I'm not sure what you mean. I understand it to be a review by a professional photographer - but one with an obvious bias towards Apple, as they have been a client of his, he uses their phone's cameras in his work, and he has a book about how to take pictures with their phones. But that does not make it an advertisement, as far as I know, he is not paid by Apple, nor did Apple provide the phone or control what he said.

How did he get hands on a phone that hasn’t been released yet if Apple didn’t provide it?

A lot of prominent bloggers and tech news sites, including John Gruber, The Verge, and many others, got advance devices to review. This is normal, and not unique to Apple. They also get Pixels and Galaxies in advance.

Unfortunately, alot early reviewers have perverse incentive to give good reviews to continue receiving early units and getting that as revenue first.

Sure, and respected camera review websites like DPReview get the majority of their revenue through people clicking through their site to purchase cameras. Is it a conflict of interest? Oh hell yes, and you should keep it in mind. Does it make the review wrong? Well...probably not, but keep it in mind.

I think Apple has plenty of incentive not to yank reviewable units from people who've gotten them early in the past, when/if they get a bad review.

Taints the whole point of doing reviews.

> Taints the whole point of doing reviews.

It certainly does, which is why you can never trust an early review of an Apple product. https://www.cultofmac.com/255618/how-apples-blacklist-manipu...

Okay but there’s no concrete examples there. There’s a bunch of broad claims that Apple will blacklist journalists for X, Y, and Z but no names or evidence that it’s actually happening.

I can believe that Apple might do this (especially since he also cites openly breaking rules by doing things like live-streaming when it’s been explicitly forbidden) but this article doesn’t convince me it’s happening or educate me on how much of a problem it really is.

The article links to a few concrete examples. You'll have to use the Wayback Machine to access them.

No it doesn’t. It contains a link to an article about supposed “whitelisting” and one about supposedly giving WaPo and exclusive interview in retaliation to the NYT’s critical reporting. These are both the exact opposite of the blacklisting the article asserts exists. Then it links to an article about blacklisting but dismissed it as inaccurate. So there’s nothing linked about actual blacklisting examples by Apple unless I’ve missed something. Elgan doesn’t even say why he is blacklisted.

This article is about somebody who got a loaner, which means they are specifically whitelisted as my article's link says, which means that they are uncritical of Apple products. I don't know why you are hung up on blacklisting specifically as I have not mentioned that, only that prelaunch reviews of Apple products are not credible.

Because this comment chain, including your original reply, was about blacklisting critical reviewers.

Also because the article you linked is about blacklisting.

It is also about whitelisting, which is the relevant section for this review ("an early review of an Apple product"). I never mentioned the term "blacklisting" until you brought it up.

Now that we have that out of the way, do you agree that early reviews of Apple products can only be done by reviewers that Apple considers favorable?

The article is extremely weak and then tried to explain way why some publications who say negative things don’t get blacklisted.

That doesn't make their reviews advertisements.

why would ppl keep trusting them if they keep writing bogus positive reviews.

That's fair, it may be a provided phone. But then that puts him in a similar situation as any site that has a review for the phone now. You know his relationship with the phone itself and Apple. Consider his review with that perspective - but I still think it's a valid review.

And now if he doesn't write a glorious review then he won't be ever contacted by Apple again in the future. Really hard to trust objectivity of his review in these circumstances.

The review by John Gruber of the Touch Bar based MacBook was critical of the feel of the keyboard - this was before the actual reliability problems came up.

He along with everyone else was critical of the first Apple Watch.

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/05/03/patel-apple-wat...

Seeing that he still not only gets review units every year, he gets the prime live interview every year after WWDC with top Apple executives, I don’t think he has been blacklisted.

Not to mention that Marco Arment is often critical of Apple and got a review unit of the Mac Mini last year.

Those two bloggers will only criticize Apple products in comparison to other Apple products. They will never say a competitor's product is better even if most other reviewers say so.

John Gruber on Pixel’s Night Site Camera

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/10/25/night-sight

Gruber has stated repeatedly how much of an embarrassment that the MacBook keyboards have become but he famously still uses an old ADB Apple keyboard so he doesn’t have as much first hand experience as Marco who buys computers more frequently.

They have both complained about Macs falling behind compared to what Microsoft is doing with the Surface line.

Marco routinely criticizes the Apple Watch and compares it to the non smart watches he prefers. Gruber also prefers regular watches.

It is a completely ridiculous breathless review of a phone that matches a Pixel or Huawei from 1-2 years ago.

