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