

Apple stops hiding Samsung apology on its UK site - Quekster
http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/11/08/after-backlash-on-reddit-and-hacker-news-apple-stops-hiding-samsung-apology-on-its-uk-site/?fromcat=all

======
Terretta
Speaking of hiding things, the truth is buried in the middle of this article:

 _"The Javascript code in question ... ensured that the iPad mini
advertisement would take up the whole page, regardless of your resolution...
The code’s main purpose wasn’t ... to hide the apology -- Apple has been
pushing a more vertically-responsive design on its international sites for a
while now."_

The home page was doing this before the statement, and doing it after (until
now), across all International sites, not just the UK where the notice was
required. But truth tends to drive fewer page views than manufactured buzz.

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bradleyland
The artcile offers zero evidence that Reddit or HN had anything to do with the
alteration. It is equally as likely that the change was motivated by continued
evaluation by Apple's legal team.

~~~
manys
Circumstantial evidence is a kind of evidence.

~~~
bradleyland
This is more along the lines of correlation/causation. It's one thing to
speculate, but it's another to report the matter as fact. Did anyone from TNW
contact Apple for comment?

After re-reading the headline, I see that it's cleverly worded to avoid making
a patently false claim. "After" is a statement of proximity.

Fact 1: there was backlash on Reddit and HN.

Fact 2: Apple has stopped hiding the policy on their UK site.

Fact 3: fact 2 happened "after" fact 1. Congrats on the weaselly headline.

However, the body of the article shows that they did intend to imply
causation:

> The backlash has apparently led the company to remove the code sometime
> between Monday and Thursday, possibly in the hopes of avoiding yet another
> court order.

Yes, "apparently". So basically, this is speculation about which TNW has no
actual facts.

Yes, this is yet another trite complaint about the sad state of journalism,
but the fact that it's trite doesn't make it untrue.

~~~
chc
If I shoot a gun and the guy in front of me drops dead of a bullet wound, are
you going to wait for the forensics to come back on the bullet before you
suggest that I shot him? It _could_ be that I shot past him and some guy on a
grassy knoll is the real killer, but it is not unreasonable to say that I
"apparently shot him."

~~~
brianchu
This is not a valid analogy. Causation is typically proved empirically. We
have _consistent_ (as in, 99.9999%) empirical evidence that if you "shoot a
gun and the guy in front of [you] drops dead of a bullet wound," there is a
causative relationship.

The incidence of "people on HN/Reddit make a fuss" and "Apple/other-big-tech-
company changes it's website or some other legal matter" is occasional and
inconsistent at best. There is really no empirical evidence of causation.

~~~
chc
The incidence of "People on Reddit make a fuss" and "Big company quickly makes
a change that happens to address the fuss but was actually completely
unrelated" is far lower. While a fuss doesn't always produce change, it seems
to me that change following a fuss may reasonably be viewed as a response.

Better analogy: Asking me for five dollars will not consistently result in me
giving you five dollars. But if you ask for five dollars and I give it, you
would not be wrong to assume that the two events are related. There are other
conceivable explanations (e.g. perhaps I wasn't listening to you, but mistook
you for a valet), but those are so much less likely given the context that
it's quite reasonable to assume I was responding to your request.

~~~
brianchu
Again, the analogy is not quite accurate. I find that analogies are often poor
justifications of arguments because of widely varying contexts. In Apple's
case there are many other more plausible alternative explanations, such as
Apple wanting to avoid a court order. This is bolstered by Apple's reputation
for not being very responsive to the public (see: Antennagate, long time until
public iOS maps apology). In the second analogy, there is 1) a personal
element (direct asking) and 2) a physical interaction (handing money), neither
of which exist in the HN/reddit case.

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bjhoops1
Look Samsung in the EYE and tell them you're sorry, Apple. Sorry for what? OK
that's better.

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SeanDav
Bit of the Streisand effect going on here.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect>

