Apple and Truth in Advertising/Marketing
I take issue with Apple. I take issue with Apple for a number of reasons. If you've been on this site enough, or even around me enough, you will know that I generally tend to shy away from the trendy things in life. The trendy clothing, the trendy hair cuts and hair coloring, the must have shoes, or car, or even the most popular TV watching habits including TV shows and sports. Naturally, Apple tends to fall into this category. I gave it a go. I really did. I purchased a MacBook at one point. I fell it into the hype, the marketing, and the beauty of it all. I kept that MacBook for about 9 months.
Short of an HP laptop, that MacBook was the most troublesome piece of computer equipment I've ever owned. It would shut down on me randomly about twice a week. The commercials always indicated that their products were more stable, so I just thought it was something I had installed. I wiped the install and started fresh. Same thing. How could this be? I did a bit of digging and found the following: http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/apple-notebooks/37401-macbook-randomly-shuts-down.html
Amazing, they're susceptible to the exact same issues that any other computer is susceptible to. They aren't some magical piece of computer hardware like their commercials lead you to believe. The software? It was a pain in the ass to get it to connect to the network at school. Sure, I could connect if all I wanted to do was surf the Internet. Anything beyond that proved to be difficult. Mind you, I hear that things have changed and I'm sure they have, otherwise, Apple wouldn't have made it this long. That didn't help me back then, and it went against everything their ads indicated: Apple = easy
Today? Things haven't changed. Dare I say they've gotten worse on the advertising front.
Really? I'm pretty sure I can get the same apps on the Android market, the BlackBerry market, and the Windows Mobile Market. True, I can't get them on those phones through the Apple Market. The ad is extremely misleading in that it leads users to believe that they can only get those applications or features if they have an iPhone. While I've had some people tell me that there's no way people would think this, I'm here to say I've experienced it first hand. Sitting at a local bar one night with my husband, we listened to a group of people talking to someone with a BlackBerry, trying to explain to him why he needed to get an iPhone. They kept trying to tell him that he needed to get an iPhone because then he could get him personal email, surf the web, and have access to xyz applications. It made me sick. Apparently, I wasn't the only one. The guy with the BlackBerry was getting quite frustrated as well.
This is really the ad that set me off recently and lead me to this whole rant. If I don't have an iPhone, I can't have my favorite books in my pocket? Are you kidding me!?!?! It would have been one thing if Apple had stated "If you don't have an iPhone, you can't have your favorite iBooks in your pocket". I would have actually been ok with that because it would have been factual. This?! What about the Kindle app, Nook app, Google Books, Aldiko, etc.?
It is one thing to state the facts in such a manner that they favor your point. For instance, car companies tell you all about the awards that they've won in a specific category, how they have more vehicles with x mpg or better than any other in a specific category, etc, etc. Or take TV companies, they always market the strong feature of their particular product: how thin a tv is, how vivid the image is, a specific new technology that's unique to them. Or take other phone companies: they talk about their processors, 4G/LTE, screen type & size, camera specs, etc. While Apple did this to an extent, they never left it to this. They told blatant lies: saying you don't have your favorite books in your pocket? Saying you're not susceptible to viruses? It's one thing to take the facts and talk about them in such a way that they favor your points and your product. For instance: If you don't have an iPhone, you don't have the largest App store. I could understand that. Never mind that there are a ton of completely useless apps, never mind that you have to pay for the vast majority of those apps compared to the Android market. That's NOT a blatant lie. It's a statement of the facts in such a manner that it favors their product and NOT falsifying and twisting the truth to such an extent that it's no longer recognizable.
To brain wash people into seriously thinking that this is the case is bad business. It's no different than then saying that you can't get a virus on a Mac. You CAN get a virus on a Mac. The same vulnerabilities exist. The difference is that not as many people own them. If you're going to write a virus, you're going to write it for the masses. It's a low, low way of playing the game and frankly, it's why I can't stand Apple. Truth in advertising is important. As Americans we should expect this in our companies, and in our history, we have expected just this and thus have passed legislation to prevent just this kind of thing. Now, suddenly, it's deemed an ok business practice? Why?
Truth in advertising and truth in marketing. At what point did we as Americans throw out our morals and roll over to accept that falsehoods and twisted truths are ok? I guess it was the point at which we decided that stepping all over each other to make a buck was the American way. I'll have none of it. My morals won't allow it.
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