THE past month and a half been tough times for PR at Apple. Having spent a few hours last night catching up with news, we managed to fish some items that show Apple is far from perfect and at times excessively vain. Apple's PR crisis culminates now that an Apple manager gets arrested for fraud. The items below are roughly chronologically sorted (also sorted by topic to an extent).
A CITY COUNCILLOR has cancelled her order for an Ipad after a public backlash over tax expenditure.
A rogue Vietnamese developer called Thuat Nguyen reportedly hacked into iTunes accounts and gamed the Books category in the Apple App Store to artificially inflate the ratings and sales for his book apps. Both The Next Web and Engadget websites reported Sunday that Nguyen apps accounted for 42 of the top 50 books by revenue in the Books section of the iTunes App Store.
We reported earlier this week on a rogue developer who had apparently gamed the App Store in order to get 40 of his apps listed on the store's top sales rankings. Following numerous developer and user complaints, Apple yanked the offending apps from the store, and now Engadget says it's received a response from Apple regarding these shenanigans.
You needn't worry, though, iPhone users: Apple is keeping you safe from dangerous apps like Google Voice, Google Latitude, and MSNBC.com cartoonist Daryl Cagle's Tiger Woods cartoon viewer. Anything that so much as implies the idea of a nipple certainly won't get within 10 feet of Steve Jobs' castle. And political satire? Well, you're usually shielded from that, unless some guy has the audacity to win a Pulitzer Prize and generate lots of publicity over his rejection.
Apple advised users who suspected fraudulent purchases were made to contact their bank and cancel the credit card in question.
At one point Mr Nguyen's apps occupied 42 of the top 50 book apps sold.
Apple says in the filing that it has suffered "irreparable harm" from the sales and has requested that the court grant an order preventing any future infringement as well as monetary damages and litigation fees.
Verizon mocked Apple and its new iPhone 4 in a New York Times ad this week. Promoting its flagship Droid X, Verizon's ad states: "Most importantly, it comes with a double antenna design. The kind that allows you to hold the phone any way you like and use it just about anywhere to make calls."
DESIGNER OF SHINY TOYS Apple has burnt at least one fanboi with the Iphone 4 as a report has emerged that one of the devices caught fire, resulting in burns for the user.
On Thursday, New York Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat, sent a letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs asking him to offer iPhone 4 customers a clearly written explanation of the problem and make a commitment to fix it at no charge to users.
While the D.A.'s withdrawal of the April 23rd warrant is certainly a positive step, this likely isn't the end of the matter. As EFF repeatedly noted at the time, the warrant-backed search of Chen's home was illegal as it violated California Penal Code section 1524(g)'s prohibition against the issuance of warrants for "unpublished information obtained or prepared in gathering, receiving or processing of information for communication to the public."
Consumer Reports made headlines earlier this week for suggesting that iPhone 4 owners would get better phone reception if they put duct tape over the bottom left corner of the phone, where there was a "design flaw" in the antenna.
SOUTH KOREA will not have to worry about a rash of people complaining about buying broken Iphone 4s this year.
The country is a little miffed that Steve Jobs does not think it is important enough to peddle his rubber band powered phone there.
Apple is reporting that, in a quarter when it shipped a phone so broken that it required a rubber band to fix it, its profits shot through the roof.
Apple launched the iPhone 4 Case Program app in the App Store a few days ago, and is expected to invest somewhere in the neighborhood of $175 million on the free bumper program aimed at reluctantly addressing reception issues with the iPhone 4. There is something that doesn't add up, though, about the timing that makes the program seem like a bait-and-switch designed to brush the problem under the rug.
Apple's iPad can shut down if it gets too hot, and Jacob Baltazar, Claudia Keller, and John Browning are as mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore.
Apple has expunged videos of competing cellphones exhibiting comparative reception problems, perhaps hoping that if it can just stop talking about the problem then everyone will forget it happened.
In letters to the lawyers of both Apple and Amazon, Blumenthal noted that while MFNs are not "per se illegal" under current antitrust laws, they are not entirely legal either. He requested counsel from both companies to meet with him to discuss the inquiry.
And you thought those iPhone 4 signal problems were bad -- at last week's Black Hat conference, a San Francisco firm called Lookout Mobile Security revealed that third-party smartphone apps are stealing user information and (literally) phoning home with it. And by "home," I mean China.
Independent testing by PA Consulting supports Apple CEO Steve Jobs' claim that most smartphones have antenna weaknesses, but finds the iPhone 4 does not perform as well in this regard as certain BlackBerry and HTC models.
RUBBER BAND SELLER Apple has said it will investigate a major security vulnerability in its Iphone OS software that allows hackers to gain complete access to Iphones and Ipads.
The Iphone Dev Team showed off the hack to great effect earlier this week with the Jailbreakme 'application'. The site, which allowed users to jailbreak Iphone OS devices including the Iphone 4 and the Ipad, simply required users to visit a single website.
THE GERMAN REPUBLIC has had it with Apple shipping out gear with dodgy security and has issued a statement warning Apple Iphone 4 users that the company's trademark rubber band is not protection against viruses.
The Federal Office for Information Security (FOIS), which has already claimed the scalp of Internet Explorer in Europe by suggesting that people use Firefox instead, has said that several versions of Apple's Iphone, Ipad, and Ipod Touch have potentially serious security problems.
Don't, however, jump to the conclusion that Mark Papermaster is a victim of the iPhone 4 "antennagate" debacle. Remember, in his press conference of July 16 — an event from which Papermaster was conspicuouly absent — CEO Steve Jobs assured us all that "There is no antennagate."
The Apple executive who oversaw development of the troubled iPhone 4 is leaving the company.
The New York Post reports that the European Commission is working with its US equivalent, the FTC, to see if the practice of banning companies from iOS on the basis of their ability to compete with Apple (or its mates) is anti-competitive.
The cappuccino company rarely admits that any of its products have faults, with the recent Iphone 4 antenna issue being one of the most recent in a long line of denials. However with the Japanese government wading in on this, Jobs' Mob must have felt compelled to do something useful and forgo the usual round of blaming its customers and releasing magical software fixes that do nothing.
Global supply manager Paul Shin Devine was charged with accepting $1 million in kickbacks from half a dozen Asian suppliers of iPhone and iPod accessories in a federal indictment and a civil suit, the San Jose Mercury News reported. Devine allegedly was paid for sharing confidential Apple information with contractors that helped them win Apple business on favorable terms, the paper said.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Paul Shin Devine is facing both a federal grand jury indictment and a civil suit from Apple following an investigation which implicates Devine for leaking confidential information to key suppliers to enable them to negotiate better contracts with Apple. In exchange, the Apple suppliers made payments to various bank accounts set up in the names of Devine and his wife according to the indictment.