Name One Company Other Than Apple That Can Get Away With This Much Lying

// April 8th, 2010 // Gadgets

Now don’t take the title of this article in a bad way. No. Far from that. Actually, I have tons of admiration for Apple for being able to pull this off without customers screaming their heart out that the company is just feeding them one lie after another and deciding to boycott the hell out of it.

Disclaimer: I’m writing this article from my Macbook, with my iPod Touch on the couch beside me. So you know I’m not a hater. I don’t have an iPhone though, I have a Nokia N97 Mini and I’m an active writer in the Symbian Blogosphere.

Let’s go back, what, 3 years has it been now?! Yes, 3 years I think, and a few months give or take. Rewind to Apple’s positions on the iPhone 1st gen launch.

  • Apple claim #1: You don’t need 3G. Edge is fast enough.
  • Apple claim #2: You don’t need native apps. Web apps are the future.
  • Apple claim #3: You don’t need GPS. Cell triangulation is super accurate.
  • Apple claim #4: Menu & Folder organization is over complicated. Make it simple with only icons.
  • Apple claim #5: You don’t need multitasking. Our system remembers where you left off when you relaunch.
  • Apple claim #6: You don’t need a physical keyboard. The on-screen keyboard is faaaaaast and accurate.

Fast forward to when Apple released their SDK for apps. Forgive me, I don’t remember the date, I have more important things to keep in my tiny memory-head, but it was like 3-5 months after the launch of iPhone 1st gen.

  • Apple UNclaim #2: Web apps are crap. Native apps are the way to go. Go! Go! Go!

Fast forward to the iPhone 3G announcement, like 14 months after the first iphone announcement.

  • Apple UNclaim #1: Edge is SLOW. 3G is FAST. Get the 3G!
  • Apple UNclaim #3: Cell triangulation is OK, but true GPS is much more accurate.

And somewhere along the line:

  • Apple sort-of UNclaim #5: we’re doing push notifications so that you can sort-of multitask.

Then to the iPhone OS 4.0 announcement, just today.

  • Apple UNclaim #4: Folders for the menu ROCK. They let you organize your apps so easily.
  • Apple UNclaim #5: Multitasking is crucial to have, but has to be done right. Oh right, so multitasking was always essential, but you didn’t know how to do it, so you told me it wasn’t necessary?!

And I wonder when they will UNclaim #6 and release an iPhone Pro with a slide out QWERTY. It has to be done. Just for the sake of continuing the lie cycle. It’s hard to believe they’d tell the truth, even once.

Now add to those 5 claims their patchy position on Copy/Paste, Video recording, MMS, Turn-by-Turn navigation, Bluetooth accessories… and you have a pretty good idea of the massive public lying that Apple has been doing over the last 3 years.

And they get away with it!

As a matter of fact, they lie and people defend the lie. They change their point of view, and people defend the new position. It’s like a massive global hypnosis. It’s amazing. Staggering. ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY MIND-BLOWING!

For that alone, I respect Apple. To be able to pull that out is nothing short of phenomenal.

Moral of the story: if you’re a company and people don’t believe you when you lie, then you probably suck even at telling the truth. If you change your position and people don’t defend you, then you probably suck at being able to convince people of your opinion, whatever it is.

Put that into perspective and every company in the world, save for Apple, sucks at both of these and always will. The keyword being ALWAYS. It’s irreversible. Once a no-liar, always a no-liar.

  • http://twitter.com/hooker1uk Paul H

    These lies are why a few of us would rather dip our heads in boiling hot chipfat than buy an apple iphone/ipod touch

    Paul

  • Nick

    …and how many companies backdate most if not all of the new features to phones 2 year old or more.
    Certainly not Nokia, come the summer my 3GS will feel like a new device again, what will my N97 Mini feel like? even more outdated than it feels today I expect.
    Only thing you can hope for is that Nokia will take not and release a Symbian^3 firmware for it, but I am not that optimistic.

  • Nick

    ….oh at take a look at the original promo video for the N97 and then compare it to what was released, then take another look after you have updated to the latest firmware, still doesn’t come close to the N97 in the promo video.
    Who are the liars now!!

  • mk2fac3

    The thing is, times change. Network speeds grow, and consumers demand. People weren’t really asking for all of this stuff until after the iPhone initially launched.

    guess what! All corporations change their business decisions on a daily basis. Why are you so mad?