Of course Apple did provide the phone. it’s not in stores yet.

And of course he gets ‘paid’. If not directly by Apple in dollars, but by Apple in exposure of his name and thus his business. He does this (great) PR piece pre-launch for Apple, we all learn his name, some will want him to be their photographer of choice and thus the cycle closes.

Maybe he found it in a bar?

Early test releases are not uncommon.

Does the author have a bias? Certainly.

Is this an advertisement? Ads are paid announcements. There was nothing noting it was paid for in any capacity.

There's a difference between an ad and a bias. I find it useful to notice biases because we all have them. Ads are quite different.

First, there can be a big power discrepancy in cases where free product is provided for review purposes. It's different if you are part of a traditional media outfit and have a significant, steady readership. But for someone like this, there can be a lot of pressure to give very favorable write-ups.

Second, this wouldn't be the first time someone did a paid promotion without noting it was paid. I don't know anything about this guy, so I'm not accusing him of anything. I'm just saying it's naive to think that everyone is always highly committed to playing nice with the FTC rules. (See game streamers and their odd tendency to open tons of 'loot boxes' on stream & get significantly better results than expected.)

Finally a lot of the copy reads like it's straight from a press release, with capitalized words and everything.

Whether it's enough to constitute an ad in a regulatory sense, I don't know. But you can be advertised to without the source being a literal ad according to a legal definition.

Whats the point of muddying the waters without having verifiable facts? The thing with speculation is .. anyone can speculate, on anything, for any reason. That doesn't make it true.

>I'm just saying it's naive to think that everyone is always highly committed to playing nice with the FTC rules.

Who exactly said that?

Look at the quote at the beginning of this thread.

If it looks like an ad, if it reads unnaturally, like something no real person would say to convey a honest opinion, then it's most likely an ad.

I read the post and it read fairly naturally to me. There are a wide variety of people out there who communicate differently.

Given the date of the post, time to write it up, and time to take the pictures this phone is in the hands of something before the official release date.

I read this like I read something from John Gruber about something Apple.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. It didn't read like an ad to me. It reads like someone who was excited to use a cool new product, and wrote about it on their own website.

Promoted content exists, where publishers accept money from companies to write articles promoting a good or service, to subsidize their revenue. Most of the time they do not disclose this.

He received a device in exchange for his review, so yes he was paid.

Apple doesn't give out devices (unlike a variety of other companies that do). They lend it for review or development purposes and then you return it. That's how they work. Of course that is still a gift of sorts given that it gives some people a headstart, but for some random photographer that doesn't seem to be selling anything or have ads...eh, it's kind of a not super big value.

Further he never thanked Apple. He thanked a maker of a camera app for iOS. At most it seems to be an ad for a camera app, and they likely provided the device to him.

Ok, it's not an ad. It's an advertorial. Happy now?

And he's just beating the strawman with his review.

- Did we need a "review" to learn that the new iPhone can shoot better pictures than previous iPhones?

- Where are all the full-resolution pictures–especially from the night shots? Everything looks nice and sharp if you scale it to 750x560. Even for the single lens camera of my 3 years-old android.

- Would it break Apple's heart to include a comparison of their "pro camera" with a real professional camera? Even a low-end one.

And let's not stick with the payment thing. We have no way to verify whether or not he received or will receive compensation from Apple. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.

> Would it break Apple's heart to include a comparison of their "pro camera" with a real professional camera? Even a low-end one.

Why would they? That's not who they're competing against.

Hell, photographers know that any iPhone can't compete a midrange camera.

But Apple clearly wants the average person to believe that it can. Why else stick a "pro" description to your phone's camera? Of course they can't spell it clearly, because they will become a laughing stock. But they do imply it at every opportunity: "Pro camera system. We’ve three‑upped ourselves.", review by professional photographer etc.

It would be fair game if they had a professional instagrammer review the new iPhone. Because that's the only kind of "professional" camerawork you can do with any phone.

He doesn't even compare it to non-Apple phone cameras. Only to previous generation Apple cameras. That's one tipoff that the article is a submarine.

I'm not really sure what you are talking about. An advertisement of what? Ultra wide lenses? The author is a photographer who writes about being excited to now have the ability to carry an ultra wide lense - something that has exited in the photography world for decades - as part of his phone. He then write a review about the performance of this lense. Nothing about this is even close to being an advertisement.

What a ridiculous non-argument. What about your advertisement is even remotely similar to the context of the above quote from an iPhone 11 camera review? Pretty much nothing.

