

Apple Legal: Reasonable People Do Not Believe the Claims of Apple Marketing - sutro
http://gizmodo.com/5101110/apple-no-reasonable-person-should-trust-their-marketing

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altano
The real problem with the iPhone commercials is not that they say the phone is
2x as fast as the first generation model, but that the demonstration they give
is _at least_ 5x faster than reality. I guess the 2x claim is an easier thing
to base a court case around, though.

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harpastum
I think this is more of a "when we said twice as fast, you should interpret it
as much faster, not 2.00x as fast"

Admittedly, still a pretty weak argument.

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jm4
It's the same sort of line as "5000 songs in your pocket" or whatever they
used to say about the iPod. Some people read it and think "it's got enough
space to hold about 5000 songs". Others read it and think of it in the context
of a CD rack or something that holds exactly 100 CDs. In other words, it's got
exactly 5000 slots for you to put your songs in. Something like that is common
sense to most of us, but when you think about where we came from it's not so
clear. A 30GB iPod could be filled any number of ways depending on codecs and
bitrates. Just a few years ago music storage was measured as an exact number
of minutes.

But I can sort of see where they're coming from. It's like if I trade in my
sports car for an SUV and tell people how much I like it because it's got
twice as much room. No one expects a statement like that to be based on exact
measurements. I think their marketing is going for the same sort of tone--
kind of how a non-technical person is going to explain to a friend why the new
version of a product is better than the old one. "It's great! It's twice as
fast as my old one and only cost me half as much."

You see marketing slogans like this everywhere. I can imagine a car ad saying
something like, "you'll never be short on power with 250 horses under the
hood!" What reasonable person is going to believe the car comes with horses? I
think that's what they're getting at here, and when you consider it in that
context their argument makes much more sense. I'm sure with a little digging
one could find enough examples to convince just about anyone that only an
idiot would believe advertisements.

The headline is worded in a way to suggest that Apple is completely in the
wrong or being overly harsh. The situation isn't that black and white.

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sh1mmer
I would say there is a difference between people and companies. You saying
twice as big is different from Hummer saying it. They _should_ know the
dimensions of their vehicles.

Secondly I think that making a claim that was reasonably rounded up or is
conservative is much more reasonable than making a bold claim and then under
delivering. Saying "My patented snake oil cures cancer" and then claiming
anyone who believes you is an idiot, is a pretty flippant argument. If the
iPhone 3G had a 1.89x bandwidth capacity for example then the 2x claim might
be reasonable.

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jm4
I think the key thing here is the difference between marketing materials and
facts. Marketing materials may be going for a certain tone or theme that may
not coincide with fact. They exaggerate a little. They take certain liberties
when describing a product or use common figures of speech that are not
intended to be taken literally. Marketing materials are intended to be the
hook to get consumers interested.

Take alcohol or cigarrette advertisements for example. There's always a guy
out partying with a bunch of hot women. Are we to believe that if we start
drinking cheap American beer or smoking we're going to have to beat the girls
off with a stick? When a car dealer tells you a car is a pussy magnet is that
supposed to be taken seriously? Of course, those things _could_ happen, but
they probably won't.

I guess the conclusion is that marketing materials are all about the
possibilities but not necessarily the outcome that should be expected from
buying a product. And right or wrong, marketing materials are clearly not held
to the same standards as something purported to be fact.

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scott_s
Marketing can not make false claims. Claims such as "this car will get you
laid" can not be falsified. Claims such as "this car can go 0-60 in 3 seconds"
can be falsified.

I think "twice as fast" fits with a falsifiable claim. It's a figure of speech
as well, but I'd rather err on the side of protecting consumers. If a company
claims something is "twice as fast," it had better be, by some metric, twice
as fast.

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jm4
You're absolutely right. But in the case of "twice as fast", if it is twice as
fast under the right conditions then it's not exactly a false claim. Maybe the
right condition for the phone being twice as fast is being within a short
distance of a cell tower. The fact that at any given time a user likely won't
be within that distance is certainly deceptive in that it doesn't present the
entire truth, but it's going to be extremely difficult to prove it's a false
claim.

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scott_s
The FTC disallows deceptive advertising as well:
<http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/policystmt/ad-decept.htm>

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dcminter
Reminds me of the amusingly named "Carlill v. the Carbolic Smoke Ball Company"
case in contract law (though nothing like as blatant):
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlill_v._Carbolic_Smoke_Ball_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlill_v._Carbolic_Smoke_Ball_Company)

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sh1mmer
This is one of the things that amazes me, that it's not actually illegal for
advertising to issue falsities in the US. I'm pretty sure that's not true back
home in the UK, or at least there is an industry watchdog that can punish
people who do.

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scott_s
Where did you get that impression? The FTC has the authority to regulate
advertising, and false or deceptive advertising is illegal in the US.

