously cached before they clicked on a link. The Pc Pro guys started from google, had to type in the URL, then wait for the page to load... that was a HUGE chunk of time over what the ad was doing.
3) Apple ad zoomed into a portion of the page by double tapping, PC Pro guys sloooowly zoomed using two fingers (with a double hand technique showing the iPhone is about as familiar to them as a flying saucer)
4) The PC Pro map load was about right, but then again they slooowly zoom in....
5) I'm wondering just how large that PC Pro PDF was.
Basically between the two videos, both are not accurate and I agree with pulling the Apple ad - but the Apple ad is way more representative of real world use than the PC Pro video. I don't see you (or anyone else chastising Apple) complaining about those missteps, I wonder what your motivations could be... Apple Hater.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Maybe it's meant to reflect the actual user experience, but they spend a lot more time diking around with websites than the iPhone add. They load two webpages instead of one, and spend time scrolling around those webpages, where as the add merely shows the phone zooming in. They also enter the URL manually, while the add shows them only loading a link. They also spend time scrolling around the PDF document, while in the add the user receives a call immediately after the PDF has loaded. Not to mention that they obviously used different sites and files. They also started from the unlock screen instead of the home screen. You can't call something a recreation if you didn't even try to recreate the add.
Why didn't they actually try to recreate the add ? The iPhone is obviously not that fast over a 3G network (though it is that fast over a 802.11 connection in my experience). What is it about journalists that makes them think they need to exaggerate things that are already plenty bad?
Obvious to who? Someone who is seeing all these Apple ads and talking about how much "different" and "better" the iPhone is? Looking up an address without text entry? Might be "obvious" that there's some kind of "automagically linking addresses in text", or "copy and paste", but there's not, too. The selling point of this ad was just how, quote, "really really fast" everything was on an iPhone, except it's not, not anywhere near as fast as the ad implies.
...especially those who insult me, but to make it clear, it is not a question of the ad being truthful so much as PCPro being full of shit. If you cannot understand the difference, then you are the dense one. If I can recreate the series of actions in 48 secs on my first 'attempt' then PCPro is clearly distorting the 'truth'.
Unless you are simply biased, and note I am the first to say that the iPhone is not the second coming, to criticize any company's advertising on such a tiny, nit-picking issue is moronic. It is not like they said it will cook you breakfast. And I have no doubt I could pare down a few more seconds in order to have an actual 30 second commercial spot. AND they had a fucking disclaimer for christ sake...
Thanks for participating...
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
It's an ad about a $200+ phone, demonstrating how fast the phone is, but the performance displayed was beyond what the phone is physically capable of.
I don't think the burger comparison is even worth pursuing; that was a $5 burger at a fast food outlet, and theoretically an employee who took the time to make a good one could have given you a burger that looked like the advertised one.
It's more like if Dell advertised a laptop with hardware specs from 2 years ago and showed it playing Crysis at 40fps. When you got home and your frame rate was 10fps you wouldn't think "oh it's just an ad, I should have expected them to exaggerate the performance"
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
I just recently got to try out a Mac. It has been over a decade since the last time I used one. What shocked me most was just how crappy and unintuitive their UI was. Since UI is basically what Macs have used as their primary selling point since the beginning, I had just taken peoples word for it that it didn't suck. Hands down, it is the least intuitive UI have have ever used short of a command line.
Who doesn't? Went to Wendy's the other day and got a #2 combo because it looked pretty awesome on the order board.
Got back to the office and opened it up to discover something pretty gross looking, a mash of squashed bun and grey meat. Yum.
I actually worked at Wendy's back in high school, and we did a challenge once where we tried to make the food look like the 'order board' to use your words. Turns out its not that hard... but
1) You had to use fresh toasted buns straight off the toaster
2) You had to 'cherry pick' things like lettuce and tomatoes.
3) You had to have someone who really knew how to work 'grill' to get perfect looking meat.
4) Most importantly - you couldn't wrap it up. You had to serve it unwrapped. Wrapping ALWAYS squashes it to at least some degree, and meat drippings and condiment get spread to the wrapper.
That said, a significant percentage of burgers actually look a lot like the advertising, prior to wrapping, when made by competent staff.
So...I'm not saying Wendy's isn't false advertising, but in their case at least, the real food CAN actually look like the ads, even though it usually doesn't. So at least they aren't showing food that simply can't come out of their 'kitchens'.
The phrase "self-centered prick" comes to mind.
Nah, it's just that the negligible cost associated with producing each additional stream of packets of information really turns the internet into a socialized information utopia. See, I pay for my internet connection. You pay for yours. That should be it.
But the telcos are the ones really cashing in, as they have been ever since the first telegraph line. They have the capacity. The fiber is laid, and our monthly fees more than cover the depreciation and maintenance. They just don't want to give full access to you because they're a monopoly and they CAN charge whatever they want and make you think bandwidth is a scarce resource. After all they need to buy all those politicians to get their hands on every single communications medium out there, and to outlaw ones they couldn't possibly monopolize.