To use a word review, I expect at least an attempt to be objective. The article doesn't feel that way at all, even more if you actually shoot at least as a hobby, ie with some APS-C or fullframe.

Discussing whether he is just subjectively biased towards Apple or outright paid is already kind of moot point

Reviews are never "objective." They are always a single person's experience with a thing.

Why would you want a camera review to be “objective?” What would that even mean? Other than some tech specs (which the article does provide), there’s not a whole lot of relevant “objective” information about a camera.

Austin Mann has reviewed every new iPhone for awhile in this manner. Reviewing equipment while taking travel photos is what he does.

The replies to this observation are hilarious. The "article" is as marketingy as it gets. It's blatantly obvious. But noo, "I don't know what you mean", "you sound mad" haha.

The assertion by the original commenter was that this article was an "advertisement" - meaning paid.

While the article may well serve as a function of marketing because some pro photographer got a loner from Apple and wrote up a gushing review. I don't believe the word "advertisement" holds water.

I think this comment said it best: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21016402

Ads don't have to be paid. Promo-for-product is still an ad - sometimes called an advertorial.

It's unprofessional at best and dishonest at worst to pretend that this isn't just corporate PR.

And ironically, the image quality really isn't all that amazing. It's +/- other phone cams - better in some conditions, not as good in others. And in absolute terms, these photos are nowhere close to the sharpness, dynamic range, and saturation of professional equipment. Night mode is good, but the daylight shots are okay but not awesome.

You could argue it's unfair to expect anything better from a (relatively) cheap phone cam - but it's a (relatively) cheap phone cam with a "pro" tag being marketed as a "pro" product.

In photographic terms, it simply isn't - except maybe for the fairly forgiving social media photo niche.

PR and advertising are not the same thing. Seeding review units to product reviewers is part of effective PR for consumer electronics. It isn't advertising, though. Standard practice (at least among Apple reviewers) is for the devices to be returned after some period of time.

> "PR and advertising are not the same thing."

A distinction without substance.

Please don't conflate different terms for the purpose of making a glib point. It really doesn't help the conversation. They are different words because they mean different things.

From the perspective of a consumer, the difference is totally irrelevant. Why should the particulars of the exchange between the shill and the company matter to me? They don't.

The Verge regularly gets review units from Apple. Their editor, Joshua Topolsky, is not what you would describe as warm and enthusiastic about Apple and their products. When The Verge reviews an iPhone, they are not them engaging in advertising for Apple. If you think every tech outlet is a shill for the manufacturers, then you're just plain wrong about how the world works.

Spot on.

I think the replies from toasterlovin (below) summed it up on the diff between PR and ads so I'll leave it at that.

The root of what you are asserting is that is ANY review is corp PR. Which is partially true - a review (good or bad), and esp high profile reviews, can shift conversations around its subject.

For smaller entities, any publicity is good publicity, not as true for larger entities.

So if Apple gave a review copy of a phone to a photographer, that based on his past writings, Apple was fairly sure would write something "positive" - they made a good bet and the review copy of the phone paid dividends.

That being said, the article isn't corp PR - it reads like a "fanboy" review and that's exactly how I took it. Not an advert.

Personally for camera tech I like sites like dpreview.com (no review site is perfect).

I did like some of the example photos in this article tho - don't know if I could ever reach that quality but I'm not a pro photographer.

> Promo-for-product is still an ad - sometimes called an advertorial.

Are you suggesting that Apple gave or lent the author products with a contractual obligation that the author write a positive review? I think that is extremely unlikely, and I believe anyone familiar with how Apple works with reviewers/influencers/content producers would agree. I would need to see compelling evidence to change my mind.

It's very unlikely that this article was written with any direction, payment, or remotely direct incentive from Apple. This is how the author writes, and anyone familiar with the author's work (he has written many iPhone camera reviews) will find this to be not at all unusual.

You can say the language is "marketingy," sure, but it is extremely unlikely that the author is involved in or paid by Apple's marketing or advertising team.

It's in that zone where the limit between native content and advertisement becomes blurry. Where do you draw the line where an advertorial [1] starts? Or native advertising [2]? This type of content is likely to become more common, too. With the rise of ad-blockers, companies are putting more weight on alternative methods.

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_advertising

Well, I'm not sure how to answer the "how," but I was certainly about to read it and not think it's an advertisement. Unless of course by "advertisement" you mean any review written by someone who is experienced with Apple products and has done other paid work for Apple in the past.

