And I'm quite confident that the lawsuit would've been thrown out if Apple's advertisements said "Sorry, but battery life cannot be guaranteed because equipment wears out, and that's life."
The article in question doesn't do the best job of highlighting the issue of misrepresentation in advertising, but that's what this suit is really about.
There's another response that equates this suit to trying to sue GM over an empty fuel tank. Wouldn't a more appropriate comparison would be suing GM for advertising a car as getting 30 miles to the gallon if a gallon never gets you further than 10 miles.
I'm extremely skeptical of advertisements, and everyone else should be, too. But does the gullibility of consumers mitigate Apple's responsibility to sell products that can back up the claims they make in their advertisements?
IANAL, but if the ad says "Your iPod (or new GM car, or whatever) will make you the envy of all of your friends", that's called puffery, and it's legal even if it doesn't perform as advertised. The reasoning is that it's a highly subjective claim in the first place.
If the ad says "Your iPod (car, whatever) will perform in this or that measurable way", and it does not perform in this or that measurable way, that's false advertising. That's an objective claim and I might have used it to choose the product over others. You're not obligated to believe it's "your fault" if someone gets your money by lying to you.
Telling the difference between puffery and verifiable claims is the responsibility of the consumer. That's life. Convincing people to buy your product without making false claims is the responsibility of the advertiser. I don't see battery life as falling in the grey area.
For what it's worth, I tried out RealUser when it was in the news, specifically because I group myself with the other people here who say "I never remember faces in real life, so this isn't for me."
A few times since then (and just now), each time after months of not giving a single thought to PassFaces, I've logged in to prove that it wouldn't work for me. I assumed that I was too much of a geek to remember a sequence of faces. The fact is, I've logged in successfully on the first try every time.
The point is not: ... that this is a brand new idea. It's not. It's been around, and there is more than one proof-of-concept implementation. ... that text-mode console users will love this. They won't. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'd never use it. But no one cares. I'm not in the target userbase anyway, because I'm already good at remembering passwords. ... that this is only for people who remember the names of the people they meet at the bar. I never remember names. Luckily, this is more like remembering that you're supposed to remember the name for a specific face. ("Click the faces that would embarass you most if they remembered your name.") ... that users will create stupid authentication keys no matter what. That seems like a problem with the MS technology as it's described, but it doesn't seem inevitable. RealUser, for instance, is arguably superior in this respect. The RealUser face-sequence is system-generated and (presumably) more random than any of my user-chosen alphanumeric passwords.
Offered as an option alongside alphanumeric passwords in technologies with a large population of less-than-tech-savvy users, image-based authentication seems likely to result in lowered use of "remember password" checkboxes and/or "forgot my password" tech support calls. Most technologies that have such a userbase require a graphical interface in the first place.
The weakness of this authentication method against shoulder-surfing is my biggest complaint. Again, RealUser seems better poised to address this problem. Both RealUser and the MS solution will require images to be displayed. However, since RealUser doesn't care where I click within an image, they could change the selection method to a keyboard-based one to make the shoulder-surfing threat more similar to the same threat against alphanumeric passwords.
In my opinion, the most interesting thing about this article is the fact that "Researchers at Microsoft Corp." are making news by "[working] on new types of passwords". I, and others here, already tried the technology they're working on over a year ago and in a form arguably superior to the one the article describes.
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And I'm quite confident that the lawsuit would've been thrown out if Apple's advertisements said "Sorry, but battery life cannot be guaranteed because equipment wears out, and that's life."
The article in question doesn't do the best job of highlighting the issue of misrepresentation in advertising, but that's what this suit is really about.
There's another response that equates this suit to trying to sue GM over an empty fuel tank. Wouldn't a more appropriate comparison would be suing GM for advertising a car as getting 30 miles to the gallon if a gallon never gets you further than 10 miles.
I'm extremely skeptical of advertisements, and everyone else should be, too. But does the gullibility of consumers mitigate Apple's responsibility to sell products that can back up the claims they make in their advertisements?
IANAL, but if the ad says "Your iPod (or new GM car, or whatever) will make you the envy of all of your friends", that's called puffery, and it's legal even if it doesn't perform as advertised. The reasoning is that it's a highly subjective claim in the first place.
If the ad says "Your iPod (car, whatever) will perform in this or that measurable way", and it does not perform in this or that measurable way, that's false advertising. That's an objective claim and I might have used it to choose the product over others. You're not obligated to believe it's "your fault" if someone gets your money by lying to you.
Telling the difference between puffery and verifiable claims is the responsibility of the consumer. That's life. Convincing people to buy your product without making false claims is the responsibility of the advertiser. I don't see battery life as falling in the grey area.
For what it's worth, I tried out RealUser when it was in the news, specifically because I group myself with the other people here who say "I never remember faces in real life, so this isn't for me."
... that this is a brand new idea. It's not. It's been around, and there is more than one proof-of-concept implementation.
... that text-mode console users will love this. They won't. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'd never use it. But no one cares. I'm not in the target userbase anyway, because I'm already good at remembering passwords.
... that this is only for people who remember the names of the people they meet at the bar. I never remember names. Luckily, this is more like remembering that you're supposed to remember the name for a specific face. ("Click the faces that would embarass you most if they remembered your name.")
... that users will create stupid authentication keys no matter what. That seems like a problem with the MS technology as it's described, but it doesn't seem inevitable. RealUser, for instance, is arguably superior in this respect. The RealUser face-sequence is system-generated and (presumably) more random than any of my user-chosen alphanumeric passwords.
A few times since then (and just now), each time after months of not giving a single thought to PassFaces, I've logged in to prove that it wouldn't work for me. I assumed that I was too much of a geek to remember a sequence of faces. The fact is, I've logged in successfully on the first try every time.
The point is not:
Offered as an option alongside alphanumeric passwords in technologies with a large population of less-than-tech-savvy users, image-based authentication seems likely to result in lowered use of "remember password" checkboxes and/or "forgot my password" tech support calls. Most technologies that have such a userbase require a graphical interface in the first place.
The weakness of this authentication method against shoulder-surfing is my biggest complaint. Again, RealUser seems better poised to address this problem. Both RealUser and the MS solution will require images to be displayed. However, since RealUser doesn't care where I click within an image, they could change the selection method to a keyboard-based one to make the shoulder-surfing threat more similar to the same threat against alphanumeric passwords.
In my opinion, the most interesting thing about this article is the fact that "Researchers at Microsoft Corp." are making news by "[working] on new types of passwords". I, and others here, already tried the technology they're working on over a year ago and in a form arguably superior to the one the article describes.