Apple slapped for dodgy ads
The Advertising Standards Authority has told Apple UK not to show an advert which suggested the iPhone contained "all parts of the internet" any more. The iPhone cannot access websites which use Java or Flash despite its claim that "all parts of the internet are on the iPhone". Two members of the public complained about the TV …
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Flash
Does it support the Flash videos on YouTube though? That's got to make up a big chunk of the Interweb right there.
Silly ASA
The ASA is wrong to assume that Flash is part of the web. The web is not even partly defined by Microsoft, Adobe or Sun. The ASA is wrong to presume prejudices falsely instilled by dominant companies to the disadvantage of consumers.
Re: Have a break...
If that video is in Flash, the iPhone might not be able to view it.
Oh, the ironing etc.
@messiah
had to try it straight away. rather posh, that site, plays without fail, though, and reasonable loading times(1-4s). It's a posh watch company, though, so what do we expect?
To the original issue: the usual buyer (or rather on credit hirer) of an iphone seems to me either the paris hilton type female or the 'look at the diameter of the exhaust on my Subaru' prematurely postadolescent male. There is a high demand in these circles for youtube, youp*rn, p*rntube, eywhatever as well as all kinds of p2p that they don't wanna mummy to find on the home pc.
so, yes, important bits of the internet.
lynx can access all parts, too.
the icoat, please.
Rampage!
Now we can go on an Ad dissecting rampage and invalidate 99.999999999% of all ads out there and if only 2 of us complain for each one, we are SURE to get rid of commercials ya!
@Neil Hoskins
Why the insistence it's something you think it's not???
Because it has the single best phone user interface in the world, with the EXCEPTION of a lack of cut and paste. After Palm OS, Windows Mobile and Linux smartphones, I have a decent experience base to make that claim. Nothing compares to the visual interface of the iPhone - and when you use it for a while, you just think, "HUH - how come nobody else thought of that paradigm?" Moving a large slider rather than trying to touch small parts of the screen to answer a call or unlock it, paging through icons by letting the whole screen slide left and right (and even show physics by bouncing!), moving icons by pressing and watching them jiggle to show they are now moveable? You don't need a bloody stylus, you can do most things with one finger, and best of all NO freakin' cascading menus on a touch screen.
OK, I miss cut and paste, but agree that it is a difficult thing to do well without a stylus or keys from a UI perspective. It hasn't made me want to throw it out the window however, like MS Mobile's menus small buttons did on my three HTC phones...
@ Webster
"...every banking site I've ever tried..."
So you, Webster Phreaky, have an iPhone?
I think I need to go and lie down.
Black helicopter: Where's the real Webster Phreaky?
definitions and misinderstanding
Java is not the internet, nor is flash. It is an application API, not a website. The site loads, we can access it, but the application embedded in it, which is actualy compiled code, will not run wiothout that addition. You can access every website on the iPhone. Whether the site operator chooses to publish in the industry supported HTML versions, or have flash only support has nothing to do with the phone's ability to get there.
btw, IE can not access the whole internet either by the ASAs determination, nor can any browser on earth for that matter, even with additions of flash and a hundred other plug-ins. In fact, IE can't be used at me.com, but firefox, opera, and safari all can, not just apple's proprietary browser. Nothing BUT IE can go to microsoft.com anymore and access actual content without installing silverlight, which is available to noone else.
You can get the whole internet, but you can not get all the CONTENT that's on it that uses PROPRIETARY protocols.
also, flash IS coming to the iPhone soon enough, and I expe ct java might actually get there first. If the iPhone is more powerful that a PSP, and computers less powerful than that can run flash, the iPhone can too. It's just a matter of integrating it so it's not ALLWAYS running in the background.
Why is it...
that every time there is an ASA ruling on anything there are two main responses on El Reg...
1) But they still wont go after the ISPs (I understand this)
2) But this is totally wrong. I work in IT therefore I know all about these things and I am right. I don't care about what the general public think, they are wrong.
I think you will find the ASA are not there to judge if an advert is WC3 compliant (You know what I mean by that), but if it is likely to mislead the public. As far as most people are concerned there are allot of websites they want to use which contain Flash and Java, and probably think FTP is a type of STD.
We all know you probably didn't get laid until you were in your mid 40s, but this kind of willy waving "look how clever I am" is not helping you. It’s probably what caused that situation in the first place.
Yet Virgin get away with it
So, because it lacks two particular plugins, Apple get slapped down - yet Virgin are allowed to keep lying about their cable modems being "fibre optic broadband", on the pathetic excuse that their network backbone is fibre optic (just like every ADSL provider) and "only" the "final mile" connection is copper (again, just like every ADSL provider). Equally, "unlimited" is apparently allowed to include all sorts of limits, and confusing bits with bytes is OK, because that's "only" exaggerating the capacity by a factor of eight.
