Apple script resizes iPad banner and pushes Samsung verdict out of view

https://ssl.apple.com/v/home/n/scripts/hero_resize.js

by josteink • 14 years ago

240 135 14 years ago

ssl.apple.com

w1ntermute3• 14 years ago

I really hope they get reamed by the judge again for this. It would be great to see them forced to place the verdict at the top of the page. Unfortunately, the judge probably has no idea what JS is.

joering22• 14 years ago

this is not 2001. Plenty of judges know this stuff (heck, some been favorized Facebook by slightly skewing their decisionsm, because FB helped them connect with further family) and I am sure well presented and explained case will make it through. I hope they get punished hard.

meaty• 14 years ago

Judge will work it out. You do not fuck with a legal judgement in the UK - they will start pulling the big guns next. Place your bets: frozen assets or criminal charge?

Osmium4• 14 years ago

Where in the legal judgement did it say it had to be "above the fold"? They could have specified this if they'd wanted it.

pasbesoin2• 14 years ago

I don't know how things work in the UK, but I wonder whether the equivalent of contempt charges will be forthcoming.

Toss a few of them in prison for a bit, and see whether that improves cooperation.

theboywho• 14 years ago

I think you too have no idea what JS is. The script basically resizes the window based on weather you're on a touch device or not. It has nothing to do with the Samsung apology.

chacha102• 14 years ago

I'm using a fairly long screen and I can see the verdict fine. I don't think this was specifically put to get rid of the apology. More likely, the top image is always suppose to be fairly large and fit the screen well.

I wouldn't put it past Apple to make things look nice.

w1ntermute3• 14 years ago

> I think you too have no idea what JS is. The script basically resizes the window based on weather you're on a touch device or not.

Actually, you're the one who has no idea what JS is. I just resized a Chrome window with http://www.apple.co.uk/ loaded in it on my Windows desktop PC. As I changed the height of the window, the content above the Samsung apology was resized so that the apology would be hidden unless I scrolled down. It is most definitely not restricted to touch devices.

javert6• 14 years ago

I really disagree. Forcing someone to say something they don't agree with is a violation of free speech.

felipeko• 14 years ago

First, a corporation is not someone. Second, forcing a corporation to repair the damage they done is the right thing to do.

dbecker3• 14 years ago

If I want to market a soft-drink containing cyanide, do you think free speech means I don't have to mention the dangers of my drink?

What if I disagree with the required warning?

camus• 14 years ago

except there is no free speech in UK. free speech only exists in USA. but at the same time you can say the equivalent of fck or sht on a public tv in France, so ... i dont mind free speech...

Shivetya• 14 years ago

How about reamed by geeks?

I for one decided my recent seven inch tablet purchase and now my upcoming ten inch tablet purchase based on Apple's bad behavior. This just reinforces the idea in my head that I made the right choice. The Nexus tablets offer an incredible amount of features at a price point Apple doesn't even try to compete at and all without the Assholiness of Apple

shinratdr4• 14 years ago

> The Nexus tablets offer an incredible amount of features at a price point Apple doesn't even try to compete at and all without the Assholiness of Apple

I like how you posted you BS reason and then followed it up with the real reason, pricing is more of a concern to you and you hate Apple.

Yeah, something tells me even if this whole incident had never happened, you would end up with a Nexus tablet and not an iPad. Call it a hunch.

jakejake2• 14 years ago

I don't really care one way or the other, but I'm curious why Apple is being "shamed" in a sense. There are copyright rulings all the time but I haven't noticed or read about too many websites with notices posted on them.

Was this a condition of the plea bargain, or is this just something that is common in the UK?

Niten• 14 years ago

First this is patent, not copyright law.

And the issue is that Apple has effectively committed libel against Samsung in the UK with its repeated claims that the Samsung tablet is a copy of the iPad. This claim has turned out to be legally false, and now Apple is obliged to correct any turn of public opinion against Samsung that it instigated by making this false claim in the first place.

