Apple Limits Lengthy iPhone X Testing for Most Reviewers

https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-limits-lengthy-testing-for-most-iphone-x-reviewers-1509466644

by skue • 9 years ago

46 61 9 years ago

mankash666• 9 years ago

iPhone X reviews are expected to receive the largest audience, so Apple's strategy of starving time probably makes the reviewers be more favorable.

I've also known a reviewer who got into Apple's "Shadow Ban" list for a negative review. In his case, Apple product reviews always garnered the largest audience, thereby impacting his bottom line.

eridius3• 9 years ago

"Shadow Ban" seems like you're saying tech reviewers are entitled to being able to review Apple devices before they're released. But that's not true. Apple always seeds a limited number of devices (rather than giving one to anyone who claims to be a journalist), and it's their prerogative to give the devices to the reviewers of their choice.

JustSomeNobody2• 9 years ago

Right, but if you don't go deep like Rene Ritchie does, you may not get invited again.

vetinari• 9 years ago

While that's true, for the user, a review by a reviewer who is afraid to state his opinion or mention any negative in order to be invited again, is quite useless.

ksk4• 9 years ago

Right, but people can and do use a company's legal actions to make moral judgements on them. If a web hosting company chose to give hosting space to a hate-group, people would be upset too.

It's disappointing that Apple feels like they can bully people into only giving them favorable reviews.

oflannabhra2• 9 years ago

Did they limit the reviewers time with the iPhone X? Or did they limit their time before the embargo lifted? Genuinely curious, some reviewers are saying they will update their “impressions” with full reviews.

aetherson5• 9 years ago

Per the article, they usually give out review units at embargo time - 1 week, and instead they gave out review units at embargo time - 1 day (except to TechCrunch, Buzzfeed, and Mashable, plus some Youtubers, Axios, and Glamour).

IBM3• 9 years ago

They gave them 24 hours until the embargo was lifted. I'm not sure why some blogs are upset about it though, because they could have waited however long they wanted before they published something. They clearly wanted in on the initial review traffic.

Skunkleton• 9 years ago

That is the whole point. Most of these review sites are trying to run a business, so they need traffic. Launch day reviews are a huge source of traffic, so they need to 1) post as soon as the embargo is lifted, and 2) stay on apples good side so that they get early review units.

The effect is that we aren't getting entirely honest reviews of apple products on launch day, and we probably aren't getting honest reviews afterwards from any site that depends on the traffic from early review units.

slg3• 9 years ago

My first thought is there are three possible explanations for this.

1. Apple is not concerned about increasing demand with reviews because there is already a backlog of orders that exceeds supply. This is similar to Tesla's anti-selling of the Model 3 in favor of a product that already has wide supply.

2. Apple was really making last minute hardware and software changes that prevented them from producing a large number of review units ahead of time.

3. Apple knows there are flaws in the phone and wants to limit the amount of time a reviewer might have in order to discover those flaws before the first publish date.

Considering Apple's history, that they still provided week long review windows for a handful of sources, and none of those sources are particularly technical device reviewers, I would lean towards option 3.

Is there any other possible explanation for this change?

lolsal• 9 years ago

I would say there may be many more possible explanations than you listed here. We cannot know, only speculate.

IBM3• 9 years ago

The idea that anything reviewers write will have any measurable impact on iPhone sales is laughable. Can reviews or other media coverage kill a startup? Sure. It happened to Juicero.

An Apple product is like a Star Wars movie, it doesn't matter what anyone writes, people are going to see it. Nobody really intermediates between Apple's relationship with customers, and that's been proven over and over again (most recently with The Verge's months long campaign painting the removal of the headphone jack as "user hostile").

slg3• 9 years ago

Will bad reviews kill an Apple/Star Wars release, obviously not. That however doesn't mean that reviews don't have any effect. Otherwise why would these companies go through the process of giving out review devices or holding critic screenings? Or why would all these reviews get so much traffic if their content had no effect on the reader's ultimate buying decision?

Eric_WVGG• 9 years ago

I was thinking about the reception of the latest Apple Watch ("Series 3").

The Watch had some issues with Wifi common-use scenarios that Apple testers failed to anticipate (obviously they wouldn't want these devices connecting to random coffeeshop hubs, etc.); this resulted in many of the reviewers having ongoing connection problems, which led to a lot of "this will be really cool when they work out the kinks" reviews.

Compare to the early work on iPhone X: a bunch of "normals" just gushing about how cool it is. The initial messaging is undeniably better.

Personally, I chalk it up to an experiment that they can afford, largely due to your #1 observation.

ecesena2• 9 years ago

I wrote about the Watch here, if you're interested. https://hackernoon.com/im-returning-my-apple-watch-3-cellula...

jen729w3• 9 years ago

2. Apple was really making last minute hardware and software changes that prevented them from producing a large number of review units ahead of time.

Apple was not making “last minute” changes to this hardware. This hardware was locked in at least six months ago.

aetherson5• 9 years ago

This is certainly true, but I suppose it's possible that they were making last minute changes to the hardware 6 months ago (or whenever was the deadline to get it locked), and as a result don't have very many review units until this week.

