Both Apple and Google Release New Ads, Both of Which are Quite Misleading or Worse
By: Hillel Fuld (@hilzfuld)
As I have said many times, the technology wars have left the R&D centers long ago and now take place in courtrooms and on YouTube. Putting aside all the recent litigation between Apple and Samsung, Apple and Google, Apple and HTC (Hmm, noticing a pattern here), and others, the big tech giants are releasing online ads at a faster pace than ever before.
The thing is, too many of these ads are aggressive competition-bashing ads and I am looking at you, Samsung (and RIM, you should be ashamed of yourself). So when Google and Apple release some good old-fashioned product-based advertising, it is worth a head nod. Except, both companies released cute ads this week and while Apple’s is quite misleading, Google’s, some might say, is worse.
Let me explain. In the Apple Siri ad below, you can see Martin Scorsese talking to his iPhone, which by the way, works significantly better in iOS6 and actually manages to work when demoing it (most of the time). Putting aside the claims that Siri does not respond nearly as fast as she does in the ads, Mr Scorsese says to Siri at one point in the video, “Where’s Rick?”. Siri then responds with Rick’s location on a map.
Is that really possible? I thought not. So I asked my Apple Guru, Mark Gurman of 9to5Mac and he explained to me that for this functionality to work, you need Find My Friends, an App Apple itself released to be installed and configured. You need to be friends with Rick on Find My Friends and you need to be running iOS 5 or later.
@hilzfuld find my friends works in siri if you have the app installed and setup. Since 5.0.
— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) July 24, 2012
While, there are one or two people who meet all those requirements, something tells me the millions of people who watch that ad, will be asking their iPhones “Where’s John” for months and won’t get a response. Again, not impossible but not common either.
While Apple’s ad might be slightly misleading for the common person, Google’s ad for the Nexus 7 below, unless I am missing something, is just inaccurate. While the Nexus 7 is getting positive reviews across the board, and has me waiting eagerly to test one, the biggest downfall of the tablet is its lack of true mobile connectivity.
The iPad, as you know, comes in a 4G version so you are always connected, as do many other tablets. The Nexus 7 is Wifi only. Now if you own a Nexus 7, you might have noticed that it is very easy to physically open (how symbolic), unlike the iPad. If you do open it, you might notice the slot in there for future mobile connectivity (LTE I believe). However, right now it is not supported.
As TechCrunch points out, there is no Wifi Hotspot being used in this video (hard to see in the screen shot above, but watch the video) so with the lack of mobile data, how exactly is this dad and son duo connected on their camping trip? (See bottom of post for update.)
While tethering is indeed a decent solution for on-the-go connectivity in general, it is not ideal to be dependent on another device to surf the web, but either way, that is not the case in the ad so like I said, it is remotely misleading.
Well, the case against Apple’s Siri ads have been brought up before, mainly because of the speed of the responses, but unless I am missing something here in the Google ad, some Nexus 7 users might just make some noise about this ad.
So, did I indeed miss something here?
(UPDATE: Many have pointed out that the camping in the video is in their backyard within range of the house’s Wifi. Unless the Nexus 7 has a better Wifi sensor than other devices or there is some other solution set up in the house, the range is a bit much, in my humble opinion. Either way, it is possible, so I stand corrected.)
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Looks like you didn't get the last part of Nexus 7 advert. He's using WiFi outside their home to look up maps….at that point, they've come back home and are camping in the lawn.
Techies like me (and you) are such nitpickers. The first time I started watching the ad (yesterday morning), I thought to myself “hey wait a sec, it’s WiFi only, so how are they doing all that!”, but then when I reached the end of the ad, I thought to my self “How cute! They are playing on the concept of a father-son virtual camping trip (in the backyard).”
Many ads do this, it’s a kind of dissonance, where the first part of the ad puts your mind in a place that may not be real or possible, and the ending resolves the issue in a cute or humorous way that makes you experience pleasure or chuckle, but either way makes it memorable. This ad accomplishes that pretty well for various people. Non-techies will say “how cute, and what a useful device”. Techies will say “Aha! They are in WiFi range from their nearby house, that’s how they did Google Earth”. Some techies might even zoom in to see the WiFi signal indicator on the display. Either way it’s memorable and people will talk about it (as we are doing since yesterday).
As far as WiFi range, I don’t know about y’all, but when I turn my computer on and scan for WiFi, it finds 8 SSID’s, at least one of which is from a house 300 feet away from the computer. So, it isn’t at all farfetched for a wood-frame house to emit a good WiFi signal into the yard 30 feet away. Concrete houses with rebar and metallic mesh in the walls will result in a much weaker (or close to nonexistent) WiFi signal outdoors.
I think it’s a very cute and effective advertisement.
I'm a little surprised that no techie mentioned that looking at a 7 inch tablet with a dinosaur on it with binoculars wouldn't result in enough of a field of view to appear as if dinosaurs are roaming in the backyard
Both commercials are quite convincing, the one from Nexus all awhile I thought they are in a jungle surprisingly that's just their backyard.
The most used aspect of your smartphone is the talking, texting and e-mails. These can lead to huge monthly bills and all companies would like to control these costs while leaving their staff on a plan. Viber and Skype are both applications that use the data network to make calls and have chat sessions, without impacting your call minutes.
Making an application is not completely free since you will be spending a hundred dollars. You will also need a Mac and to utilize specific Mac-happy code to make your application.
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the growing number of Android phones, the number of available apps has also grown explosively. In addition to mobile phones, other devices such as tablet computers that run on the Android operating system are also gaining popularity.