When you pay for a stock image, as an aside, a part of the value of paying is economic scarcity: That the images that you choose aren't blanketing every Wordpress site, etc.
Isn't this a bit much? There's hardly any text on the site at all, much less enough to 'denigrate an entire industry'.
This is just a web page with 10 photos on it with a cc license. Don't know where you're getting the rest of that.
Apparently you're new here.
Huh, where did he denigrate an entire industry?
Lots of hate in this thread, which I don't get. Granted, you can find a lot of free stock photos on the internet, but I find the idea of curated list of photos targeted for product landing pages valuable. This was clearly an MVP and for some reason HN audience found it valuable and voted it to the front page, but I don't see how it deserves all the negativity that is shown in many comments.
and for some reason HN audience found it valuable and voted it to the front page
This a recurring retort. It's nonsense. A very small percentage of HNers can get something to the top of the front page (especially if it uses a title that panders to a bias, given that many people never actually click on the link). That they do in no world inoculates the target against any criticism.
Lets say I write an article negatively portraying the electronics manufacturing industry and use these images along with the article. I'm pretty sure Apple wouldn't like it if they found out...
Despite the reactionary comments in this thread, we're not in a corporatist dystopia where it's against the law to publish a photograph of a ubiquitous consumer device.
Libel and slander laws are more directed at individuals... large corporate companies are free game in my opinion.
It's important to know and understand the reasons behind advice like that. It totally depends on the circumstances, who is doing it and a host of other factors. Best practice? Get a government job with a pension and you won't have to worry about anything. Work for a corporation where they have departments that tell you what you can and should do and worry about all sorts of minutia.
I've used Apple logos in the past frequently as well as other things similar. Large companies don't expend energy and legal time doing anything nasty to small companies without a compelling reason (of course you could show me outliers obviously but you can't make money in business worrying about those outliers). Worse case scenario is normally a nasty letter asking you to stop, if that. The chance of an actual legal claim and money damages (once again in most cases) is minute. You might have to pay a lawyer to write something in reply. So what?
(And yes I've gone up against the NCAA and AMX with nasty letters and made them go away so I've pushed the envelope at least that far..I've also gotten approval in advance from the IRS as well for a project using their logo.)
If you are talking about Apple's marketing partners' rules for using photography, then those do not apply to the rest of the world.
I'm no fan of stock photos but I have to say that the few images look pretty much like stock photos. Which is what I don't like about them. The fact that you don't have to pay is really not the issue it's that particular look (with the blur etc.) that bothers me.