That said, I don't think that the numbers here are all that plausible. Maybe if they only gave out 50 or 100 review phones, we might say they were supply-constrained, but surely they can't be so supply-constrained that they could only give out a dozen.

binaryapparatus2• 9 years ago

John Gruber from daring fireball doesn't sound too happy about getting review unit after all those youtube "stars".

Thank god Apple seeded Mike Allen with an iPhone X review unit. Such great insight from his fucking nephew, the emoji expert.

throwanem2• 9 years ago

John Gruber thinks a great deal of himself! I've never been quite sure why.

binaryapparatus2• 9 years ago

Agreed.

runjake• 9 years ago

Because most of us tend to think a great deal about ourselves. The difference being: he has a lucrative, popular blog and we don't.

briandear2• 9 years ago

I don’t dislike Gruber, but has he earned the entitlement he seems to be suggesting? Gruber is very “inside baseball” — average consumers don’t really care about his opinion. Sure he’s “tech famous” but I don’t think anyone that isn’t already using an Apple product really cares what he thinks — and even most Apple users probably aren’t making a decision from a Gruber review.

dmbass• 9 years ago

A negative review from him would probably be pretty damning and deter lots of techies who are stilly trying to buy the phone.

hsod• 9 years ago

No one ever looks good complaining they didn't get invited to the dance, but I think he's earned it to the extent such a thing can be earned.

untog2• 9 years ago

That particular criticism (aside from being pretty mean to a 19 year old) struck me as especially silly - one of the key iPhone X features is a silly animated emoji face. Of course it makes more sense to get a young person to review it instead of John effing Gruber. If anything he ought to be angry at the feature, not that he isn't first choice to review it.

JustSomeNobody2• 9 years ago

... one of the key iPhone X features is a silly animated emoji face.

I think we should all take a step back and let that sink in a bit.

oneeyedpigeon• 9 years ago

I think that's post 3/3 in a series of "Thank god Apple gave X a review copy before me" — it's incredibly bitter and a bit unseemly, to be honest.

twoodfin• 9 years ago

To be fair to Gruber, I think his criticism of the PR for the X is that it displays a lack of taste. If Google picked slack-jawed YouTubers to be the first wave of press for the Pixel 2 I bet he’d have a similar, if more derisive, reaction.

trb8• 9 years ago

“Thank god Apple gave X a review copy before me”

Ah yes. Excellent usage of quotation marks for your interpretation of Gruber’s thoughts. Nothing at all dishonest about that.

kemiller2• 9 years ago

I don't get the impression that he was denied a review unit, just that his embargo clears later. The Youtubers don't seem even to have been given a unit at all — just access to them in Apple facilities.

dilap• 9 years ago

Eh, that's just Gruber's style, always a bit of an asshole. Sometimes it's amusing and sometimes it really grates, but you've got to admit it seems to be working for him.

Anyway, underneath the presentation, he has a good point that it's pretty weak that Apple chose complete puff-piece reviewers to get initial seed units.

jen729w3• 9 years ago

I think his beef is more with the vapid content of the review rather than the fact that Mike Allen got a review unit.

This new phone comes out and it’s got some new stuff that we’re really not sure about - no buttons, Face ID, the notch - and the reviewer relays a story about his nephew and an emoji. It’s hardly insightful journalism, is it?

untog2• 9 years ago

The review does mention other stuff like Face ID as well, though: https://www.axios.com/axios-am-2503582568.html?rebelltitem=2...

It just leads with an aniemoji anecdote. For a lot of users it's probably every bit as important as discussion of the notch.

bhhaskin• 9 years ago

Because it's not journalism. It's entertainment.

Animats2• 9 years ago

Whatever. It's been less than two months since the last Apple phone release. Are they trying to compete with the Sony Xperia line for number of slightly different models?

Animats2• 9 years ago

Modded down to -4. Apple's PR operation is on the job.

lechiffre10• 9 years ago

This is the first time Apple has sent youtube personalities iPhone review units. In the Steve Jobs era, they would carefully select certain tech columnists. That coupled with limiting time for reviewers seems to be a desperate attempt at convincing people to buy the phone. The verge says FaceID is inconsistent in daylight and outside when beeing used.

developer2• 9 years ago

It's exactly this. YouTubers are being given phones to drum up some uneducated noise to dilute any criticism from technical reviews. YouTubers only care about view counts and their popularity, and most will just shout about how shiny it is without putting in any effort to find anything to criticize. Apple needs some hype to convince consumers that the iPhone X's notch design, and Face ID not working in sunlight or sitting on a flat surface, aren't deal breakers.

That notch is the most gimmicky thing to ever make it past the concept phase for a modern phone. The tech reviews I've seen so far are showing off just how broken existing apps are because of the notch interfering. Of course all the "big player" apps will be fixed within 1-2 months, but there are thousands of apps that will never be updated to support the X's notch.

Apple needs to figure out how to embed these components beneath the screen. Yes it will be an incredible technical challenge; but that's what we're really waiting for: 100% screen space. Until that is possible, they shouldn't have pushed such an unfinished concept as being "innovative".

lostmsu• 9 years ago

Another way to grab some attention.

Apple Limits Lengthy iPhone X Testing for Most Reviewers

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