If you Google “apple product recall” you get less than a page of results. That is peculiar, isn’t it? Try searching for “recall history” or anything like that and you more or less get the Google equivalent of “what you are looking for does not exist in this galaxy”. So then being Greek, I use the terms “ανάκληση προϊόντων Apple” and get 32 thousand results. Obviously the propaganda masters at Apple don’t bother with Greece. Much like Apple support doesn’t bother with Greece and other “minor” markets. They just rely on the well documented pro Apple journalist bias. If I want a more serious and organised list of Apple product recalls, I can go for the United States to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. That gives me many many more Apple product recalls. And that is when you realise it is not just that Apple users are fanatics. The company puts a lot of PR effort in making information disappear. As it lobbies Washington to fight Samsung with legal fines and other restrictions.
PR and lobbying are of course well established form of corporate action. Will Apple get fined for the whole Irish tax debacle? Of course they won’t. Hold up a bit with all the emotionally appealing “think different” adverts of us all flying about in the perfect future, white clothes, white background, white devices and white hoverboards. Earlier this year Apple recalled iPhones, iPads, iPods and Mac computers sold from 2003 to 2015. And you think Samsung is the problem? They admitted to 12 “incidents” which means that there were probably hundreds. It is rather entertaining to watch liberal America up in arms against the “irrationality” of Donald Trump. He lies in your face, changes views, claims the internet as an information source and generally does pretty much whatever he wants with absolutely no attention paid to facts or logic. Yet “70% of the most active iPhone states vote Democrat“. So you are accepting irrationality from your phone’s manufacturer, but think it is not OK for a President.
Who is more likely to have had an affair? Brad Pitt or Stephen Hawking? A politician or a doctor? You will make a guesstimate about any of these questions based on your available information. Do you read gossip magazines often? Do you work in a hospital and hear rumours of infidelity often? Apple makes product recall information disappear because it knows you won’t bother to search or think about it as long as I did today. If I ask you about Brad Pitt again, but this time it is via chat on your cell phone, you will answer even more succinctly if you don’t like typing there. Especially if you are using the iPhone keyboard which for some ridiculous reason is different from other keyboards on the planet. As humans we are always looking for shortcuts.
It is the same reason homeopathy has lasted so well despite being complete rubbish with absolutely no results on any level. (No, not even placebo.) No matter how much evidence you pile in front of someone they respond “well, one time my son had a terrible rash and it just wouldn’t go…but homeopathy saved him”. One time, one highly subjective personal experience trumps everything else. And you can’t outTrump Trump. Stupidity is unbeatable and we are all terrible judges. You don’t know if the new iPhone is any good like you don’t know if you are more likely to get hit by lightning, a car or a falling piano this year. In fact I suggest you are more likely to guess whether Brad Pitt does drugs with Russian prostitutes than to objectively compare an iPhone with a Samsung phone.
It is a bit like a husband-wife argument about who does most around the house. Each of us focuses on their own contribution. What it costs each of us in terms of energy. Apple computer users have put up with the absolutely ludicrous application navigation wheel for years. When pushed they will claim it is “the best”. Like iPhone users claimed they didn’t need copy-paste until they got it. Or two buttons on a mouse until Steve Jobs presented the magic mouse. They “burned Pentiums to the ground” one month and the next were “using the incredible power of Pentium”.
So leave Brad Pitt alone. And check those product recall lists before you start talking about Apple.