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Apple Gives In, Drops iPad '4G' Tag To Avoid Lawsuits
Back in March, Apple was sued in Australia and criticized in Europe over its marketing of the iPad as supporting 4G speeds when it only did so in the U.S. and Canada. Now, reader TheGift73 writes with news that Apple has given in and changed the 'Wi-Fi + 4G' label to 'Wi-Fi + Cellular.' From the article:
"In the U.K., a number of complaints by customers pushed the ASA into acting against Apple for its misleading advertisements. The regulator had received 'dozens of complaints' from customers, and had pushed for Apple to remove any mentions of '4G' from its websites. It should come as little surprise considering Britain has yet to see its mobile networks divide up its 4G spectrum without bickering furiously about it. Some networks had even opted to avoid litigation directed at them by including stickers to inform potential buyers that the new iPad will not work on existing 4G networks, or even 4G networks that don't even exist yet. This should come as bittersweet news for consumers. Apple has already sold millions of iPads across the U.K., Europe and Australia, while the vast majority are unaware that they will not be able to connect to high-speed mobile broadband networks."
Americans are slowly waking up to the fact that their mobile networks, internet access, and communications facilities are all crap compared to the rest of the world. Just wait until they find out that a farmer in rural China can get better cell phone service and a cheaper plan than they can in one of the large US cities...
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Just because a device has a certain feature, doesn't mean you can use it. That is especially true if it relies upon external services that may not be available in a particular region. It should be the consumer's responsibility to ensure that they meet the requirements to use those features.
But consumers like to play dumb and, at the rate that things are going, we are going to have some absurd situations. I mean, just imagine the day when printer manufacturers have to stop advertising their printers as colour. After all, colour isn't visible when you are looking at a printout in a darkened room.
Nobody in Australia calls mobile phones cellphones, so most consumers aren't going to have a clue what Cellular means.
AT&T has no LTE footprint at all here in Oregon. Yet Apple can still sell the iPad LTE here and call it that. Why? Because if/when AT&T finally brings LTE here, the device will work on it.
I get the whole "consumers walking out of the store thinking they have LTE service" thing. Seems like the simple solution is just to call it an "LTE Ready" device. You've got the LTE modem, and you're ready for the service.
I know this is supposed to be an "Apple is evil" issue but imagine with all the standards trying to roll out a worldwide product? Is it an attempt to deceive or that support to local networks is lagging behind? Is it a matter of time or an issue that can't be corrected with the current product? There are simply too many standards to expect everyone to support every standard or local system. The advertising department is at fault for boasting of local support that doesn't exist but it's hard to say how intentional it was for the parent company.
Now if only they'd get rid of the fake "4G" tag the iPhone 4S has on AT&T. It's barely faster than the "3G" on the iPhone 4, and isn't real "4G" by any means.
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AFIK, none in production. Many lab environments but REAL 4G does not exist in Commercial Production yet.
LTE is not 4G.
LTE-A is.
IEEE 802.16m/WiMAX 2 is.
4G is standardized and will make things better but differences in Frequency usage across the planet will still cause some roaming issues.
Multi band phones will help but still...
There are still kinks to sort out with 4G..Antenna Tech among others...to get the bandwidth required to meet 4G specs.
Plus, there are no real 4G handsets out as yet either...the LTE handsets are just LTE handsets..not 4G.
Presently, many markets are using LTE just for data.
4G should and will also allow Voice over LTE...then that will be true 4G.
Till then, we stuck on 3.9G !
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"Apple has already sold millions of iPads across the U.K., Europe and Australia, while the vast majority are unaware that they will not be able to connect to high-speed mobile broadband networks."
Have any citation for the bald assertion that the vast majority of iPad owners don't know their iPad won't be able to connect to high-speed mobile broadband networks?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Now if only they'd get rid of the fake "4G" tag the iPhone 4S has on AT&T. It's barely faster than the "3G" on the iPhone 4, and isn't real "4G" by any means.
Except that it's 4-5x times faster than the "3G" on the Verizon network, so while it's not as fast as LTE it does seem like there's some room for calling it something other than what Verizon called their dog-slow pre-LTE "3G" network. This wasn't Apple's call, anyway... AT&T's HSPA+ network has the "official" 4G designation so it's as "4G" as anything. You'll have to look specifically for "LTE" if you want that speed.
E pluribus unum
Like when I bought my 4G phone from Verizon. They made no bones about the fact that at the time, there was no 4G service in my city. They told me when it was scheduled to be there, and where else I might use it. However it was a device that had the necessary features to use a network they were building. They didn't sell me a phone that would only do 4G in Japan or something. They could truthfully market a 4G device as it had the necessary hardware, the network did exist in some of the US, and they were building it out to this area soon (came about 3 months after I got the phone).
This is about Australia, not America.
Now price aside (my employer pays for my phone so I dunno what it costs), I get pretty badass wireless speeds in America. I have a 4G phone and it works great. Get about 20-25mbps on speed tests. That'll probably drop as more people get 4G phones but still, that is cable modem kind of speeds on the cell network.
This isn't a theoretical speed, this is in actual testing. 4G service is being rolled out nicely in the US, by Verizon at least.
The problem of worldwide LTE-support is that there are like 20 different frequencies used. For GSM/UMTS you just had to support four or five, but for LTE, it's a big bag of snafu.
I know that this change must have been excruciating for Apple to do, as being seen to listen to their customers must rub them the wrong way.
But for this I congratulate Apple for this historic event. It was excruciatingly hard, but it was needed.
*claps*
unless it is profitable and stands a chance in court.
And this one does not: you could not sell a phone "with charger" either, if the charger is for the wrong voltage. What ever happened to common sense?
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Much like HD televisions, the majority of which until quite recently were never used with HD media even when it was available, 4G seems like something that a purchaser either knows what it is at a technical level or they are blissfully unaware of it. Anyone with the interest to know what 4G is, knows that buying an iPad won't make it magically become available. There were plenty of technologically averse people (Apple customers I likes to call'em) swanning about the place, mentally gloating that their iPad was giving them an extra G's worth of data speed over the sorry Samsung users around them. All this litigation, fiery brand-waving and angry mobs is only serving to burst the smug bubble around these previously content consumers. It isn't hurting Apple (certainly not in any way reflected in their stock price) but it's hurting a lot of hipsters' feelings.
disclaimer: I am a very happy iPad owner. But I only use it ironically.
It's not PAL TV in SECAM country, it's PAL-N in PAL-B country. There are 4G LTE towers in Australia and other devices advertised as 4G in Australia are able to use them. iPad is advertised as 4G, but can't.
It's still just LTE, which is not 4G. So, it only makes sense to rebrand it (and all of it's other "4G" products) worldwide as "cellular," since none of them support 4G.
If it is advertised as a Color TV, surely that would be misleading?
http://mashable.com/2011/07/14/4g-confusion-study/ 34% of iPhone Users Think They Have 4G [STUDY] July 14, 2011 by Charlie White
Snitching on snitches isn't snitching because two takeaways is an add and anyway you got cooties so yahboosucks with knobs on.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
+1 for realizing this could be a false flag operation.
And you'd be wrong, because the law does not say what you want it to say - it says what it says.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Go read the BBB entries for the referenced organization, cross reference that with what you can find with a couple of cursory Google queries, then come back and tell me it's a false flag operation. On the slim to none chance that it is, they still appear to deserve some serious attention.
On a side note, it's once again entirely depressing to see how the BBB actually operates with regard to horrendous behavior on the part of participating businesses.
Write failed: Broken pipe