Hacker News Reader

Comment by defaultname | Hacker News Reader

Every single company that sells things does this. You are talking about an Apple event and promo page where they are quite literally giving a sales pitch for their new products. That they (over)hype their own products is not only not notable or interesting, it's entirely expected.

It is a bit bizarre that your comment, or variations of it, appears for every single Apple release. For those people so jaded and annoyed at the existence of Apple, why not just skip those threads?

There's something unique about Apple that draws in the detractors, however (seriously -- just look at the comments! What a junkyard of noise). It's a bit like a thread about the Super Bowl having hundreds of comments by people announcing that they aren't interested in the Super Bowl. Neat.

View on HN

You are right that it's just sales language, but people, tech folks in particular, don't have to like it and it's nothing wrong to voice their complaints. In fact it would be quite freshing today if some company start talking down to earth languages, like "hey we are giving you basically the same phone as last year with slightly better camera etc. It's useful though."

Fairphone did exactly this with the Fairphone 3+: they emphasised that they were just upgrading two components of the Fairphone 3 that had attracted criticism (the camera and speaker) and otherwise didn't want to change anything about their super-easy-to-repair phone with promises that replacement parts would be available for many years.

Fairphone's marketing is rather unusual in the marketplace in this respect.

What’s a fair phone though. You don’t make money with bland marketing. Nobody knows what that is.

Edit: lol @ people downvoting because I judged their phone. As if I cared about imaginary points on throwaway accounts.

It's interesting you mention that because I went to their website today and they are running a secret product campaign at the moment:

> The ...............* that can change a whole industry

> *Coming soon. Subscribe for updates and a chance to win big!

So it may be a laptop, a fairphone 4, a DIY geosync satellite. Or simply the old trick that tickles curiosity and get them subscribers to their newsletter. Not that unusual. And as a techie I say "fine, keep your secrets then" though.

Yeah, I don't think those statements would seen positive by the shareholders. I imagine shareholders would interpret them as lack of innovation and would probably trigger a sell on stocks.

yes, an underappreciated aspect, splashy advertising has mutliple audiences, not the least of which are (potential) shareholders. tim's (and many others') comp literally depends on it.

> You are right that it's just sales language, but people, tech folks in particular, don't have to like it and it's nothing wrong to voice their complaints.

Except it gets old real fast. These comments read like "first".

No signal, all noise.

Same thing with the PHP, electron and Facebook topics for instance. First top comments have been saying the same thing for years.

Obnoxious overhyping is not normal in most cultures around the world.

What is a company that doesn't do obnoxious overhyping?

Casio

Ouch, true, underhyped even. I had this simple, stylish enough for me, just heavy enough watch, sold with 10 years battery. Not only did it take lots of damage (daily driver, never removed it but for cleaning) but the battery lasted 15 years then died a bit later. That was 100eur well spent.

Casio is a sleeper, they don't over extend and they are the best at what they do (which is to provide durable, cheap digital watches)

And graphing calculators. And audio synth. ;-)

And Citizen, maybe?

What cultures are they not common in? I know you aren't talking about China, at least. Definitely not Japan, not most of East Asia. Probably not western Europe either, and it's pretty common in North America.

There's not a lot of new product hype in Amish communities.

New barn designs maybe?

You've clearly never been shopping for Amish furniture.

I was literally just watching a video the other day from an amish buggy producer. they were going over the different options and prices. 7k for the top of the line model

Streaming video doesn't seem like the most effective way to reach your Amish customers...

What? Yes it definitely is. Look at every single traditional market in every single European country, or in South America. You’ll find people screaming about the worlds best this and world best that. If you walk down a random street in England you see 14 of the world best beers and 7 of them will be the worlds oldest pub. Naturally all the commercials are the same.

You’d have to be a recluse to think that overhyping in sales pitches is not normal.

Haven't been to Scotland then.

Yeah, the place that proudly claims to be producer of most mediocre whiskies in the world.

To be fair no true Scotsmen would do such thing.

Marketing for Scotch is done by people in the local markets and is not representative of the true Scotsman.

must be fun to live in a culture of subtlety

honestly, as someone who has lived in over 20 countries and on 5 continents, I would say the US has more restrained tastes in marketing than most cultures. Western Europe is generally more low key than ours though. Almost everywhere else I have been has a more aggressive sales/advertising culture.

I am not sure what culture you are referring to, but as someone who has lived in four very different cultures for a long time each, this is very normal, human behavior. Every tech company does this too, not just Apple. And every other company too, not just tech. And artists, and hollywood, and... humans.