Zenst2• 14 years ago

THe judges a couple of days ago already lambasted Apple for the wording, details such as JS will not phase judges. It is the output and end result and if somebody smells something a miss then the judges will be told. They may not be the fastest or most aware, but they do look at the end result and if they see shinangigans or even a hint of it then they will ask what is going on. If they are not happy with the answear then they bite and they can bite. Generaly there pretty firm but fair so apple needs to play ball and stop trying to be clever as it will only work against them.

jsnk• 14 years ago

Just for the record.

jrajav2• 14 years ago

    var HeroResize = AC.Class({
        initialize: function (b) {
            this._height = null;
            this._hero = $(b);
            AC.Object.synthesize(this);
            this.__boundResizeHero = this.resizeHero.bindAsEventListener(this);
            if (typeof window.ontouchstart === "undefined") {
                this.resizeHero();
                Event.observe(window, "resize", this.__boundResizeHero)
            }
        },
        setHeight: function (b) {
            this._height = (b < 0) ? 0 : b;
            return this._height
        },
        resizeHero: function () {
            this.setHeight(parseInt(window.innerHeight || (window.document.documentElement.clientHeight || window.document.body.clientHeight), 10) - 310);
            this.hero().style.height = this.height() + "px"
        }
    });
    Event.onDOMReady(function () {
        var b = new HeroResize("billboard")
    });

Tyr42• 14 years ago

I don't see the Samsung verdict anywhere on the page or in the source.

Breakthrough2• 14 years ago

It only shows up on http://www.apple.co.uk, since the ruling was made in the UK.

kordless• 14 years ago

I wonder if I go to http://www.apple.com/ if it redirects to the UK site if I'm in the UK?

Breakthrough2• 14 years ago

Man, this just keeps getting better... You think after the first time they would just have accepted the loss, put up the message, and gone on with things. It's amazing the extent they are willing to go to subvert the verdict. Of course, this is only if the script is indeed meant to push the ruling out of view...

joering22• 14 years ago

really? Don't you think that trillion dollar valuation gave every exec @ Apple some steel balls?

Apple products are so loved by masses that I bet ya if, for example, a judge would ban sell of Apple products in the city like New York, you would find some idiot on a manslaughter mission.

rhizome3• 14 years ago

I think even without the script story it's plain that Apple is acting like a child here.

tnuc2• 14 years ago

What page of the apple site should I be looking at to see this script in action?

manojlds• 14 years ago

apple.co.uk

tnuc2• 14 years ago

Thank you.

jimrandomh• 14 years ago

Additionally, there is a script to measure what fraction of people scroll down. That script is not new; Apple knows exactly how many people this will prevent from seeing the notice.

rogerb• 14 years ago

Do we know whether or not this was the behavior on the site prior to them having to post this ?

______• 14 years ago

Judging from the fact that this same behavior does _not_ occur on the apple.com site, which is running the same exact promo of the iPad mini, my guess is that this is something new and not the existing behavior.

jason_slack2• 14 years ago

Can someone explain though, non-code, under what conditions is the resizing taking place?

NoahSussman• 14 years ago

The onresize event fires whenever you change the sized of your browser window. Eg it occurs when you maximize the window or when you click-and-drag on the corner of the window in order to make it smaller or larger. See also https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/DOM/window.onresize

Heliosmaster• 14 years ago

and when you zoom out.

dmbass• 14 years ago

It resizes the height of the "hero" element (the iPad mini promo at this time) so that it takes up the whole height of the browser window, pushing the footer below the fold.

jason_slack2• 14 years ago

so thus pushing the verdict out of view without scrolling down....which if they make it take up the whole space, most people dont bother scrolling down...

mrilhan• 14 years ago

Suspiciously, this auto-resizing action is not available on apple.com, but only apple.co.uk.

kami8845• 14 years ago

The statement can be found on http://www.apple.co.uk for anyone wondering.

archgrove3• 14 years ago

This behaviour is the same on apple.de or apple.jp, so it's not just the UK site. Moreover, it was added only 2 days after the judgement was upheld:

    HEAD /v/home/n/scripts/hero_resize.js HTTP/1.1
    Host: www.apple.com
    
    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Server: Apache
    **Last-Modified: Sun, 21 Oct 2012 19:31:51 GMT**
    Accept-Ranges: bytes
    Content-Length: 632
    Content-Type: application/x-javascript
    Cache-Control: max-age=600
    Expires: Sat, 03 Nov 2012 17:04:23 GMT
    Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2012 16:54:23 GMT
    Connection: keep-alive

I believe this was before the homepage was altered to display the ruling. Moreover, this was also just 2 days before the iPad mini was announced. Far more likely this is just related to new product announcements than any nefarious scheme.

jrajav2• 14 years ago

I don't see how it matters that the behavior was added before the text itself. It's more relevant that it was added after the judgement.

archgrove3• 14 years ago

So anything, any time, that alters the vertical spacing of the Apple homepage around the world, even if it's only 2 days before a major product roll-out is related to an 15pt font paragraph at the bottom of their UK homepage that no-one except the lawyers will even click on? Moreover, given that they've pissed off the judge once, their own lawyers won't have signed off on 5 times over?

