iPhone ad rapped as 'misleading'

tucker101uk said:
Obviously. We are all idiots over here in the UK. How could I possibly have thought otherwise.

Do you want to borrow my spade?
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Let me clarify. From your discription of the average consumer in the UK, I'm led to believe that the average consumer in the UK is dense. I never said that you're all dense:)

And thank you for the offer, but no thanks.

Don
 
MacTraveller said:
Truth in Advertising Law? Well great. Everyone loses. Billion-dollar advertising revenues will be destroyed. Every business gets sued and bankrupted, their marketing/advertising executives all jailed. Only the lawyers win. We want the lawyers to pwn the rest of the world, do we? :rolleyes:
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Your logic is pretty weird. Has it occurred to you that adverts could be made that are truthful? No one gets sued, ad revenue continues, consumers are not duped ... :rolleyes:
 
Dmac77 said:
I understand what you are saying, but IMO you have got to pretty damn stupid to not research buying something that is going to cost you nearly $2500. And if you don't research it, it's you fault and no one else's.

Don
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Even if you do research it would you have to look for flash specifically? Go to Apples site (logical place to research the iPhone) and this is what it says

"iPhone features Safari — the most advanced web browser ever on a portable device. And with 3G and Wi-Fi, you can browse the real Internet really fast. "

http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/safari.html

So now I've done my research and still no mention of flash not working.
 
I never said "the average consumer". Just a lot, meaning a proportion. A lot of people live in the UK right? Just because not everyone is technically minded, or interested in gadgets etc it doesnt mean they are dense or whatever. The average person will look at the advertising and technical specification provided by the manufactur, which in this case is wrong.

Distoredloop - I believe there is already small print on the UK advert re 3g network signal, something along the lines of "speed may vary depending upon location"... nothing mentioned about internet tho.
 
and all this is relevant, how?
the ad is a year old. it's not to be shown again.

plus, you can visit any website with the iphone, period. there are many websites that do not support the browser you might be using, or require a plug-in that might not be available for your platform. anyhow that is entirely the content provider's fault. there are nice ways of displaying almost all kinds of animation etc. without the need to use flash.
 
Adverts In Disguise...

tucker101uk said:
We seem to manage okay over here... Imagine buying a fruitcake in the supermarket, and then finding out that in fact, it was just spongecake with lemon flavouring!!?!!?
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mmmm, lemon spongecake.. ..I'd buy that for a dollar! ...but only if it didn't contravene the CITES convention on advertising...

Guys,

does it really matter to you if the advertisement was banned or not? Fact: Apple made misleading claims. Fact: Practically half the internet is run on Flash and other 'non-supported, third -party' technologies.

I for one am pretty pissed off about the fact I can't access any Flash-driven sites on my iPhone 3G - especially when I'm sat in the toilet cubicle trying to get to my favourite porn sites!

Anyway, I feel comforted by the fact the they are hiding amongst us, waiting to protect us at a moments notice!
 
well, not seeing the ad only reading about it here and the comments stated, I think the law is correct in the idea that the "full internet" is not able too be used.

I too see how Apple "meant" by saying full internet, not a mini phone version but what you see is what I see on my computer monitor. I have tried phone web years back (i suppose when nothing was good on phones) and thought it sucked. Haven't tried it since but have heard complaints from CrashBerry owners and saw the iphone and it does look like a normal web/internet.

still, the ruling is correct in the statement. Apple could support flash/java or say not all third-party apps are compliant.
 
distortedloop said:
So, if Apple put a little disclaimer, in "fine print" at the bottom of the ad at the end, stating" "Websites dependent on Java and Flash will not support full functionality," would that satisfy the Advert Board in the UK? I'm pretty sure that would stave off any legal action for such claims in the US.

Along the same vein, to prevent further controversy over the "Twice the speed at half the cost" adverts, wouldn't a similar disclaimer along the lines of "your results may vary based on location, 3G network availability and network loads" protect them from false advertising claims.

Those tactics seem to work for Rx med, automobile, vacation, attorneys, home loans, credit cards, and all other sorts of adverts here in the US. On the radio, they even read the disclaimer out loud in rapid-fire-speak.
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I like this idea. I must admit I only bother listening to TV ads that have these disclaimers these days. They are very entertaining. Recently I heard one for a drug 'you must ask your doctor for' that even used the words, 'In some cases death may occur'. They are truly the Monty Python level of humor I always found amusing (having a twisted sense of humor I guess). :)
 
Jimmni said:
If they mean the web and email, they should say the web and email. If they mean the whole internet, then where's my usenet access? Where's my IRC access? Where's my IM access? Where my FTP access? I could go on. The web and the internet aren't the same thing, and in both cases this ad was flat out misleading and/or dishonest.
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You know, outside of the relatively small group of technorati, geeks and nerds that visit sites like this, the VAST MAJORITY of the public buying iPhones has no clue what IRC, FTP, Usenet, Telnet, SSH, or any of the other things that run over the internet are.

I can say with utmost confidence that of my social circle that owns iPhones, less than 1/4 of them know what any of those things are, and that more than likely I am the only one that knows what all of them are.

This is all just a tempest in a teapot - change one or two words in that ad and there would be nothing to bitch about.
 
Kar98 said:
And even that is not true, because WAP versions of sites are usually pushed by the site itself. If there's no such thing provided for, my Wing (for instance, but all the other WM PDA phones too) will simply scale the site to the screen, while (and that's important!) remaining readable without having to drag, nudge, zoom or fap the displayed content around.

