back to article Apple ditches video evidence

Apple has expunged videos of competing cellphones exhibiting comparative reception problems, perhaps hoping that if it can just stop talking about the problem then everyone will forget it happened. Having told everyone that the iPhone 4 doesn't have reception problems, and that every cellphone exhibits the same symptoms, Apple …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Common Sense Kicking In?

    Has someone taken the Apple PR team out over the weekend, put them up against a wall and shot them? (A better fate than most PR teams deserve IMHO)

    This is what Apple should have done in the first place, rather than increasing the shit storm of controversy around their new product, they should have just kept their heads down and quetly got on with fixing the problem. Of course I'm making a major assumption that this is what they are now doing....

    1. Eponymous Howard
      Boffin

      Let me guess...

      ....you're not a PR professional.

      Apples objective: to change the narrative while making it clear that it will, if necessary, fight dirty (without ever being so crass as to say that).

      Job done.

      Of course, if Jobs hadn't been such an arsehole in the first place, this hoo-ha *may* not have happened, But once it did, Apple has played text book. Nokia and Moto rose to the bait superbly, made the conversation about everyone and now only El Reg cares.

      1. Paul RND*1000
        FAIL

        Uh, no.

        If "textbook PR" equates to "turning me off Apple, possibly forever" then good job, Apple PR.

        All I got out of the "textbook response" you speak of was "Mistake, what mistake? We never make mistakes, we don't give a crap what you say, you're just dumb customers who should stop whining and enjoy the awesome product we sold to you. Here's a video we pulled out of our ass to prove that we're better than everyone else".

        Of course I'm not a PR professional, so obviously I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. But I can't help thinking that's not such a good impression to be giving to potential customers, most of whom are NOT PR professionals.

        1. Eponymous Howard

          Ah, diddums

          Did the nasty-wasty PR peeps not come up with a programme targeted at your ego?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Let me guuueeeeessssss

        Dear Reg,

        Can we have a hahahahahahahaha icon please?

  2. JaitcH
    Jobs Horns

    Jobs proved the Chinese proverb was right, again

    The Chinese have a saying that goes: "Point a finger at someone and three point back at you".

    No one could have demonstrated this better than Jobs highlighting dipping bars - the real test actually being maintenance of communications, which all units other than Lemon 4, managed to do.

    Do what the French network advised: "Non, mon Dieu! Non!"

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Title

      Is that really Chinese? I am skeptical, but failed to find anything either way with a quick Google search.

      I remember hearing that in the early 90s, but it was more of a nursery rhyme than a Chinese proverb.

  3. Stefing
    Jobs Horns

    I think that should be...

    Apple ditches video 'evidence'.

    1. Ted
      Happy

      No, the Videos are Still Available

      http://www.youtube.com/Apple#p/u

  4. Basic
    Grenade

    The beginning of the end

    or at least the end of the beginning.

    Most of the ppl I know with an iPhone 4 are now embarrassed to admit it. if anything goes wrong, all they hear is "You're holding it wrong" or Death Grip jokes.

    For the first time, Apple's customers have actually started to realise that it's just a good UI on a mediocre product ("lipstick on a pig" springs to mind)

    From now on, I suspect Apple will have to compete on how their products work - They've lost the ability to trade on "It's Apple ergo it's the best" - Which should be interesting. Hopefully they'll be pushed to a new range of products worth owning.

    There will of course be a few die-hard fans who will buy anything from them but everyone has those.

    1. Eponymous Howard
      Troll

      @Basic

      ***

      Most of the ppl I know with an iPhone 4 are now embarrassed to admit it.

      ***

      I think you will find your pants on fire.

    2. Gavin Brown
      Stop

      @Basic - The beginning of the end

      "For the first time, Apple's customers have actually started to realise that it's just a good UI on a mediocre product ("lipstick on a pig" springs to mind)"

      I don't own any apple products, and I'm not defending their behaviour over there current anenna problems.

      The comment "a good UI on a mediocre product" misses the point that usability is fundamentally part of the product your selling. Think of the opposite a technically great phone with appalling usability, who'd want to own it?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Stop

        Re: @Basic - The beginning of the end

        "The comment "a good UI on a mediocre product" misses the point that usability is fundamentally part of the product your selling."

        What's so usable about pages and pages of App icons, without the ability to organise them how you want?

        1. bygjohn
          Stop

          Who hasn't been keeping up, then?

          Erm, iOS4 has app folders so you can organise them how you want. If you're going to snipe, at least get up to date. Next you'll start telling us the iPhone doesn't do cut and paste, or MMS...

          1. Anonymous Coward
            WTF?

            Re: Who hasn't been keeping up, then?