  • http://cmahr.wordpress.com/2010/04/08/name-one-company-other-than-apple-that-can-get-away-with-this-much-lying-the-dotsisx-blog/ Name One Company Other Than Apple That Can Get Away With This Much Lying | The Dotsisx Blog « cwm p.o.v.

    [...] Name One Company Other Than Apple That Can Get Away With This Much Lying « The Dotsisx Blog. [...]

  • http://myexistence.inacurate.com Inacurate

    Great article! :)

    mk2fac3(Sup man!): Yes, times change and so does device usage. The issue I have is how Apple markets the “lack of” these features, how consumers gloss over the lack of them and then later when they are later added to an Apple product, utterly ignore what was said and why they were not originally included!

    Nick: Apple has to fit *everything* into their ecosystem “their way” and if they can’t do it, they simply say it’s for your benefit or it’s not needed and give a reason other than the truth; they can’t control your usage habits if they introduced that “right now” or it would give their products the perception of being no better than the rest. My point, and my long way of getting around to it, is that Apple has *two* product architectures to design for in the mobile market. iPod’s and iPhone’s. Within the iPhone domain, since they 100% control the experience by having one handset, designing and updating for it is a lot easier than Nokia.

  • Brendan

    ….oh at take a look at the original promo video for the N97 and then compare it to what was released, then take another look after you have updated to the latest firmware, still doesn’t come close to the N97 in the promo video.
    Who are the liars now!!

    Frankly this is no worse than Apples infamous TV ads which were banned by Advertising Standards (in the UK). If you were fool enough to think it might actually work like in the video, then well…

  • Ricky

    You forgot “No one reads books.”

  • Random Gemini

    Here’s three to start off with.

    Nokia:

    http://www.mobileinc.co.uk/2010/03/nokia-n97-promotional-video-vs-real-life/

    Motorola:
    http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/personnel/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=216500429

    Microsoft:
    http://boycottnovell.com/2010/04/03/windows-7-battery-issues-confirmed/

    Need we go on?

    Apple did change its mind on those issues based on consumer demand. Apple never promised consumers anything that did not intend to deliver.

    Apple may have been WRONG about some things… but they did not lie.

  • Acsteffy87

    we are mad because Apple new all along that their next device would include these things. Apple excludes things from current devices to give you an incentive to buy the next device. And they are doing this with the iPad as well. I would bet my nexus one, iPhone and HD2 on Apple releasing the iPad 2g with a camera, and then the iPad 3g with a frontfacing camera. It’s all about money and i dont hold that against them. It just sucks that we can have it all right now when we know they could do it.

  • Paul V

    Great article!

    I bet they bring kinda lame upgrade to the “series” when summer comes, like snapdragon and so on, what you don’t really need.(Tho enthusiasts need)
    Slider would be interesting, but I still don’t care.
    Don’t want iTunes crap and so on to my PC!

    They will continue their dirty marketing.

  • http://www.thoughtsfromhell.net Michael Hell

    that was spot on rita, fantastic read!!
    and an iphone with Qwerty.. mmhh..

  • http://afzalnaj.deviantart.com/ Afzal Najam

    Comprehensively owned!
    Short and to the point…the point of proving that Apple/Steve Jobs is a blatant liar and misleads people with its ads.

    Signed,
    The most badass Apple hater there is

  • http://twitter.com/CGiboi CGiboi

    Too bad a post like this will never appear in TechCrunch, Gizmodo or Engadget. Maybe they’re on the payroll or are duped like the rest of us.

    Disclaimer: I own only an iPod Classic (160GB) and considering buying an iPod Touch. Other than that I’m a PC (and everything that goes with that). So you can call me a hater, but I’m not.

  • http://gerrymoth.co.uk/?p=121 gerrymoth » iPhone OS 4 Coming Soon

    [...] FIRST speech” and said Apple are the 1st with true multitasking, I beg to differ and so does Dotsisx (Rita), well worth a read [...]

  • http://www.mobileinc.co.uk Murat

    So here’s the thing, consumers don’t give a shit because they get a shiney phone that works well and has a good user experience.

    Apple aren’t exactly lying here are they, lying would be telling you the iPhone has MMS but selling it without it enabled. They are just changing their opinion, that’s not a lie.