I think almost anyone reading it will feel that it's drenched in corp-o-speak, and will simply ignore most of these paragraphs.

It's not even meant to be subtle. Everybody knows how it works. You receive some gadget form a manufacturer, you present it in a positive way, you can keep it and expect more to come. If you break the rules, you won't receive the next one. There is no incentive to break the rules on either side.

Does anyone though ?

I just scrolled down to the side by side images.

If it's VERY CLEARLY shown, it's not too bad. But think for a moment if advertising only had access to one font, 1000 characters length of text, including spaces, and at most 15% of the ad real estate for images. Plus a warning sign, reminding everyone that repeated exposure to propaganda can change one's mind, even though one is aware.

:-)

> I find marketing unethical

That’s a strange view. Taken to an extreme, that would be a restaurant without an exterior sign, menus, or even a waiter explaining the food. You would literally know nothing about any product or service without marketing. Marketing is the act of “bringing a product to market.” Marketing isn’t advertising. A farmer displaying tomatoes on a table at a farmers market is marketing. A farmer buying billboard space with a photo of his tomatoes is advertising. There isn’t anything unethical about either practice.

Communicating about the availability of a product shouldn’t be considered unethical. Lying about that product on the other hand..

>Lying about that product on the other hand..

What if things are not prove able? Like "most secure", but their metric is fastest patching. It's not actually secure, but they have logic.

Technically true, but intentionally misleading.

I don't suggest getting caught up in the Innocence of having a brick and mortar sign. This is not what we worry about.

What do we learn from a beer commercial showing hot girls? Or a tech commercial showing people dancing. These are feelings unrelated to the product.

These specific examples don't scratch the surface. The best marketing, you don't see.

You're, perhaps unintentionally, doing a bait-and-switch argument. Sure, communicating about the availability of a product is important; in fact, it's crucial for functioning of a market. But this is not what marketing, or advertising in particular, is about in the real world. It's not what people mean by these words.

I wrote about it some time ago at length[0]; skim the list and tell me how any of that - all of which is common practice and what you get to work on if you become a marketer - how any of that can be justified on the grounds of just "communicating about the availability of a product"?

--

[0] - http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html

> You would literally know nothing about any product or service without marketing.

We can hardly imagine such bliss.

Pop quiz: does anybody imagine marketing or advertising would exist in a) paradise, b) utopia, c) Heaven?

> A farmer buying billboard space with a photo of his tomatoes is advertising. There isn’t anything unethical about either practice.

Plastering every available surface by a road or in a common area, with adverts is tragedy of the commons material. How dare people litter like that, taking away our collective view of the world and replacing it to their advantage without our consent?

People wouldn't need to spend significant portions of their precious life making, moving, and selling things to others in paradise, utopia, or Heaven. Of course there would be no advertising, there'd be no treadmill of consumerism to necessitate such a thing.

Now, what that says about how far we are from paradise, heaven, or utopia here...

After writing that, I wondered about how we always portray "paradise" as a desert island, beach, tropical exotic location far from civilization and 'unspoilt', and portray a dystopia as a heavily urbanized and dirty city full of neon signs and billboards and industrial pollution.

Then the we talk reverses that, as if industrialization and capitalism as if bringing more products into our lives is making life better (read: closer to paradise), and so advertising and marketing are the heralds of all that's good about the future - if only you'd simply concede to stop whining and pay attention - it's for your own good after all.

I can't deny the short-lived excitement of novelty, but perhaps if we overall stopped making daily life so dystopian and unpleasant, we'd have fewer dreams of escaping it. What would a country look like if tens of millions of people didn't spend decades looking forward to retirement and gambling to get there quicker and dreaming of travel and products as temporary escapes from such unpleasant daily surroundings as need escaping from?

That’s actually how the world used to be.

To be completely honest, your comment makes me think you're the one who's mad... or at least not very sane; you're assuming a person is mad about something based on 1 whole sentence (a sentence people seem to agree with) and proceed to go on a rant in which you ask the same question 3 times!

LOL. I don't think you're being completely honest.

From your reply, it would appear you are also upset and want to defend someone who's upset about an article that has a gushing review of an Apple product.

Apple is just one of those companies that is very divisive within the tech community - for some reason or the other.

I could make an assumption that you're another person who is 'annoyed' by the existence of Apple. But I won't.

So you question my sanity bc I question why the OP was upset.

Maybe you're just annoyed by existence.

So why are you mad?

grabs popcorn