Brian's Brain

A year and a half ago, I pointed out some presentation sleigh-of-hand done by Steve Jobs at his Macworld Expo keynote, related to the statistics he showcased in comparing PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs. In summary, the SPEC 'rate' versions he shared automatically benefited from a multi-core ('coincidentally' Intel) CPU versus a single-core (PowerPC) counterpart, regardless of which architecture the CPU was based on. Admittedly, Apple's not alone in staging such 'buyer beware: read the fine print' tricks; the company's CPU supplier pulled a similar stunt less than two months back. But it's yet another example of the half-truth mentality that's increasingly pervasive in the tech press (and public) relations fields, a behavioural pattern that I most recently pointed out to you just a week (and a day) ago.

Unfortunately, Apple's at it again....twice, actually, within less than two weeks. Example 1: one of the things I didn't share with you about the the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference keynote two weeks (and two days) back was that Electronic Arts co-founder Bing Gordon joined Steve Jobs onstage and announced that EA was developing several game titles for OS X. Something just smelled fishy to me; most (if not all) of EA's originally-Windows-targeted content (which these particular titles are) leverages Microsoft's DirectX API suite, which isn't natively available on OS X. Conversely, many of the titles developed by id Software and its founder John Carmack, which also joined Jobs onstage that day, are built on OpenGL, which is natively available on OS X.

As it turns out, my skepticism was justified; EA will be using a virtualization layer called Cider (which I've written about before). Granted, virtualization doesn't necessarily translate into a substantial performance hit or feature-and-quality degradation; note, for example, the 3D acceleration built into the latest version of Parallels Desktop and the still-in-beta VMware Fusion. But although I doubt Jobs and Gordon said that the EA titles were native (Apple, unlike Microsoft, doesn't publish executive speech transcripts....think about that one for a moment....so I can't definitively say one way or the other), I'd argue that native OS X titles were strongly implied.

My other example just came to light last Thursday. Stare at the animated GIF below for a few seconds:

Yep, you've got it. Apple's using a big-hands model in its most recent iPhone advertisements. Not only are the new images deceptive (the practice is known as forced perspective), unless a potential customer's got Frankenstein's Monster-like dimensions, they also reflect a profoundly inept marketing decision. It's not necessary for Apple to mislead; folks began lining up outside Apple and AT&T stores days ago in advance of Friday evening's sales kickoff, and initial reviews are generally positive. The company's clearly got a winner on its hands (pun intended). So why risk public backlash from such shoddy promotional practices?

Like I said; there's something rotten at Apple's core. Caveat emptor.

p.s....check this link for what I consider to be fair and balanced past coverage before you flame me, Apple fanboys. And note: there are more Macs than PCs in my household.