            Quote: "Erm, iOS4 has app folders so you can organise them how you want. If you're going to snipe, at least get up to date. Next you'll start telling us the iPhone doesn't do cut and paste, or MMS..."

            LOL! The iPhone should have had ALL those things from day 1, yet you mugs STILL bought them by the shitload.

            Unfuckingbelievable!

            1. B 9

              But why

              The iPhone SHOULD have had them from day 1? Seems a bit presumptuous that your opinion should be the way it is, doesn't it? A new platform, rushing to get to production, do we wait for ALL features to be ready on day 1, or do we get it out the door and improve it over time?

              People bought them by the shitload because they loved the product as a whole, not because they focused on one small feature of the overall product. Jeez, if you don't even understand that concept then why am I talking to you?

          2. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
            WTF?

            Folders

            Now, let me see - 1983, the big innovation of MS-DOS v2 over v1 was that it supported directories, and that was a huge step forward. I'll skate over the obvious cheap shot about Apple stealing the idea of folders for iOS4, and just ask what the hell they thought they were doing, not including them from the very beginning?

            GJC

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Title

        "The comment "a good UI on a mediocre product" misses the point that usability is fundamentally part of the product your selling. Think of the opposite a technically great phone with appalling usability, who'd want to own it?"

        Anyone with any technical skills.

        I'd rather have a phone let me program my own custom UI than be locked into one developed by the team in the ivory tower. I'd wager that anyone running a Linux box at work or home would agree.

        Is that a "mass market" strategy? No. Obviously companies are going to market to the average person. Unfortunately for the intelligent among us, the average person is akin to a fourth grader on roller skates. They need a helmet, knee pads, wrist guards, elbow pads, etc to protect them from themselves.

        Why do people hate Apple? Because Apple products are akin to a shiny metallic helmet and a new pair of kneepads with flames on them, yet they purport their products to be "magic".

        Just as the flames on the kneepads do not make you skate any faster, the idiot-proof Apple UI doesn't make the product "revolutionary" or "magical". At best it makes you gullible, at worst, a pompous ass.

        1. Giles Jones Gold badge

          Erm?

          Technical skills are no antidote to a rubbish user interface. A poorly designed user interface can be dangerous or result in data loss or accidental deletion of data.

          Think poorly labelled buttons, badly layout of buttons, lack of confirmation messages (accidental button pushes do happen, especially on a phone) and other such things.

          I think you seriously need to go back to 1996 prior to the launch of the iPhone and look at the sorry state of smartphones back then. It was all crude UIs on top of Windows Mobile, or phones based on Symbian S60 or UIQ. Shocking usability, slow clunky interfaces and about attractive as Windows 3.11.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            @Giles Jones

            "I think you seriously need to go back to 1996 prior to the launch of the iPhone and look at the sorry state of smartphones back then."

            True, because we all know that there have been no technological advances in the past decade, and the phones then were running on the exact same hardware that they do now.

            You know that, for example, the first Google phone was in development before the iPhone was, right? If Bill Gates had allowed Apple to dissolve years ago, everything would be the same, except we'd have no fanbois to make up lies about "everyone copying Apple".

          2. Daniel B.
            Alert

            Some smartphones you got there...

            "I think you seriously need to go back to 1996 prior to the launch of the iPhone and look at the sorry state of smartphones back then."

            Yes, the smartphones were in a sorry state back then, because, well, *they didn't even exist in 1996*. I think what you call Symbian or Windows Mobile didn't even exist back then!

            However, my 1996 PalmPilot did have a nice UI, thank-you-very-much. The same UI that prevailed with PalmOS, up to the mid-2000's with the Treo, which was actually a smartphone.

            While I agree that bad UIs can cause problems, the ones I remember weren't that bad. Haven't really used Symbian, so I can't vow for them.

  5. Diccon

    Mmm.

    Does anyone want to lay a bet that Apple will be back to an internal antenna for the iPhone 5?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    enough people have seen the videos?

    that is why they toke them down!

    I honestly would have respected Apple had it admitted the problem instead of blaming the competition.

    1. Ted
      Go

      They did admit the problem

      Apple admitted there was a problem 8 days after launch, they solved it on day 22, so that's pretty darn fast.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Jobs Horns

        Re: They did admit the problem

        Did they admit the problem? - "There is no Antennagate" doesn't sound like much of an admission to me. Also, handing out free rubber-bands doesn't look like much of a solution either.

  7. rahul
    Alert

    Forget it? I don't think so...

    "perhaps hoping that if it can just stop talking about the problem then everyone will forget it happened"

    ...not as long as judasphone.com is around...

  8. Alan Denman

    Hit and run

    Something quick to appease their perceptive fanbase.