Most of Asia begs to differ, if not all of Asia.

Well, when things like superbowl or similar events are happening the overspill tends to get inacceptable.

Rave and rant all you want about it on appleinsiders, mac rumors, or whatever.

Regarding the expected (over)hyping, why is that an exuse? It's like the commercials for washing powder/liquid, toothpaste and all the countless other non-sense.

In other words a lie, or euphemistic reality distortion field.

Who does that? Fraudsters!

edit: and just for the fun of it

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whore_of_Babylon

[2] http://www.sutjhally.com/articles/advertisingattheed/

[3] https://www.mediaed.org/transcripts/Advertising-at-the-Edge-...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live

> Every single company that sells things does this.

Software companies moving from update releases to subscription models are a great counter-example. There's plenty of bad sides to a subscription model, but at least PR and marketing departments can be much more honest about slow and incremental updates.

Marketing links have no place on HN, but until the mods recognise this fact, it's actually refreshing to see people call out marketing bullshit.

We're allowed to point out hyperbole! Comment threads always have criticisms of everything. What's bizarre is Apple defenders that always show up feeling personally slighted somehow.

Sure, point out the hyperbole. I'll point out how predictable it is.

The universe is balanced.

> There's something unique about Apple that draws in the detractors

I think you've almost figured it out. Apple and the Super Bowl both have something in common: really obnoxious fans.

If Apple didn't do it above and beyond not just what is normal but what is reasonable without an eye roll, then it wouldn't appear in every announcement, would it?

Everyone overhypes their product releases. But the reality is that most of us just don't pay attention to them. Microsoft talking about Windows? Eh. Samsung announcing something? Neat.

Apple announces something, however, and the detractors just have to flood in and give their hot takes. I suppose that speaks to the influence of Apple now.

No need to get defensive. People are allowed to be unimpressed with Apple's marketing speak.

Yes, they are allowed, of course... but being "unimpressed with Apple's marketing speak", a topic having been thoroughly traversed, seems counter to Hacker News's stated desire for comments that substantiate new thought, or create new or interesting discussions.

To the contrary, it's sparked quite the deep discussion about marketing hype, software companies, and views about the same across the world.

More valuable, perhaps, than discussing an incremental upgrade to the iPad Mini?

That's fair, I agree that it has sparked interesting discussions. Looks like we can't write off topics just because we think it's been thoroughly discussed already.

How "new" are the discussions though? Maybe we should try to find a previous thread where someone said the same thing and compare the discussion there?

They really don't. most of them make a bad commercial with a attractive people using the product and call it a day. Maybe list some features. I can't really think of any other company who's brand is to self label that every thing it does is some breakthrough for humanity. Segway?

Penis enlargement pill pushers!

> Every single company that sells things does this.

Nope.

> It is a bit bizarre that your comment, or variations of it, appears for every single Apple release. For those people so jaded and annoyed at the existence of Apple, why not just skip those threads?

For those people so jaded and annoyed at people critiquing apple - why not just skip those threads?

> There's something unique about Apple that draws in the detractors, however (seriously -- just look at the comments! What a junkyard of noise).

Maybe the only unique thing here is your need to defend apple with no arguments other than your own annoyance at apple being criticised?

Apple also lies

Steve Jobs with his distortion field used to say RISC was better than Intel right up until they switched to Intel, then the story switched.

They acted like they invented the omnibox for safari browser…

Also they used to tout the size of their phones as perfect, then unceremoniously eliminated that size for nearly a decade (until this year!)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AptLR1gS-Pg

In fairness to the size thing, until last year I was still using the older se and had that form factor since my first smart phone, the iPhone 4.

When I got the 4 it was great. By the time I finally changed the form factor last October, the world had changed and by that I mean much of the web was unusable due to the screen size and how no one optimized for non-phablets.

What’s perfect one year may not be perfect the next because things change. Accounting for an allowance of standard marketing hyperbole on top of that, i don’t see anything particularly wrong with that one claim.

> Steve Jobs with his distortion field used to say RISC was better than Intel right up until they switched to Intel, then the story switched.

What are you talking about? He never changed his story about RISC, and guess what Apple is using now? The only reason they switched to intel was because nobody else was manufacturing a chip that was competitive.

> Steve Jobs with his distortion field used to say RISC was better than Intel right up until they switched to Intel, then the story switched.

He generally made specific claims which were true — for example, when they added AltiVec they talked about media processing and other SIMD-friendly tasks — and then let the press/fanboys generalize that. Towards the end they also started talking about things like battery life or software features when there simply wasn't a compelling comparison like that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com