I find that rather implausible, though I guess it's not impossible.

bangbang• 14 years ago

Hum... I donno. My understanding is that apple no longer redirects to .co.uk for UK users since the ruling. This seems a little convenient to me.

deanpcmad• 14 years ago

That never happened anyway. Going to apple.co.uk, however, redirects to apple.com/uk

thezilch• 14 years ago

You won't find the same behavior on the identical "hero" and product elements of apple.com; far more likely that they want nothing leaking below the fold, on the non-US sites, and inviting users to scroll.

arrrg• 14 years ago

http://apple.de – http://apple.fr – http://apple.it – http://apple.pl

http://apple.com is the outlier, always has been. It’s no surprise that it’s different.

revelation• 14 years ago

Well, theres a screenshot here:

http://i.imgur.com/KH555.jpg

They fudged with the sizes, through this script here or not.

archgrove3• 14 years ago

This only seems to occur on apple.com. The resizing behaviour happens on all country specific sites I've tried.

andrewingram• 14 years ago

The US site alternates between two different promotions, the iPad Mini and the iPad with Retina Display. Every other language's site (I've tried quite a few) which promotes the iPad Mini is showing just a single promotion and exhibits the resize behaviour.

bitcartel• 14 years ago

Yep. Here's an example from the Japan site, where you can see the repositioning of the iPad Mini graphic when the browser window is made larger. The UK site has the same behaviour. I don't think there's anything dodgy going on.

Before: http://imgur.com/5GgX3

After resize: http://imgur.com/8BW3T

fludlight• 14 years ago

I don't see what the big deal is. When I go to http://apple.co.uk I see a statement about Samsung in reasonably sized, clear print:

"On 25 October 2012, Apple Inc. published a statement on its UK website in relation to Samsung's Galaxy tablet computers. That statement was inaccurate and did not comply with the order of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. The correct statement is at Samsung/Apple UK judgement."

Screenshot, in case you see something else: http://imgur.com/79bBm

Edit: Oh, I see...the statement gets pushed below the first visible page so you have to scroll to see it, which most people don't. Still, so what? Where did you guys expect them to put it? Tattooed on Tim Cook's forehead? Joe the plumber doesn't care about intellectual property disputes between electronics companies.

tankenmate3• 14 years ago

Joe the plumber may not care, but then Joe can't hold Apple in contempt.

sigzero• 14 years ago

Neither can the Judge. The exact wording is right there. So what if you have to scroll to see it. That isn't contempt.

pfortuny• 14 years ago

They are really playing with fire...

MattDL• 14 years ago

I could have seen this being unrelated and just a UX polishing touch, but then they didn't think to put it on the other versions of the site to at least try and make it less suspicious.

Pushing past the limits of acceptability now, they should face some fairly serious punishment for this.

frugalmail• 14 years ago

The sleezy-ness of Apple is completely unacceptable as of late

sek• 14 years ago

This stuff makes this company so incredibly unlikable.

Maybe some uninformed consumers don't see it, but for informed people Apple loses sympathy every day with this behavior.

TillE2• 14 years ago

As someone who wants to like Apple (and owns a bunch of iOS gear), I agree. But the fanboys are loving it. I'll never understand that kind of corporate partisanship.

Realistically, 99% of potential customers won't even know about this sort of thing. But sometimes I do wish Apple would just make the tiny bit of effort to step on to the moral high ground.

Osmium4• 14 years ago

>I'll never understand that kind of corporate partisanship.

It's no different from sport and patriotism. It's exactly the same mentality. Everyone* has their team.

gurkendoktor• 14 years ago

> But the fanboys are loving it.

I see that it's problematic to point at people on the internet - but is there any proof of this? I get the impression that the whole internet knows that "Apple fanboys are like that" when there are only 2.5 people somewhere deep inside MacRumors who actually confirm the stereotype.

Cbasedlifeform2• 14 years ago

This whole thing is turning into a PR disaster for Apple... Some variation on the Streisand Effect.

