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Apple Forced To Clean Up Its Fine Print
Barence writes "Apple has been forced to tidy up its online terms and conditions, at the behest of the UK's Office of Fair Trading. The company has redrafted its Ts & Cs so that it now accepts liability for faulty or misdescribed goods sold from its website or the iTunes store. Apple must also ensure that its conditions are 'drafted in plain or intelligible language' and that they 'do not potentially allow changes to be made to products and prices after an agreement is made.'"
Different thing, the clause is wider and it is telling you not to use the software for very mission critical applications:
* This software is not designed or intended for use in on-line control of
* aircraft, air traffic, aircraft navigation or aircraft communications; or in
* the design, construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear
* facilit. Licensee represents and warrants that it will not use or
* redistribute the Software for such purposes.
http://java.sun.com/applets/jdk/1.4/demo/applets/Clock/Clock.java
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Is it me or do Apple get in trouble in the UK a lot?
More a case of whenever Apple get in trouble it tends to be over-reported. Ads get pulled all the time. Also, its largely driven by how many "members of the public" complain.
Have they really not bothered to hire any UK lawyers?
The ASA is an independent industry regulator enforcing a "code of conduct" so the law doesn't necessarily come in to it.
However, no, I don't think Apple really understands the way advertising works in the UK: a prestige brand like Apple is supposed to give us 40 seconds of entertainment with a "pack shot" at the end. If you make specific claims about the product, people will check (if a cosmetics firm says "8 out of 10 women in our survey said they felt younger looking" then they better have those stats). Knocking the competitor's product really isn't cricket and is fairly rare. I notice that although Apple initially made UK versions of the "I'm a Mac" ads (with a British comedy duo) that didn't last long.
On the other hand, Apple also think that a British keyboard is an American keyboard with the # key replaced by a £ sign. Twits.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.