    And yes saying the iPhone is as 'crap as the others' is now best forgotten.

    Now we can safely get back to the positive mantra marketing of very dubious features like the Retina display.

  9. Lionel Baden
    FAIL

    Oh LOL !!!

    100$ million dollars and they still got it wrong

    or am i detecting bullsquid !!

    1. Daniel Evans

      Indeed

      There does seem to be a slight flaw in the logic behind using "See how much money we put into creating a failed antenna design!" as a marketing ploy.

  10. Mike Flugennock

    another outfit scrubbing its YouTube channel?

    ClipNabber is your friend. http://www.clipnabber.com .

    They have an excellent bookmarklet for sucking down mpeg4's and .flv's of YouTube clips. It's saved my ass numerous times.

  11. Hans 1
    Grenade

    I'm Loving it

    So, someone has finally found an (invalid) point to mock the iPhone and everybody springs on the bandwagon ... iPhones do not have worse reception problems compared to others. When I hold the antenna of my radio, heck, it acts weird, too ... why not sue Sony or whoever? Point is invalid, because anybody who cares for his iPhone has it in a casing, anyway.

    Bottom-line, iPhone is so much better at most things I am interested in and that is plainly my opinion I am entitled to. I have tested and compared HTC's, Samsungs, Nokia's and a Blackberry. I use it for business-related stuff only - I have a few free apps on it for the kids when I'm driving, but that is about it.

    Now, you can go and mock Steve, Apple et al ... as much as I hate Apple, their kit just rocks and most of the anti-Apple crowd have never used the piece of kit they are spitting at - bunch of jealous pricks, if you ask me... get your head out of your a$$e$ and get a well-paid job! Maybe you are just not good enough at what you do?

    The only thing wrong with the iPhone I have owned for 1.5 years now is battery life - which was correctly advertised when I bought it, btw, and could be better, apart from that, it works much better than anything I used before.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      Title

      Well! Since Apple's report contradicts EVERY. SINGLE. INDEPENDENT. REPORT. we might as well toss them all out and keep just Apple's!

      Did you know that BP did an investigation that cleared themselves of all fault in the oil rig accident and stated that the environmental impact of the disaster is negligible? We should take their word on that one too.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    OneCell update..

    Apple also commented that..

    "The OneCell name in no way indicates the reception range of the new phone..."

    :-)

    [for those that read my original OneCell comment some time ago]

  13. NotTellinYou
    Thumb Down

    Humm...not what PC Mag says!

    http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2367211,00.asp

    I think the words used for the iPhone Antenna is "Best in breed"?

    Again you guys have given the other manufacturers, like Motorola that had FULL PAGE ads in the NYT saying you can hold your Droid X anyway you want with with no issues because of their unique antenna design. Obviously that's not true and you guys TOTALLY ignore it giving them a pass. You have ZERO credibility,

    1. Daniel B.
      Boffin

      Missing the point

      The antenna works really good ... except when you short it with the other antenna by touching the gap. That is the real problem, the one that Anandtech team tested, and later the PA team confirmed. There's no way to cop out from that fact.

  14. Arc_Light
    Paris Hilton

    Oh, FFS...

    Consumer Reports - non-profit, unbiased, well-respected - had this to say:

    "The iPhone scored high, in part because it sports the sharpest display and best video camera we've seen on any phone, and even outshines its high-scoring predecessors with improved battery life and such new features as a front-facing camera for video chats and a built-in gyroscope that turns the phone into a super-responsive game controller. But Apple needs to come up with a permanent—and free—fix for the antenna problem before we can recommend the iPhone 4." - July 12

    "Consumer Reports believes Apple's offer of free cases is a good first step. However, Apple has indicated that this is not a long-term solution, it has guaranteed the offer only through September 30th, and has not extended it unequivocally to customers who bought cases from third-party vendors. We look forward to a long-term fix from Apple. As things currently stand, the iPhone 4 is still not one of our Recommended models." - July 16

    In short: it's a very nice phone with an antenna design that is significantly more crapulent than the competition's. These points are not debatable, no matter how many others prefer alternative smart phones OR how many iPhone 4 users have never had a problem.

    Now then - if competitors take advantage of a situation Apple was wholly responsible for creating and has repeatedly failed to fully and completely address, who, again, should be taken to task?

    [Paris, 'cause she's the only one still thinking about the answer...]

  15. NX1977
    Heart

    cease and decist

    I bet it's gone legal, so Apple pulled them.

    It also wouldn't go down well when the patent cases start....

  16. Tigra 07
    Alert

    What a shame they removed the videos

    I was actually hoping Apple would get sued but it looks like the only chance of that now is the class action suit in America, where they're trying to force a recall

    Oh well, one can hope

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