I wonder how they'd react to a complaint about themselves, on the basis they clearly have no standards?
The worst is that you are NOT ALLOWED to install it
Java and Flash are free yo download (Java is even GPL now)
BUT the Apple's license terms for the SDK doesn't allow anyone to create a IPhone port for those technologies.
I'm OK for not having java/flash out of the box, but banding people to install it????
JD
@N1AK
Unfortunately, with an increase of market share and further public awareness, regardless of how minor, the direct result is people rip into for everything that they possibly can.
The world is in recession but apple are booming. Expect jealousy, and expect people to slate them for more. This is just the beginning.
@Robert Hill
can i say that you all your comments should be ignored for a serious use or the word paradigm.
and using a big slider to unlock phone is "so much" easier then flipping my phone open or sliding it up like i do now sorry i'll stick to mW910i i can live with out the gizmos and i'm old enough to keep my porn on my laptop and no one cares.
(hell no one cared if i had porn when i was sixteen.)
they should of been done for the "really fast " bit as i'll never ever got the top 3g speeds with any phone or a 3G card and especially if it trns out it's really not quite 3g
So if there's no flash
how come YouTube and BBC iPlayer work so well?
@James Bassett
I think you will find that not all banking websites NEED Javascript, though the ones that don't need it, still have it to do twiddly bits. The Cooperative Bank is one of these, and they aren't the only ones. Their site doesn't need JAVA either, so provided your browser supports 128 bit https and cookies it should work.
Ev'rybody! Ev'rybody!
The only reason for flash is Homestar Runner (and Strongbad), but I can watch those on my MacBook. Other than that, the biggest annoyance I have with my iPhone is that the SMS app seems to take ages to load and I'd like to have quicker access to the WiFi on-off setting and the brightness setting.
@Michael C
just been to me.com with my ie6sp2. Ok, didn't go first time. After changing the user agent to firefox 9.3 it works and i could sign up (which I didn't).
I don't think they're using anything special (although I haven't looked through the website), they are just reading your agent string and redirect.
Can some russian car maker design a light commercial vehicle, please?
@Mike Groombridge
Sorry Mikey, but do you actually KNOW what a paradigm is???
$0.10.
And yes, using a big visual slider is a major UI issue on a phone that actually has a touchscreen, not some downmarket little clamshell that answers when opened. And you need that giant touchscreen to have a true web-capable phone, not some small little 1.5" screen that you can barely see text in. Like it sounds yours is...
Internet? Or World Wide Web?
Bet it doesn't do FTP either or, to haul up a real oldie moldie, Gopher. Nor NNTP.
Must have been a long afternoon in the ad office...
"OK Steve, we're going to do movie tie-in ads, worked for Orange, it'll work for us! Now imagine, a desert landscape, two suns low on the horizon, little figures in dark robes stand in front of an enormous iPhone mounted on treads, lots of robots lined up out fornt. Alec Guiness voice-overs "These little fellows" (waddya mean he's dead? Offer him double) sorry about that "These little fellows are Javas, they provide the best droids on the intern- oh. It doesn't? You're sure? OK OK OK, I got another one. Space battle! Lasers! Big jock guy, girl dressed in harem gear. Heavy drums on soundtrack DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM FLASH! Ah-ahhhh! Saviour of the inter- it doesn't do that either? What the hell does it do? It makes phone calls and the screen flips when you turn it sideways? Jeez, no wonder you need a decent ad campaign..."
Good to see Apple don't give a fcuk
Saw the ad on TV lastnight (Wednesday). Still "surfing faster than before" yabba yabba yawn.
@Peter
Thanks for the dilbert.com/fast link! An absolute lifesaver.
Here's hoping they keep it...
@ Ivan Headache
BBC and YouTube provide Quicktime alternatives of all the content that the iPhone is able to decode. The iPhone does not support Flash. It's never likely too either. Anyone following the Adobe development blogs will know that Adobe currently have no plans, or real incentive, for making a Flash player for iPhone. Apple aren't pushing for it either probably because it would just drain the battery so fast (Flash is pretty intensive). As the Flash player isn't open source, nobody else can make a Flash player for the iPhone legally (without paying a hefty license fee to Adobe I guess). I'd love to see Flash on the iPhone, but I doubt it'll happen.
@Michael C
I hope you've read through the comments, noticed what dreadful scathe said and feel silly.
Can the iPhone usefully access IRC, FTP, NNTP, or any of the other non proprietary protocols that are available through the internet?
I doubt it. Apple has been caught on this one.
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