Apple's latest 'Switch' ads tout iPhone's security & 'smoothness'
Apple on Monday released a trio of new video ads in its "Switch" series, aimed at persuading Android users to make the leap to an iPhone.
The first, "Security," argues that Android devices are more vulnerable to data theft, while "Smooth" implies that iPhones offer inherently better performance, regardless of a device's specifications. "Contacts" is the only one of the three that avoids going on the attack, simply suggesting that it's easy to migrate contact data to iOS.
As with the first round of "Switch" ads, released last week, the new ones all use a left-to-right motif and direct people to apple.com/switch.
That site was recently revamped to expand its focus beyond the Move to iOS Android app and sell people on the merits of iPhones, such as a high-quality camera, better technical support, and a lower environmental footprint.
Apple has often bragged about the number of people switching to iPhones, but added the caveat "outside of Greater China" to record-breaking claims in its last quarterly results call. In that country the company has largely been trounced by native Android brands Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi, ending up in fifth place.
The first, "Security," argues that Android devices are more vulnerable to data theft, while "Smooth" implies that iPhones offer inherently better performance, regardless of a device's specifications. "Contacts" is the only one of the three that avoids going on the attack, simply suggesting that it's easy to migrate contact data to iOS.
As with the first round of "Switch" ads, released last week, the new ones all use a left-to-right motif and direct people to apple.com/switch.
That site was recently revamped to expand its focus beyond the Move to iOS Android app and sell people on the merits of iPhones, such as a high-quality camera, better technical support, and a lower environmental footprint.
Apple has often bragged about the number of people switching to iPhones, but added the caveat "outside of Greater China" to record-breaking claims in its last quarterly results call. In that country the company has largely been trounced by native Android brands Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi, ending up in fifth place.
Comments
"We detect that your Apple iPhone is 28.1% damaged because of four harmful viruses from recent adult sites."
It's going to eat your SIM card! Oh nos!
Yeah, so download this free app from Google Play!
Um, so my iphone is strangely precisely damaged by viruses I can fix with an Android App?
As I have said elsewhere: Apple's excellence is not in its hardware -- anybody can match or exceed Apple's best (particularly in its Mac products). Rather, Apple's unique contribution that nobody can touch derives from its ecosystem and infrastructure -- and its tightly integrated products...
But, those things are mostly intangibles that the media simply ignores because they don't feed the horse-race narrative that sells newspapers and clicks.
There is no vetting, and no one checks what the app is, until a significant number of people report an obvious problem..
As for not so obvious problems, a problematic app will stay there, until some security dude reports it...which might take months (best case).
What I am saying is, betting on that to happen to Google Play, is like betting on water being wet when you touch it.
Answer: Last I looked they are
I was not talking about "dishonest" developers (whatever you mean by that), but about those who submit apps with functionality that steals data, for example, and uploads it somewhere. AFAIK accounts of those who attempted that, were terminated, if they used methods to hide those "features" (from static analysis, for example).
Also, I am pretty sure that there are many more devs, that we don't know about, who were not allowed to publish, as a result of them going against the policies.
Yes, you can't vet out 100% of them, but it is far better than not vetting it at all.
Vetting the apps wouldn't have mattered as initially they did not have the adware. It was a fairly recent update that added it. It's somewhat similar to the malware episode that infected a few hundred App Store apps last year. Catching this kind of stuff after an app has already been vetted and available for download on both app stores is of course just a tad more difficult. Google responded by removing that developers apps. As of two days ago those same apps were still available for iOS. With adware? Uncertain. In any event I would expect Apple may remove them as well now.
Have you seen source code of both apps? No. Then why are you even talking about that? You simply assumed that those apps (on GP and on AS) both do the same things, simply because they came from the same dev. But why?
In the interest of consistency when discussing malware: There are no Android viruses, nor are there iOS viruses. You actually should have used the very broad category of "Malware", which according to the security vendors who report on this kind of stuff is pretty much anything an app does that is not disclosed by the developer. An app that collects your contacts but doesn't tell you is considered malware. So is an app that reports location but doesn't tell you upfront that it's doing so. Yup, it's malware too. Both types have been discovered in the App Store hundreds of times, and quietly discovered and removed probably far more often just as they have been on Google Play.
And so is an app that uses trickery to game advertisers (which is what this most recent one is that you've referenced) or puff app developer revenue. I doubt the Play Store has an exclusive on that.