    Whether these changes such as MMS, Multi-tasking etc are down to demand or because they have ensured that the best possible experience can be had before releasing it to the public, at least they work.

    Can you say that for my Nokia E71, N96, etc that came with software so buggy that it crippled the features of the phone? I constantly got auto-messages from Nokia saying they apologised for Nokia Push Messaging not working. I would much rather Nokia waited before releasing a pile of shit which had a detrimental effect on me purchasing their future handsets.

  • Taomyn

    But it doesn’t matter for the likes of Nokia i.e. non crApple, because in 12 months many if not most people out side of the US can simply upgrade their handset at little or no cost for a shiny new model with the extra features. For most Iphone users, they’re locked in for 2 years and paying nearly twice as much for the privilege.

  • http://myexistence.inacurate.com Inacurate

    Lies of omissions are still lies.

    http://dlbates.com/iherd – Little article I wrote the other day to get some laughs.

    The real sad part is, it’s so true that it hurts me there are consumers like that out there.

    Take Apple’s iPhone 4.0 OS and look at the first line of this article(http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/04/08/iphone.os.wired/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn): “Apple unveiled details of its next-generation iPhone operating system Thursday” – They added multi-tasking and the ability to set wallpapers on the home screen. How is that “next-generation” by ANY stretch when those two “features” have been around for over five years on other devices?

    News agencies and other Apple-biased blogs, consumers, etc. are always talking *just like that* and it gives those of us who HAVE A BRAIN, a headache. Apple is perceived in most cases, and wrongly so, to have “invented” or “been the first” to introduce something and they just aren’t. There is rarely any mention of Apple “finally” catching up with the other companies when that is exactly what is happening, like now with iPhone 4.0 OS.

    It’s presented and perceived as “innovative and ground-breaking” and THAT is why Apple lies. They are anything but, yet their “fanboys” gloss over the very clear facts in most situations and accept what Apple spits out as fact, take multi-tasking for example.

    That is *not* multi-tasking. If it freezes anything in the background, it’s not MULTI-tasking, now is it? If you are playing a game or video and send it to the background, is it going to continue running or be put into a frozen state? Regardless of whether or not that is a good or bad thing, a frozen state means it is not running the application. Which therefor means it is not multi-tasking. Very clear.

  • http://www.vinitneo.com vinitneo

    nice post…..which device do you use more – N97 mini or iPod?

  • Lauri

    What’s funny is that most of these comments corroborate this article. Whenever someone dares to call Apple out, loads of fans appear to defend its lies. Apple says “no, you don’t need 3G” and all fans repeat “yeah, I really don’t need 3G, EDGE is fast enough and there are lots of wifi hotspots”. Then Apple names its next iPhone the 3G! And nobody says “hey, wait a minute!”.

  • http://laurelrusswurm.wordpress.com/ Laurel L. Russwurm

    The last time I had any close-up and personal Apple experience it was with the Lisa. My husband was given an ipod years ago and the battery has been dead for years now, but he pugs it in to the car stereo to listen to podcasts. (Since we don’t approve of throwing things out because we can’t change the battery, I doubt there will be another. My son’s off brand MP#player is a better machine.)

    I think proprietary is bad. I think planned obsolescence is worse.

    But what I find most frightening is that fact that Apple’s cult following. People writing articles that may not be boosting Apple are compelled to say that they are not a “hater”. This sounds more like an abusive relationship than a business relationship.

    Excuse me? Apple is a company. Yes it makes good products (far more expensively than other companies every time I’ve looked) but it exists to make money. Apple is not altruistic.

    Apple fans can be loyal, and stick up for Apple all they want, but apple will never be their friend.

  • http://thinkgeek.com.au/42744/my-take-on-iphone-os-4-0/ My Take On iPhone OS 4.0 — Think Geek Australia

    [...] don’t need the requested feature, that the way Apple says to do it is the best.  There is a great blog post on Dotsix Blog detailing all of the “lies” and times Apple has tried to convince users their [...]

  • niall

    I don’t think apple lied at all (i’m a nokia fan) . I Think those were just Job’s excuses about the iphone.

    I wouldn’t mind buying apple products and actually think they are good. It’s just that I don’t want to have something associated with arrogance (Jobs) and rabid apple fanboys/girls.

  • apple stoers

    I don?t usually reply to posts but I will in this case. Good Stuff – Nice Tech Ideas too:)

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