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Comment by bonch | Hacker News Reader

I saw nothing that constituted a "lie." This is an article from an obvious Android fan (looking at Seth Weintraub's other articles, it's all Google, all the time) who didn't like that Apple took some shots at competing tablets. I have to agree with one of the comments to the article that says Android fanboys are as bad as Apple fanboys, maybe even worse because they act like the fact Android is open source is some great benevolent act of morality--Google is simply an advertising company giving people free services in order to index their data for contxt-sensitive advertising space.

I imagine that a lot of Apple competitors and their fans were upset at the iPad 2 announcement, because it really seems as if will be another hit.

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I've only just entered the smartphone market (android phone 3 weeks ago) but before I had a horse in the race, as a neutral observer, Apple fanboys were worse than Android ones. Android fanboy bitchiness seems to be a reaction to Apple marketroid guff. It doesn't self-generate and invade your mindspace. Apple marketing and culture does. Fanboys are annoying everywhere, but in the absence of mention of competition, Apple on other people's devices demands more of my mental space than Android does.

I saw nothing that constituted a "lie."

Here's the list from the article since you must have skipped over them:

1) A mistranslation from Korean that puts a competitor in a bad light.

2) "First dual core tablet to ship in volume."

3) ">90% market share".

#1 could arguably just a rehash of old stuff, "sorry guys I'm a bit out of date". #2 and #3 are complete fabrications.

The rest of the article was just nitpicking.

#2 depends on your definition of volume, and it's pretty clear that nobody is close to Apple there, so it's hardly even an exaggeration let alone a lie.

#3 isn't a fabrication either. For it to be false, you either have to include e-readers, or assume that Samsung sold over 1.6m Tabs, which seems extremely unlikely given the evidence.

#1 is the most dishonest looking one, but none of it really justifies the "You Lie!" outrage, given the general tone of industry commentary.

#2 Since the iPad 2 wasn't shipping at all, its volume is 0 at the time this was said. That much is inarguable, full stop. Ergo it is a lie.

#3 Provide documentation then, don't guess. Since you're obviously an Apple fan (not saying there is anything wrong with that), guessing will only provide numbers and situations that you want -- confirmation bias.

For it not to be a lie, Apple must own not 88% of the market, not 90% of the market but some number larger than 90%. And yes, include Nook colors since they're Android tablets and sold out and back-ordered where I live. And include Windows tablets. And include cheapo Walgreens Android tablets, and RIM tablets and Nokia tablets, convertable notebooks/netbooks, netpads and whatever other random tablet form factor is out there today. If you want to constrain the form factor to "a big screen that you touch and carry around" so that it excludes Kindles, I think that's fine and makes sense. Here's some lists of tablets so you can start your research.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablet_personal_computer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablet_computer

Unfortunately, all indications are that Apple owns somewhere between 85-88% of the tablet market today. Which is a fantastically impressive number considering that Microsoft has been trying to build the tablet market for many years and Apple's only been at it a fraction of the time. That is the number that should have been presented, it's an amazing number. There's no reason to fabricate a number and lie.

"#2 Since the iPad 2 wasn't shipping at all, its volume is 0 at the time this was said. That much is inarguable, full stop. Ergo it is a lie."

No, he said when it was going to ship. It's a prediction. It's only a lie if he has good reason to believe that the won't ship in volume .

Here's the link to the slide in question

http://fortunebrainstormtech.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/scr...

It says, "first dual core tablet to ship in volume". That's an exact quote.

It doesn't say, as you are positing,

"when it ships, we predict that at some unspecified point in the future, it will be the dual core tablet that ships more than some arbitrary number for 'in volume' that we've defined, while our competitors will likely not meet or exceed our completely arbitrary and self defined benchmark for 'in volume'."

If you don't think that's a lie, I have some property on the moon to sell you (or at least I predict at some point in the future I will own property on the moon that I will immediately turn over to you if you pay me for it now)

A slide will usually have a generalization of the point that the speaker is making, not a word for word rehash of everything he says.

I listened to the audio and he clearly states a lie "ipad2 is the first dual core tablet to ship in volume". A bold faced lie.

I often wonder whether there's anything that Apple could do that might make the faithful admit they've done something wrong. Once again, this is one of those times.

Edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

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