Apple’s Marketing: Lies, or Just a Question of Semantics?
Update: Macworld gets caught in the tangle as well. In their test of the new iMac G5, Macworld editor Jason Snell got stuck in a heated debate (read the comments to the article) about “times faster” and “times as fast”. He finally decided to use “times as fast” for his comparisons, which, logically, is the only way to present this data.
It is also interesting to note that this Macworld test shows that Apple’s figures are, at best, wishes.
But now, back to my original article…
This irks me: I’m one for precision, and I firmly believe that a company’s marketing materials should be precise. But Steve Jobs and Apple’s usage of comparisons (n times faster) is wrong, deceptive, misleading, and should probably be illegal.At the Macworld Expo on January 10, 2006, Steve Jobs announced the availability of new iMacs and MacBook Pro’s (the computer formerly known as the Powerbook) with Intel processors. And, with benchmarks and graphs, he went on to say that they were faster; much faster; in fact, he exaggerated the speed differences between the previous versions of these computers and the new models.
Steve Jobs said that the new iMac is “two to three times faster” than the previous iMac. (Apple’s web page for the iMac includes a 2x faster icon, as shown above.) Now, lets examine that simple statement. If you start with a device at a speed value of 100 (for a simple example), and you increase the speed to 200, that device is twice as fast, not “two times faster”. If you were, however, to increase the speed to 300, then it would be either three times as fast, or two times faster. Do you get the point? Saying something is “two to three times faster” is the same as saying that the speed increase is 200% to 300%. Yet Apple’s own press release for the new iMac avoids this “exaggeration”, saying, “we hope customers really love the new iMac, which is up to twice as fast”.
I don’t mean to take Apple to task for the speed increases–they are of course a good thing–but I do blame them for semantic mis-statements. They are wrong; there is no getting around it. They are being deceptive, and misleading, and should certainly be much more honest to their customers. I’m sure there are some lawyers out there who might want to challenge this, even though I don’t think that is the solution. What Apple should do is be aware that some of their customers know how to count.
Posted: 1/19/2006 by kirk | Filed under: Apple & Mac OS X | 11 Comments »
, 
, or 
.
Either they’re lying to us now, or they were lying to us when the G5 came out and their claims on how much faster it was than the Intel chips, 64bit processing, etc.
:)
I certainly agree that Apple told a falsehood.
Why not just tell the truth ?
At this point, if they are still repeating the "4 x faster", then it’s a lie.
While I applaud your linguistic purism, I think most people would take the
statements "the new processor’s speed is two times that of the old processor"
and "the new processor is two times faster than the old processor" as being
equal. This probably stems from the fact that we wouldn’t normally say
something is "one time faster" than something else. "2X," "twice," "200%," and
"two times" appear to be of the same kind, a kind to which "one time" does
not appear to belong–and this leads to confusion. Jobs misstatement is
likely also a result of the fact that while the word "twice" is still in common
usage, the word "thrice" is not. Can you imagine Jobs saying, "The new Intel
based iMac it twice to thrice as fast as the G5?" Hmm, not so much.
As far as the marketing campaign, the "2X faster" graphic can be interpreted
in two ways. It could mean "the new iMac is two times faster than the old
iMac," or it could mean "the speed of the new iMac = 2 x (the speed of the old
iMac)." While the first statement does, as you point out, mean a 300%
increase, the second statement only claims a 200% increase. Since the
graphic uses the symbol for multiplication and not the word "times" it seems
to me to be claiming a 200% increase. But the benchmarks Jobs showed at
MacWorld claim a 320% increase in integer performance, and a 210% increase
for floating point, so even if we interpret the marketing as claiming a 300%
speed increase, this claim is still justified. Either way you slice it the "2X
faster" claim is not deceptive or misleading, and it’s certainly not illegal.
P.S. No, I’m not a lawyer for Apple.
P.P.S. In the second paragraph of my above post I should have said "as fast"
instead of "increase." My bad.
If someone says "you’re driving 10 mph faster than I am" then it is assumed that you add 10 mph to my speed to get to yours. Similarly "10% faster" implies take 10% of my speed and add it on.
If someone says "you’re walking two times faster than I am" then it is assumed you’re walking 2x as fast, not 3x as fast. Saying "200% times faster" makes no sense.
If you’re going to pick nits, get it right.
The real problem with the whole "2x faster" rubbish is that it’s actually "up to 2x faster" or "2x faster on some random benchmark"; in fact, the Core Duo-based machines seem to be more like 1.3x faster overall, which seems kind of lame considering the fact that they’ve got 2 CPUs running at nearly the same clockspeed.
One of the big wins in Mac OS X 10.2 was optimizations to the text rendering engine. One particular operation was 50x faster, and in the Jaguar marketing crap there was a statement buried somewhere that said that text rendering was "up to 50x faster".
You wrote:
"If someone says "you’re driving 10 mph faster than I am" then it is assumed
that you add 10 mph to my speed to get to yours. Similarly "10% faster"
implies take 10% of my speed and add it on.
If someone says "you’re walking two times faster than I am" then it is
assumed you’re walking 2x as fast, not 3x as fast. Saying "200% times faster"
makes no sense.
If you’re going to pick nits, get it right."
I’m sorry, what did I get wrong? Do you know how to do math? Try with a
calculator – 2x faster than 1 = 1 + (2×1), right?
"I’m sorry, what did I get wrong? Do you know how to do math? Try with a
calculator – 2x faster than 1 = 1 + (2×1), right?"
No. 2x faster than 1 = 2×1. For what it’s worth, 2x bigger than 1 = 2×1 too.
So does just plain 2x 1.
The numbers are all laid out in plain sight — 2x and 1. I don’t see how
including an adjective to tell you what’s being measured — faster, bigger,
whateverer — changes the math.
I’m curious where you get this idea from; can you point to *any* actual usage
of your "something times faster equals something plus one times faster?" I
just Googled "times faster" and every working result in the first thirty used
the phrase in the same manner as Apple.
So, according to your reasoning, 50% more than 100 is 50… Use any verb you
like: more, bigger, faster, older; any comparative. You’re saying that they do not
get added to the starting amount but rather simply factor the starting amount.
That’s incorrect both logically and mathematically.
For a much more cogent explanation, read this.
The author of the link you provided says this, "In my experience, it’s safe to
assume that a writer is using the "times more" phrasing erroneously. When you
see "100 times more," the intended meaning is "100 times as much as."
I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that was Apple’s
intended meaning.
Kirk wrote: "I’m sure there are some lawyers out there who might want to
challenge this, even though I don’t think that is the solution."
Why would any attorney bother? What would be the payoff? Most attorneys
I’ve known won’t take on a case unless there is some prospect of being paid,
including recovering from the respondent. Of course, you could front the
$10,000 or more that filing a suit would cost.
You could always file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, which
oversees advertising. I expect that the FTC would give it a priority that would
ensure that it would be addressed sometime this century. It’s just not that
important compared to real scams.