Tag: tame apple press

Apple antitrust case continues

Posted on December 11, 2014 by - News

courtroom_1_lgThe Tame Apple Press is aghast after a court decided that Apple’s antitrust antics were so important that a class action against the company could continue even if all the official plaintiffs had been ruled as inadmissible.

Apple lawyers managed to prove to the court that none of the official plaintiffs had owned an iPod 10 years ago and therefore could not have suffered from its competition snuffing DRM. So far it has not had to prove that it did anything anti-competitive, and was hoping to win on a legal technicality.

But the billion-dollar class-action lawsuit against Apple is expected to continue after a 65-year-old Massachusetts business consultant read about the plaintiffs’ floundering case online and volunteered to represent consumers in the suit.

A federal judge said she was tentatively satisfied with a proposal to add Barbara Bennett, the new named plaintiff, in the lawsuit over Apple’s iTunes software and the price of its iPods.

Plaintiffs are claiming that Apple’s restrictive software froze out competitors and allowed Apple to sell iPods at inflated prices. They are seeking $350 million (£224m) in damages, which could be tripled if the jury finds Apple broke federal antitrust law.

Apple stopped using the particular software in question in 2009, which means the lawsuit only covers iPod models bought between September 2006 and March 2009.

Each time an Apple user with non-iTunes music tried to sync their devices, between 2007 and 2009, the tech firm urged them to restore the players to factory settings which the plaintiffs claimed was a deliberate move to wipe the rival files, and cause the users’ music libraries to ‘blow up.’

Bennett, who sometimes used her iPod to listen to music while ice skating, boarded a plane early flew to California at the request of lawyers who are suing Apple. She told the court she bought a special-edition iPod Nano in 2006 because she liked its striking red case.

The Tame Apple press has been doing its best to cover up this set-back for Apple’s defence team.  The Daily Mail has been waxing lyrical about how the defence dug up Steve Jobs to testify by video.

“Legendary Apple CEO Steve Jobs held an Oakland courtroom transfixed as attorneys played a video of his testimony in a class-action lawsuit that accuses Apple of inflating prices by locking music lovers into using Apple’s iPod players,” mused the Mail.

“Looking gaunt and pale, Jobs spoke softly during the deposition he gave six months before his death in October 2011. Despite this, he gave a firm defense of Apple’s software, which blocked music from services that competed with Apple’s iTunes store,” it added.

What the Daily Mail did not say was that Jobs had form for anti-trust behaviour and was not the best witness.

Fortune magazine was even more overt in its defence of Apple  under a headline “How dumb is this Apple lawsuit?” Fortune claimed that the case was proceeding for the benefit of lawyers and not consumers. Although Fortune did not say how supporting the actions of a convicted monopoly like Apple over a consumer law-suit benefits the consumer either.  It seems that Fortune no longer favours the brave.

Press flip-flops on Fablets

Posted on September 24, 2014 by - News, Opinions

apple flip flopIf you want to see how Apple’s control of the US trade press is distorting reviews and facts about its products you do not have to look much further than the reviews for the fruity cargo cult’s Fablet.

When Flablets first started appearing, Apple made a big thing about how bad they were, and the Tame Apple Press automatically rubbished them. Despite this they were a huge success, and Apple was forced to copy its rivals and produce one.

Has the Tame Apple Press stuck to its guns and said that Fablets are rubbish? Er no, they have just contradicted their previous views because Apple now tells them to say something different.

Tech Crunch’s Darrell Etherington wrote this week that “The additional size makes for a less ‘perfect’ ergonomic quality, something the iPhone 6 definitely achieves, but there’s still lots to love about the industrial design of the 6 Plus … For most tasks, I find the iPhone 6 Plus to be a two-handed device – but I also find that I’m absolutely fine with that.”

But this is the same magazine that wrote about the Galaxy Note: “Unfortunately, you might look a little crazy with that huge thing up to your face. I found that it was really difficult to get comfortable with the device, never feeling like I had complete control over it as I would with a smaller phone.”
What is the difference? Tech Crunch’s favourite company now makes Phablets so anything it said in the past is officially rubbish.

Josh Geller, from BGR, wrote this week that “Apple has finally taken the wraps off the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus, and Apple fans are going crazy with anticipation over the largest iPhones ever released, something needs to be said. And that something is, “Thank you, Samsung.” We got it wrong.”

