Apple boycotts German newspaper after Bentgate Video – open letter to Tim Cook
computerbild.de
computerbild.de
Everything they claim should be taken with a huge grain of salt, in fact one should probably assume their claims to be false until proven otherwise.
No, it isn't, except in the most myopic and unhelpful way possible. It would be the truth to measure how much force is required and compare it to other phones on the market. It would be the truth to show that almost all phones bend when exposed to that kind of force.
It is not "the truth" to show a selective amount of the truth that allows people to keep believing a lie in order to sell papers, and I find it hard to sympathise with fake journalists losing privileges only afforded to legitimate members of the press.
We can argue the relative merits of different reasons to distance yourself from a publication, but unfavorable coverage (even unfair coverage) just seems childish and petty.
Seems to have been bent with considerably small effort, and very quickly.
Not all phones take the same pressure. But the iPhone 6+ is hardly the weakest of the lot. Consumer Reports lists it as more durable than the HTC One (90 lbs for deformation of the 6+ vs 70 lbs for the HTC One), and I don't think the HTC One is generally considered to be a flimsy phone (Consumer Reports actually says it's "largely regarded as a sturdy, solid phone").
So, if you apply pressure to the right (wrong) part of the phone, on purpose or accident, it will snap like a twig. That's just reality. Deal with it.
That said: if you are more interested in using your 6 Plus than in bending it, buy a rigid case. Problem solved.
Of course, using a level of pressure you wouldn't apply to any phone... no-one in their right mind goes around "bending" phones. The thing is, when you have your phone in your pant pocket... and you squat down or something, the arch on your leg is going to easily create upwards of 50+ lbs of pressure at just the right place to create the bend. That's how my co-worker got a bend in his phone. That's right, a guy I personally know got a bend on his iPhone 6. That's why I think the 'only 9 people' line by Apple is absolute and total bull shit. It's infuriating that news journals are just buying it up like it's truth straight from God's lips.
Agreed.
I have bent extremely thick metal keys in my back pocket I assume just by squatting, and I am under 200 pounds in weight.
I only noticed because I went to unlock my door one day and the key didn't fit.
Thankfully I could hammer it back into place, but unfortunately the same is impossible with an iPhone.
But doesn't that just prove it's stupid to put a phablet in your back pocket? There's no hope of making a phone stronger than a thick metal key.
More like your coworker is bullshit, or you are bullshit. No, Apple's "only 9 people" line doesn't mean only 9 people have ever seen a bend, but it does mean that only 9 people actually contacted Apple about having a bent phone. If your coworker really did bend his phone like that, his very first stop should have been the Apple Store, to get it replaced, and he would have been part of that "only 9 people" statistic.
So either you're making this up, or your coworker is.
Also, Consumer Reports tested the iPhone (and several other phones), and determined that it takes 70 pounds of force to bend an iPhone 6 (matching the force necessary to bend an HTC One), and 90 pounds of force to bend a 6+.
> the arch on your leg is going to easily create upwards of 50+ lbs of pressure at just the right place
Bullshit. If you're creating 50+ lbs of force on an item in your pocket by bending over, you'd be breaking stuff in your pocket all the time. 50 lbs of force is a not-insignificant amount of force. And of course it takes more than 50lbs to deform the phone anyway.
Also, that test indeed shows the newer phones are structurally weaker than the 5, at any rate. The iPhone 6 can barely sustain half the pressure as the previous model...
In hand, the thing feels solid, and that's the important part to me. I think a very small percentage of people who destroy their iPhones will do it by bending, rather than dropping or dunking.
I have. I admit it actually felt sturdy and rigid, but I don't think we should put so much weight on it merely feeling sturdy and rigid. How it feels is just how it feels, feels can be very deceiving, they don't conclusively say whether something will last.
> But doesn't that just prove it's stupid to put a phablet in your back pocket? There's no hope of making a phone stronger than a thick metal key.
Putting it in one's back pocket is stupid, I don't know anyone who does that though (I don't know anyone who did that with their Galaxy Notes for years it's been out). An individual I know reports he had his iPhone bent while it was in his front pant pocket. He says he doesn't vividly remember when or how it was bent, but strongly suspects it's when he was squatting American style (like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Michael_V... ). It appears that Galaxy Note is able to withstand this kind of stress, it's just the iPhone 6 that cannot.
At present, I'm not sure what to make of this. I know one person already who had his iPhone bent, and plenty of folks online. But it's difficult to put a number on how many people at this time have had their iPhones bent (selection bias and all on online forums). I think we should give it about 6 months and see if more people are having this problem, as reliable and clear data on this issue is not out there for us to see at this time.
Apple produced an expensive, high profile product with some serious and obvious design flaws. Trying to convince others that the issues don't exist (example - [1]) or vowing revenge against any media outlet that chooses to report on them is just absurd and wouldn't be tolerated in any other PR department.
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/09/consumer-rep...
Consumer Reports is hardly sensational. And they came down on the side of there being a problem with "Antennagate". They didn't think this is a "serious" concern.
Apple had super harsh responses to internal folks giving out bumpers to people during the iPhone 4 release, I know more than one guy who got fired for acknowledging the problem to a customer and helping them out before Apple corporate had an official policy.
I posit that the local German response of Apple was an overreaction, the magazine's response has probably exacerbated the conflict. It will be interesting to see how this resolves itself.
What I'm more surprised at is the way Apple dealt with it (if phone call claim is true), for a company that is usually great with PR.
No matter whether or not bendgate is or is not an issue, blacklisting and thumbing your nose at journalists is not a good PR move. I'm surprised people at major corporations keep screwing this up.
Instead, Apple is doing exactly what that newspaper should have expected them to do: stop giving them test units and event invites. They're not entitled to that stuff, and Apple is under no obligation to invite hostile media to their events.
And yes, they are hostile. Consumer Reports proved that the iPhone 6 is not super-sensitive to bending, and in fact the 6+ is even more durable than the 6, and more durable than the HTC One (which Consumer Reports says "is largely regarded as a sturdy, solid phone"). That should have been the end of this whole farce. But the newspaper wanted to jump on the media bandwagon, pretending that the ability to bend a phone is somehow unique to the iPhone, and Apple rightfully decided the newspaper was no longer a business they wanted to work with.