Apple Doctored iPad Star Trek Image | Hacker News Reader

Apple Doctored iPad Star Trek Image

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26 pointsMikeCapone18 comments

For the life of me I can't figure out why this is a big deal. Every marketing department uses doctored images in their promotions. It's a fact of consumerism. But it doesn't matter — really. That single image, no matter how embellished, didn't sell any iPads. The iPad sold itself.

It's a doctored image about ... image quality. That goes a bit deeper.

A doctored image about any aspect is still a doctored image — the same principles apply.

But still: it doesn't matter. Consumers aren't buying products based upon a photo. With the iPad, they've either already decided they want one or went into the store and saw it for themselves and then decided. This one picture really doesn't matter.

Why is Apple the only company being called out? If anyone — besides Apple-haters — really cared about this, image doctoring wouldn't be such a pervasive technique used in all forms of marketing. Other companies would be the focus, too — Apple isn't alone here.

This has nothing to do with image doctoring and everything to do with Apple.

Or, perhaps, it's about a culture where little lies and cheats like this are accepted as "no big deal".

It's not like they take a camera and snap a few pictures of it playing Star Trek anyway, every one of the pictures showing the ipad with some image on the screen is 'digitally altered' or any image on any screen in actual marketing data whether its from apple or htc or dell anyone else. This is because taking a picture of the actual screen actually doing something doesn't turn out very good when trying to emphasis the device. Apple wasn't the first to do this and they certainly won't be the last.

The sight of those two almost-imperceptibly-different images makes me want to throw down my iPad in disgust.

Imperceptible? If it showed what it'd actually show, you'd either be missing half of Spock's head (zoom), or it'd be letterboxed.

But I agree that they did do a good job of editing the image for the promo.

Lots of companies adjust the truth in promotions?

When was the last time you saw a shampoo commercial with real unaltered hair in it?

Do you think Nokia shows the download delays in their ads?

Do you think Sony show an actual tv display in their ads? Is it not easier to overlay a perfect picture onto the screen in post production?

Are McDonalds burgers really perfectly round and tidy?

With some very heavy number crunching, instead of just cropping, you could have nonlinear stretching of low-detail parts of the image. This would totally compromise the directorial vision, but so does 4x3 cropping.

Guess what, the burger in that Wendy's commercial isn't edible either. I'm sorry, but this just isn't that big of a deal.

Arbys beef cheddar sandwiches can never be served as they appear in advertisements. Photos of the sandwich slow plentiful cheese dripping out of the side, while cheese on the real sandwiches is doled out in small carefully measured dollops incapable of covering the entire sandwich.

Maybe this isn't a "big deal". Maybe it doesn't technically hurt anyone. But it's still a lie and I won't want a culture which turns a blind eye to small transgressions.

Wow, that went from "here's an interesting thing about the iPad advertisements" to "HOLY SHIT SOAPBOX" very quickly.

I would probably be considered an iPad hater, but have to say that this "article" is complete rubbish. Come on...

Is there something factually incorrect about it, or do you simply dislike what it implies?

they just keep on coming.

I don't doubt the iPad's capabilities, but I still dislike false advertising (of course they will claim that the image is not real just like all the camera ads on TV, "not actual images from in the camera")

Are they too good for disclaimers?

This is the clumsiest attempt at a debunking that I've seen in a long time. The guy can't even design a webpage that is readable, let alone prove his point.

It's also hilarious to assert that Apple needs to do this to sell the iPad. It sells itself. And not because of some photo of Mr. Spock.

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