4 ms·

How Apple presents statistics in its favor when they clearly aren't

9 points by kyriakos 14y ago

ricardobeat 14y ago
The author tries to paint Apple as "hiding the truth" but he's the one pushing an agenda: 1) User Adoption: adoption can only be a percentage, and is independent of market share. 2) Satisfaction: their data has different numbers, but the same end results. How is that "drastically different" or "lying"? 3) Fastest JS: this Safari update will no doubt come to market before IE10, and have a much faster adoption rate (ha). No lies here either.
- vezycash 14y ago
  Dude what the article is saying or trying to say is this. Apple knows that people would not go looking into the actual stats. Like how Mac Os claims to be the most advanced operating system ever....? Percentage-wise maybe they are telling the truth but they are hoping that people would interpret it as this... "People don't own windows anymore, lets jump on the Apple Mac boat" - study a bit of marketing or consumer psychology and you'll understand perfectly.
  - ricardobeat 14y ago
    Data is presented to support a point. The charts they showed today weren't fake or twisted stats, but real data, obviously selected from their point of view. The author accuses them of lying or "hiding the truth", and that's a looong stretch. At no point they suggested that no one uses Windows anymore (everyone knows that would be ridiculous), maybe you're confused by the "adoption" term?. Adoption has nothing to do with market-share, it's about how quick users migrate or install updates. IE vs Chrome/Firefox offers similar stats, with Microsoft far behind - their large user base, fragmented installs, update methods etc. result in slow adoption.
vezycash 14y ago
did not have to read the article before deciding to comment. This is the first article I've read that tries to see Apple for what it clearly is a - marketing company. IPAD is winning not chiefly because of pricing. Yes pricing!. The other guys made a stuid mistake my pricing above or the same with the cheapest Ipad at first. Apple's marketing stint worked perfectly - in the mind of all tablet wannabe purchasers, Ipad cost 499 even if they'd go an buy one that's over $700. Competition did not breakdown theirs that way except amazon and amazon would make more profit by mimicking Apple's separation of specs just like the kindle eBook reader does. should stop writing cheers.
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  Well, you haven't been reading much lately, have you? Marketing is clearly a huge part of any consumer-facing business. Despite that, Apple is still a product company. Google is a marketing company, they create, manage and sell advertising space.
btn 14y ago
None of these are lies or even deceit by Apple (apart from a little bit of chartjunk). Apple may have cherry-picked some particularly complementary surveys/analyses/metrics, but I'm not sure what you'd expect from the keynote of a company's premiere event.
- kyriakos 14y ago
  They are not lies but they are a manipulation of the truth to look more favorable. I understand its their presentation and who doesn't want to look good at that? but there's other things they could show the world rather than compare with the competition. Its like going back to the Mac Vs PC ads when Apple clearly moved on from that kind of marketing the past couple of years.
rsanchez1 14y ago
Of course they would take out statistics in their favor, it's their presentation. And since mostly Apple fans were tuning in, very little people would call them out on it.
craigvn 14y ago
Seriously, every company does this.
moreorless 14y ago
More accurate headline: How (most) companies use statistics in their favor.

9 points by kyriakos 14y ago

The author tries to paint Apple as "hiding the truth" but he's the one pushing an agenda: 1) User Adoption: adoption can only be a percentage, and is independent of market share. 2) Satisfaction: their data has different numbers, but the same end results. How is that "drastically different" or "lying"? 3) Fastest JS: this Safari update will no doubt come to market before IE10, and have a much faster adoption rate (ha). No lies here either.

vezycash 14y ago
Dude what the article is saying or trying to say is this. Apple knows that people would not go looking into the actual stats. Like how Mac Os claims to be the most advanced operating system ever....? Percentage-wise maybe they are telling the truth but they are hoping that people would interpret it as this... "People don't own windows anymore, lets jump on the Apple Mac boat" - study a bit of marketing or consumer psychology and you'll understand perfectly.
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  Data is presented to support a point. The charts they showed today weren't fake or twisted stats, but real data, obviously selected from their point of view. The author accuses them of lying or "hiding the truth", and that's a looong stretch. At no point they suggested that no one uses Windows anymore (everyone knows that would be ridiculous), maybe you're confused by the "adoption" term?. Adoption has nothing to do with market-share, it's about how quick users migrate or install updates. IE vs Chrome/Firefox offers similar stats, with Microsoft far behind - their large user base, fragmented installs, update methods etc. result in slow adoption.

vezycash 14y ago

did not have to read the article before deciding to comment. This is the first article I've read that tries to see Apple for what it clearly is a - marketing company. IPAD is winning not chiefly because of pricing. Yes pricing!. The other guys made a stuid mistake my pricing above or the same with the cheapest Ipad at first. Apple's marketing stint worked perfectly - in the mind of all tablet wannabe purchasers, Ipad cost 499 even if they'd go an buy one that's over $700. Competition did not breakdown theirs that way except amazon and amazon would make more profit by mimicking Apple's separation of specs just like the kindle eBook reader does. should stop writing cheers.

ricardobeat 14y ago
Well, you haven't been reading much lately, have you? Marketing is clearly a huge part of any consumer-facing business. Despite that, Apple is still a product company. Google is a marketing company, they create, manage and sell advertising space.

btn 14y ago

None of these are lies or even deceit by Apple (apart from a little bit of chartjunk). Apple may have cherry-picked some particularly complementary surveys/analyses/metrics, but I'm not sure what you'd expect from the keynote of a company's premiere event.

kyriakos 14y ago
They are not lies but they are a manipulation of the truth to look more favorable. I understand its their presentation and who doesn't want to look good at that? but there's other things they could show the world rather than compare with the competition. Its like going back to the Mac Vs PC ads when Apple clearly moved on from that kind of marketing the past couple of years.

rsanchez1 14y ago

Of course they would take out statistics in their favor, it's their presentation. And since mostly Apple fans were tuning in, very little people would call them out on it.

craigvn 14y ago

Seriously, every company does this.

moreorless 14y ago

More accurate headline: How (most) companies use statistics in their favor.