When Apple first posted the "apology" Gruber et al all whooped up how clever Apple was. A bit of blowback now.

aes256• 14 years ago

> This whole thing is turning into a PR disaster for Apple... Some variation on the Streisand Effect.

Hardly a PR disaster. 99% of Apple customers don't have a clue this is even going on.

shinratdr4• 14 years ago

> Some variation on the Streisand Effect.

In this case, the variation is "a bunch of nerds try desperately to make a mountain out of a molehill and nobody cares except themselves".

Maybe we should come up with a new name.

Cbasedlifeform2• 14 years ago

The "Kardashian Effect"?

After all, nobody gives a fuck about her :)

nirvana2• 14 years ago

Oh, such a disaster. The UK legal system is shown to be the joke it is, sowing contempt among thinking people everywhere.

The mindless apple haters whoop and cheer and continue their petulant childishness.

Samsung, and android, still fail in the marketplace, which, at least for now, values technical innovation over counterfiet crap.

lnanek2• 14 years ago

You think Samsung and Android are failing in the marketplace? boggle Samsung alone has double the smartphone market share that Apple has...

mcpoulet2• 14 years ago

This script was already used in september for the iPhone 5 homepage. This is simply called vertical responsive design. See these screenshots for exemple : http://www.flickr.com/photos/shawnblanc/7980347228/in/photos...

It has nothing to do with the Samsung trial's verdict.

leddt• 14 years ago

It is not used on the US site which does not feature the statement.

If it did I might agree with you, but in the current state of affairs it looks really fishy.

msbarnett• 14 years ago

> It is not used on the US site which does not feature the statement.

But the resize is used on apple.de, apple.co.jp, apple.ca, and a lot of othe country-specific sites, none of which display the statement.

mcpoulet2• 14 years ago

The US site has the iPad 4 featured on the homepage. All the other sites have the iPad mini featured. I'm pretty sure that once the other countries switch to the iPad 4 feature, the script will disappear as well.

lignuist• 14 years ago

I guess the judge will soon design the Apple frontpage himself with MS Paint, if Apple doesn't stop this behaviour in the next few days.

drivebyacct2• 14 years ago

While a bit deceptive, I think it's rather funny and cute. I almost get the impression that Apple is intentionally mocking the court. I know it doesn't make business sense, but it seems like they had to know they're taking a bit of a risk in not complying in full-faith.

metatronscube• 14 years ago

I went to the page to see what all the bother was about and ended up buying an iPad mini (to replace nexus 7). Thanks Samsung. You can't pay for this publicity.

msg• 14 years ago

Plausible deniability or no, Apple was very dumb not to put themselves above reproach here.

If a CSS/JS behavior interferes with your ability to comply with a court order, that just means you have two problems.

I for one don't believe Apple is being contrite and forthright about the harm they were judged to do to Samsung in the marketplace. These judges will clearly lean on Apple until they get the message.

radley• 14 years ago

This post's title is a little off.

Apple is using a script to push the verdict "below the fold".

mamby• 14 years ago

unfair!

kbs• 14 years ago

They are also using a 'sosumi' comment, guess they still want to tweak someone's nose.

    $ curl -s www.apple.com/uk/ | grep -A 1 /sosumi
    </div><!--/sosumi-->
    <p class="statement">On 25 October 2012, Apple Inc. published a statement on its UK website...

swang• 14 years ago

That's actually for the div for Apple's copyright notice, which has a classname of sosumi.

aggarwalachal• 14 years ago

Did they just update the homepage on apple.com? Shows the iPad 4th gen now.

whoisstan• 14 years ago

Samsung is a soul less copy cat. Of course I push any word of them below the fold.

RKearney• 14 years ago

Unfortunately in trying to be clever, they destroyed the page when trying to zoom in and out.

http://i.imgur.com/ssKsU.png

So they sacrificed accessibility for what, trying to be childish and clever in the execution of a court order?

alextingle2• 14 years ago

They've still got the deliberate line break between "do not" and "infringe". That trick is designed to blunt the impact of the message:

    do not</span> <span class="nowrap">infringe

orionblastar• 14 years ago

This is just a trick by Apple who don't want to admit to doing anything wrong. Expect the judge to notice this and issue another order that the text must be readable and not covered up with Javscript tricks.

Apple script resizes iPad banner and pushes Samsung verdict out of view

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