Apple Censors Consumer Report iPhone4 Discussions 588
An anonymous reader writes "Apple has done it again. All threads about Consumer Report's iPhone4 non-recommendation are removed or deleted.
If it happened once, maybe you'd say it was a glitch. But what if it happened twice? Three times? Four times, five, six?"
It is their site. (Score:1, Interesting)
I do not see why they are required to allow discussions of that subject considering the number of sites where you are free to discuss it.
Apple knows about the review, why should they let you rub their noses into it? Let alone on their forums there are more than enough rabid supporters that keeping these messages off the site means for more peaceful forums. It would simply be a flame war
Re:It is their site. (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait wait wait...a company is quelling discussion about how their product has an easily demonstrated hardware issue, and you see nothing wrong with that?
That's...that's a bit unsettling, Shivetya. I recognize that it's their site and that it's up to them, based on their forum guidelines, to control certain messages...but come on. You can't possibly think this is a defensible act.
Antennas and Cradles (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Zapp Brannigan's Reporting Strategy (Score:2, Interesting)
Just because Apple is allowed to censor the forums doesn't mean when they do it it's not censorship. It just means you knew they could do it. I don't think the argument here is that they couldn't do it, but that they shouldn't do it.
Angry customers are free to picket and protest in front of your shop.
Class action lawsuits are more involved than just "my product is crap." Usually it's a situation where you cannot return the product. For example, the possible class action against Sony for removing 3rd party OS capability from the PS3. How many of them can return the unit? Few. So you get all of the users who cannot return their product but have lost value due to Sony's removal and sue for compensation.
Your lottery example is easily distinguishable, because you have no expectation to win with the lottery but you do have the expectation that your product will work.
Oh the irony!... (Score:2, Interesting)
We have created for the first time in all history a garden of pure ideology, where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests of any contradictory true thoughts.
Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth.
We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause.
Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion.
We shall prevail!
On January 24th Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like '1984.'"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8 [youtube.com]
Who knew that 26 years later, Apple would be "Big Brother"...
New Logo Please (Score:5, Interesting)
We need a new logo on /. for Apple. No more with the company logo. We need Steve Borg or something similar.
Re:Get over it and by a bumper you cry babies! (Score:3, Interesting)
The deal is that the phone is defective in the way it is sold.
What I find the most amazing thing in this whole story is how so many blogs/"news" sites didn't dare to call apple on it wrt the iphone4 antenna. Engadget, cnet all of them just gave the defective phone a stupidly high rating. Now that the cat is out of the bag they will all back-pedal on it.
Then there are the folks like you under the reasoning: "you bought a luxury phone that is defective by design, you were already ripped off, what are 30 bucks against that? Get over it". For a customer that values the design of a phone, adding a rubber band around it pretty much nullifies the value of it.
The whole idea that the product needs to be good for what it advertises, and that customers are entitled to get what they paid for apparently doesn't apply to this particular brand.
Re:Zapp Brannigan's Reporting Strategy (Score:1, Interesting)
Let me put it another way.
Censorship is just a label. Fine, let's define it in such a way that it isn't censorship. You're right, it's their forum.
Now, if it isn't censorship, it's still a STUPID thing to do, given that the Consumer Reports results are well described in broader media reports, and the best way to handle it isn't to pretend or otherwise arrange things as if the report didn't exist. The best way to handle it is to address the report, period.
You'd think Apple would know enough about technology reporting and the Internet to know that invoking the Streisand effect [wikipedia.org] would be a bad move. As the article linked in the summary points out, now they have two PR problems instead of one.
Re:Freedom from pron, criticism, open debate (Score:3, Interesting)
I think there's a lot of truth in this. It's interesting that as Apple has become more and more visible in the mainstream this has diminished. Maybe it's about "the underdog" and not Apple specifically.
I'd wager their extreme dominance of the desktop, vendor lock-in practices, and status as convicted in court for abusing a monopoly in multiple countries may have a little something to do with that. The rest that doesn't get talked about so much is the culture that tends to surround Windows, which can be summed up as "the computer is far too complex for you to try to understand, so let us worry about that for you (for a fee, of course)."
Re:Apple fanbois will love it (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Zapp Brannigan's Reporting Strategy (Score:3, Interesting)
It's only censorship when the government does it.
No, it's only government censorship when the government does it.
There are plenty of other kinds of censorship, but whether they are appropriate and our reaction to them varies with who or what is involved. Ever heard of self-censorship? [wikipedia.org] Or the Index Librorum Prohibitorum? [wikipedia.org]
Re:Zapp Brannigan's Reporting Strategy (Score:2, Interesting)
"It's only censorship when the government does it."
No, it's only illegal censorship when the government does it. Everyone else can do it as well. However, just because it isn't illegal when a private company does it doesn't make it the right thing to do.
Re:Zapp Brannigan's Reporting Strategy (Score:3, Interesting)