So they gouge you by charging an arm and a leg for those extra Mb/s, forcing you to look for revenue to cover this additional cost. But then you get greedy and say "well if I can cover my cost, I might as well make a profit too". Well you're welcome to try. I'm part of your cost of doing business, and I'm subsidized by the uninitiated. If you don't like it, block me. I'm sure there are others that provide the same service. Google is not that hard to use.
Sorry to be so frank, but that's the way it is - for now. When someone comes up with an "internet" where you HAVE to watch the ads, expect usage to disappear or expect something new to happen. People don't LIKE watching ads. First there was over the air TV, where you had no choice but to watch what was broadcast. Then came cable, where you had more choice as to what types of programming you wanted. Now there's the internet. Why should I pay $50 a month for 170 channels I don't want, when I can just download the episodes of my favorite show and watch it when I want instead of when the network feels like broadcasting? People want what they want and ONLY that.
Do you come to slashdot for the ads, or to engage in pseudo-intellectual arguments? Did you click on all the ads here?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Quantifying "goodness" hasn't really got much to do with it. Here are a few things to consider.
1. The main point of the ad, no the whole point of it was how fast the iPhone performed.
2. It is not a case of puffery, but appears to be an entirely formal and objective demonstration.
3. They used an edited video to show off the fast performance despite the fact that the phone is not capable of performing like that.
Not even mentionning that the iPhone used is not an iPhone 3G but an iPhone Edge (CPU speed and other factors actually do matter in these tests) and that the demo starts with the iPhone turned off in the PCPro demo. And they don't zoom with double tap, they go to "big" websites, etc...
I am not saying the Apple version was realistic, but hey, the PCPro one is just as biaised in the other direction.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
But they weren't just advertising it's features, they were advertising that the iPhone is "really fast" repeatedly while doing it. If the guy was talking about what he was doing without reference to the speed it'd be another matter. From the ASA, via the article: "We noted the voice-over claim "really fast" was used in conjunction with each of the functions shown in the visuals. Although we noted the on-screen text disclaimer, "network performance will vary by location", we considered that the visuals, in conjunction with the repeated use of the claim "really fast", were likely to lead viewers to believe that the device actually operated at or near to the speeds shown in the ad. Because we understood that it did not, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead."
Well duh, of course cell phones are not made this way, which is why the iPhone is so superior.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Please don't spread this around. I'm rather hoping that the advertising agencies take this as a "we're going to come down harder on misleading advertising" rebuke rather than a "you didn't use enough weasel words" rebuke. People like you might give them the wrong idea, no matter how true.
I don't think the burger comparison is even worth pursuing; that was a $5 burger at a fast food outlet, and theoretically an employee who took the time to make a good one could have given you a burger that looked like the advertised one.
Assuming said employee had access to toothpicks, Elmer's glue, food coloring, clear epoxy, road salt and black paint, I hope you meant. Food in commercials is constructed like skyscrapers.
Kind of related, about 10 years ago in Australia Telstra was heavily pushing satellite and radio based internet (no higher than 256kbps) to farmers. One of their ads showed the stereotypical farmer family giggling around the computer looking at a bunch of sheep drinking from a water trough somewhere on their farm in a web browser. High resolution, very high frame rate, dvd quality. On the quiet Telstra had their fingers burned big time for spewing such bullshit, a revised advert was shown with the same scene a few weeks later, but very pixelated and at about 1 frame per second.
Nice to see consumer watchdogs orgs doing their bit, even better to see them getting it right in technology fields. I'd like to think that the iPhone crap wouldn't fly in Australia, but times have changed. I've since moved to Asia where there are absolutely no laws at all that cover truth in advertising. Your iPhone looks even more absurd here.
It's an ad about a $200+ phone, demonstrating how fast the phone is,
I see it more as an ad demonstrating the variety of things it can do. As much as I hate apple, the misleading part appears to be a side effect in this case.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
Whatever it was, it wasn't "copy and paste." The iPhone can't do that.
Kid-proof tablet..
I thought the job of today's advertising is to warn smart people about what not to buy because it needs serious marketing dollars to move it off the shelves.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Indeed.
Further, it's pretty obvious why the commercial is really laid out in the fashion it is: It shows off far more features and how they work together than would be possible otherwise.
I'm all for truth in advertising, but only if we're going to apply the same higher standards to everyone. To me this judgement seems both absurd and targeted.
Last, what alternative are we pushing for with judgements like this? More ads that don't even really feature the product or service being pimped? I know which one I'd prefer.
-Matt
I don't think the burger comparison is even worth pursuing; that was a $5 burger at a fast food outlet, and theoretically an employee who took the time to make a good one could have given you a burger that looked like the advertised one.
As a member of the exclusive club of former fast-food employees, I can tell you that it's not only theoretically possible, but occasionally required! Fast food places are regularly audited by their parent company - if you're working the kitchen when corporate comes to audit, you'll be expected to assemble a burger that looks exactly like the advertisement, down to the placement of the pickles and those neat overlapping onions, in under 15 seconds. If you screw it up, the auditor will ream you, and show you how to do it right.
In Apple's case, no corporate auditor could have recreated that advertisement.
Legalize recreational marijuana. Seriously.