While these are a couple of very specific examples, they are part of a wider industry trend that is woefully underdiscussed. As an industry, we have become overly accepting of this idea that it’s okay for PR to actively lie to consumers if it will help their products sell better or be more positively received. PR dishonesty is considered par for the course.
We see this all over the technology industry. People take whatever a company PR person or some manager says as truth, without a single shred of critical thinking. This is quite dangerous, and reminds me of people blindly believing everything some political bigshot says as truth.
Their lips are moving.
A variant on an old joke but IMHO pretty accurate.
It seems that they will do whatever it takes to make the problem go away in the eyes of the public/customer base.
Once you ‘grok’ that then you can survive the PR onslaught.
At the risk of being a bit political, watch the White House PR People in action. They are past masters of not answering questions, saying lots and waffling.
You come away from a session feeling the same as when you come out of a top restaurant. Hungry for something with more substance in it.
Well duh… I don’t know how is it in your America, but in my country “doing PR” is a synonym for “blowing smoke in your face so you can’t see the truth”. One would have to be pretty stupid to trust what PR says.
And that they are always “excited” about all what they do.
Children are all excited too to play with their poo.
Everyone accepts these lies from the very people we “elect” to lead us. I hardly think the tech industry is our biggest concentration of this problem nor do I find it surprising. Most people would rather believe a comfortable lie than hear something they don’t like. It’s been that way for… however long human history has existed and we’re just now shocked?
Hard to remember a time when I didn’t assume a lie.
Would you like to buy a 52x speed CD-ROM drive? (That never reaches 52x)
How about a hard drive where we measure 1024 as 1000?
Well, I agree with you that PR reps often tell lies.
But I don’t like your specific examples.
I HAD a Kenwood 72x CD-ROM drive. It did indeed read at 72x. Mine stopped working after a while, but while it worked it did work.
And as for 1024 vs 1000, the prefix size has NEVER changed. In this case, it is advertising and PR taking advantage of uninformed consumers. It’s like if your personal definition of “organic food” doesn’t match the industry and government definition. They aren’t lying to you, you’re just wrong.
The Kenwood was one of the scant few that delivered on what they promised. CDs had trouble with vibration above 12X, so Kenwood spun theirs at 10X and used SEVEN LASERS! I imagine that was a real bear to repair when it eventual had trouble.