I actually agree with this. I watch Zollotech because he is very detailed in his reviews, but how does he have all that money to buy every single apple product. What is his source of income? Is it Youtube subscriptions (And people donating to him) or something else. It seems to me like what Apple is doing is bribing these creators for good reviews, and we already saw Brownlee get mentioned in a previous event. I think they need to disclose how they got these products and if they were gifted anything by Apple to make good reviews. I would appreciate the authenticity and transparancy.
Yes, I do have a little issue with Apple gifting products to "influencers" for good reviews. That makes trusting those reviews seem a little more difficult.
Thank you! I'm glad someone else sees what's happening.
I do presume some content creators may have other sources of income to fund their credit purchases, and then process returns. Max Tech and another - whom creates and produces music on macOS (in the last 14mths had a healthcare, name escapes me). Yet the vast majority, including the small fry gang - no.
Dave2D - tends to state items are on loan for review most often, and he has a family to raise as his primary day-day focus and has a career outside of youtube. great reviews and honest opinions.
You can tell whom is doling the fluffing since many of the comments and statements made are EXACTLY the same about the EXACT same thing!
example: Oppo's Find N3 which is co-branded as the OnePlus Open. Do a search on the latter and lookup the top 10 reviews by "creators" more like paid "influencers" and watch what is stated:
'cheaper than the Z Fold 5'
'I like/love' the 4 apps at once (I forget what OnePlus is calling the app manager that does this) 'this is the way forward' amongst a few other tag lines.
EDIT: Link from GSMArena regarding pricing of the OnePlus Open as a sell "feature"
The wide availability of the Open brings it to markets that previously didn't have much competition. But that price tag is hard to swallow for most.
www.gsmarena.com
Last week’s poll shows that the
OnePlus Open is a very promising phone. It might even be the best in class that the markets outside of China have seen. And yet... well, the pie chart speaks for itself, 40% of voters have interest in the Open, but find it too pricey.
PS:
the poll is unfortunately unviewable (they used an external party which didn't reveal results on the main poll page after polling ended.
Any challenge in the comments to their statements is not even liked or acknowledged.
This is not a new thing. They’ve sent out variations of these to large corp customers and channel partners for years - source, me - this is how I get most of my iPads 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Oh I've been into tech for a long time, and you're correct this is nothing new. However how its being done isn't right for transparency and authenticity.
Nokia in their S60 Symbian OS hey-day had ALWAYS had a loan for review program, which was EASY to find on any of their regional sites. You fill out an application and await approval and they'd ship you a review unit for 30 days use and send it back. The review unit was asked to be returned in new condition, as stated other reviewers may receive it after and to be courteous to others approved in such program. AllAboutSymbian site reviewers in their most sought after reviews in such time period would state such review products. I disliked their waxing-poetic of Nokia executive staff though - clearly compensated just like CrackBerry.com's crakeberry Kevin as well.
Apple though ... never clear on this. The ONLY obvious transparency (not officially mentioned) was seeing early, highly financially successful developers of iOS applications:
example .. Smule developer always in the front 3-5 rows of ANY iOS event for the first 10yrs. Lifting his head ever so high and proud (and smug, my personal perception, but hey a successful developer he's earned that).
.