At least he admits he got it wrong, but what was Geller thinking when he wrote this: “The most useless device I’ve ever seen … This is a phone, after using it for a few hours, that feels like it is too big to be taken seriously. That’s the end of it. I don’t care if you like large screens on mobile devices, I don’t care if you love Android, and I don’t care if you love 4G LTE — this is a device fit for use only by such a small subset of the human population that I can’t fathom how AT&T and Samsung are putting so much marketing resources behind it.”

Lauren Goode at the Wall Street Journal admits that she is biased toward Apple and will say whatever the cargo cult put out is great.

“Maybe I’m getting old, and my eyes are getting worse. Or maybe I’m stuck in Apple’s reality-distortion field (help). But something strange happened this week. I started to like a phablet.”

This is the same writer who told us “It’s still too big for a smartphone … After testing it over the past week and a half, the awkwardness that came with carrying such a large, “notice me” phone outweighed the benefits of it, for me.”

The New York Times’ David Pogue was clearly trying to get back into Apple’s good books when he wrote “The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are absolutely terrific phones. They’re fast and powerful and well designed. There’s not a single component that hasn’t been improved. These phones are a delight to behold and to be held.”

This is the same numpty who said about the Samsung Phablet that its “sheer size basically makes one-handed operation impossible. Samsung’s given the Note 3 an entire settings menu dedicated to trying to make it easier to use one-handed, but even with my adult male-sized hands it’s a struggle to reach even half of the screen without dropping the device.”

For some reason his “adult hands” do not drop Apple devices, just those made by a rival.
While it is mostly Amercians journalists who are keen to sacrifice their credibility to butter up Apple, the UK’s Guardian is also keen to toady up to Jobs’ Mob.

Charles Arthur wrote this week: “Too big. This thing’s too big. Waaay too big. It’s … actually, that screen is pretty nice, isn’t it? Wow, you really can get a lot of content on there, can’t you? Hey, my hand’s getting used to the size. It’s quite comfortable, isn’t it?”

However the Guardian has a strong view about other people making Phablets. Samuel Gibbs  moaned that the sheer size of the device basically makes one-handed operation impossible. Samsung’s given the Note 3 an entire settings menu dedicated to trying to make it easier to use one-handed, but even with my adult male-sized hands it’s a struggle to reach even half of the screen without dropping the device.”

What a difference two years makes, and the fact that the outfit is your favourite toymaker.
It seems that the trade press has gone a long way since we had to send back bottles of whisky from suppliers at Christmas because they represented low-level bribery. Instead, it is clear that trade journalists are Apple’s glove puppets and no longer can be relied on to tell you the truth.

 

Huawei steals Apple’s thunder

Posted on September 5, 2014 by - News

lightningThe Tame Apple Press is fuming that the Chinese phone  maker Huawei has managed to steal Apple’s thunder by releasing a phone days before Jobs’ Mob’s traditional Nuremberg style rally.

Normally we do not think of a phone release as being sent as a spoiler to a rival’s event, but it is clear that someone in Reuters does.

Huawei unveiled shedloads of devices meant to showcase the Chinese company’s hardware technology,  and Reuters was clearly upset that it was putting the spoilers on Apple September 9 launch.

Dubbing the iPhone 6 as “highly-anticipated” it reminded its gentle readers that Apple was releasing the phone on September 9, even though the story was about Huawei.

Today Huawei markets its devices as comparable to Samsung and Apple products, which are often viewed by consumers as the technological cutting edge, patronised Reuters.

So what has Huawei released? There is a limited edition of its high-end Ascend P7 phone with a sapphire glass display. For those who came in late, Apple was rumoured to be mass-producing devices with sapphire technology and it so far has not happened.

The Ascend Mate Ascend P7 phone7 “phablet” will also be the first Android smartphone on the market with a fingerprint sensor. A fingerprint censor was something that Apple had installed on the iPhone 5s last year, Reuters fumed.

In a statement, the company’s smartphone division chief Richard Yu said the sapphire glass phone demonstrated Huawei’s “advanced craftsmanship” and its ability to “deliver the most advanced technology into the hands of consumers”.

Reuters seemed to think that this particular quote was rubbing it in a bit. The logic being that Huawei is releasing all these products which copy Apple just days before Jobs’ Mob is about to reveal its masterpiece.

That masterpiece, as it turns out, will be likely to be similar to everything else that is already on the market, but will still be plugged to the heavens by journalists who sacrifice their credibly to act as Apple’s unpaid press office.