Seriously, I agree with that decision, but not for the reasons stated.
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For myself (and I am sure most others) an entire website scaled down to about a 2" square is not fully readable. Now you can probably tell what site you are on and read a head-line or two, but fully readable, no. You're going to have to "drag, nudge, zoom or fap the displayed content around" (or whatever method the particular phone allows) to actually read most of the website.
 
distortedloop said:
You know, outside of the relatively small group of technorati, geeks and nerds that visit sites like this, the VAST MAJORITY of the public buying iPhones has no clue what IRC, FTP, Usenet, Telnet, SSH, or any of the other things that run over the internet are.

I can say with utmost confidence that of my social circle that owns iPhones, less than 1/4 of them know what any of those things are, and that more than likely I am the only one that knows what all of them are.

This is all just a tempest in a teapot - change one or two words in that ad and there would be nothing to bitch about.
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I agree 100% :)
 
distortedloop said:
So, if Apple put a little disclaimer, in "fine print" at the bottom of the ad at the end, stating" "Websites dependent on Java and Flash will not support full functionality," would that satisfy the Advert Board in the UK? I'm pretty sure that would stave off any legal action for such claims in the US.
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I'm not sure about the UK, but in some countries, having 'fine print' isn't liked as well.
 
Windows Mobile Supports Flash

Warbrain said:
How many phones can you currently purchase that support Flash? Not as many as you think.

It's not so much a grudge at this point but more Apple not wanting something that's always been relatively buggy and unstable as Flash on the iPhone. I shouldn't have to repair permissions with every Flash update on my Mac because it's a terrible but necessary add-on.

And it's not like a ruling against Apple in this will make them put Flash on the iPhone.
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Windows Mobile 6.1 supports Flash so MANY phones do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1vYIgzErS8
 
I'm a web developer and rarely use flash because it's mostly pointless. It serves a few good purposes for like movie website and stuff, but for MOST websites it's worthless and slows down the website even for people on high speed connections.

I would argue that apple's point that you can view the real internet on the phone and not just special CHTML pages is a good one. I remember when when the first mobile internet devices came out you had to build an entirely different web page for it to work on the phone.

iPhone gives you everything every other browsers does. Both Java and Flash have to be installed in FF and IE as a 3rd party applications. So who decides that the lack of flash and java make it not the real internet? What about the other 100 3rd party applications?

AND if you really need flash that bad you can just remote into your computer using VNC or RDP from the iPhone :cool:
 
MacRumors Run's Flash Ads

rowanmwilliams said:
Where did you get this information from?
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MacRumors runs flash ads on their home page as does AppleInsider, ESPN, CNN, New York Times, I could go on buy if the site we're on debating this runs Flash isn't it sort of a mute point that most sites run Flash.
 
Bevz said:
Besides, i'm with Bill Hicks on this one; Advertisers are scum. Apologies to anyone who is in advertising, but please do the world a favour and get another job (that's a more toned down version of bills thoughts ;)
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So, if you start your own business, you're not going to advertise b/c you consider "Advertisers scum?" :rolleyes:

Whether you like advertising or not, they are necessary means in our economy.
 
I'm confused as to why all the non-Brits in this thread are having such a hard time coming to terms with the fact that in the UK we take honesty in advertising seriously and have a public body that take complaints seriously. Why, exactly, are those who try to protect less knowledgeable and perhaps more gullible consumers being attacked? We have manners and common decency here. Is that so offensive?
 
shenaniganz08 said:
im actually glad someone is doing something about this

my medical school website displays multimedia in flash format ( for privacy/legal reasons) so its not silly specifics for everyone

At the bottom of this dispute is a long lasting grudge between apple and adobe :(
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If your medical school website was correctly constructed, it would degrade gracefully in the absence of a Flash player/plugin. Don't blame a device for a poorly designed website.
 
it doesn't matter if you like/need/want/have flash on a phone.

The internet is full of flash. more than half of the websites i regularly visit use flash. some of them rely on flash (homestarrunner.com, anyone?!?)

If I were just some dude from off the street and I saw the iphone and thought "want" and got one, then found out i couldn't watch strongbad emails on it, i would be pissed.

you can whine and complain about open standards and no proprietary software all day long, but realize that everyone uses proprietary software all the time. I guess there are a few people out there running home-brew linux, listening to all their music in FLAC and only looking at websites with PNG images, but most of us live in a world of flash, jpgs, mp3s, pdfs and other proprietary goodness.

All of those things are necessary to claim domain over "all" of the "real" internet, and the iphone, as cool as it is, is not able to deal with all of those things. Just because misleading or outright lying adverts are allowed here in the US doesn't mean that the rest of the world has to get on their knees for our companies.
 
Flash must die

shenaniganz08 said:
im actually glad someone is doing something about this

my medical school website displays multimedia in flash format ( for privacy/legal reasons) so its not silly specifics for everyone

At the bottom of this dispute is a long lasting grudge between apple and adobe :(
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I really hate Flash websites.

I hope that as smartphones become more widespread for html browsing, webmasters will start to dump flash pages, rather than complain that my 4 inch pocket web browser (iPhone) is not good enough to good enough to find the home page of my local restaurant.
 
About time.

My Nokia E90 using Google maps is instantaneous and it supports Flash (like real YouTube), and everything.
 
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