By Jo Best, 27 August 2008 12:32
NEWS
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned an ad for the iPhone which promised users access to "all parts of the internet" on their Apple device.
The TV advert featured an individual flicking through holiday-related web pages on an iPhone to a voiceover saying: "You never know which part of the internet you'll need. The 'do you need sun cream' part? The 'what's the quickest way to the airport' part? The 'what about an ocean view room' part? Or the 'can you really afford this' part? Which is why all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone."
The ad prompted two objections to the ASA, claiming the commercial was misleading. As the device doesn't offer Flash or Java, not all websites can be seen in their entirety, the complaints said.
Apple, however, sees the advert differently. The "all parts of the internet" claim was in reference to the iPhone's ability to offer 'full' internet access - rather than displaying WAP pages, or walled garden operator content, the company said.
The ASA said in its adjudication: "[Apple] believed the ad was not about technical details or the functionalities or plug-ins that were available on the iPhone, but the varied websites that users could visit and utilise. They said all the websites featured in the ad were available on the iPhone and were shown as they would be seen by the user. They said none of the content in the ad was Flash or Java based and the ad did not mention any other technical capabilities of the iPhone."
But the ASA upheld the complaints, saying the use of phrases "You'll never know which part of the internet you'll need" and "all parts of the internet are on the iPhone", combined with the omission would lead users to believe they could see all sites and see them as they would through their PC.
The ASA ruling said: "We concluded that the ad gave a misleading impression of the internet capabilities of the iPhone." As a result, Apple can no longer broadcast the advert in its current form.
Apple declined to comment on the ruling.
Comments
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1. anonymous
Does anybody from any government agency understand anything about computers?. Flash & Java are plugins, and any website that requires them are very badly designed. Anyway, it's nice to know were tax payers money is wasted.
2. George
Yes, but you can't 'plug-in' Flash or Java to iPhone Safari so you can't see the 'whole internet'. I find it very annoying and think the ASA are quite right.
3. anonymous
Come on George, how many sites do you visit that REQUIRE you to have Java & Flash installed. And as you most likely know Flash on the Web is mainly used to put those stupid annoying adverts everywhere, and cosume loads of CPU%, not very handy for the phone battery. And for JAVA, mainly used for naff Java games, btw. Don't mistake Java for Javascript. btw. Even IE / Firefox cannot view every webpage on the Internet properly because of DOM discrepancies.
4. Steve Jobs
Unfortunately, there are more and more sites that are entirely Flash based, with no HTML alternative available.
Flash has established itself as a sort of de facto standard, even though it's a plugin.
The time has come that all browsers - including mobile browsers - should be able to handle Flash "natively".