Wires Crossed #106 – November 9

Apple Apologises To Samsung – With A Catch

Apple Apologises To Samsung – With A Catch
After a drawn out battle, Apple’s British arm was ordered by a high court judge to apologise to Samsung via and print media over allegations that the latter copied aspects of former’s iPad tablet. Apple did as was ordered, but the apology came with a catch because in the text it also said that Samsung products were not as ‘cool’ as Apple’s (which was a direct quote from the judge, but printed out of context). Samsung would have none of it, and neither would the judge, so Apple had to put through a new set of adverts with adjusted text that doesn’t include the snide aside.

Blackberry Does Have Its Uses Afterall
To say Blackberry has taken a few hits over the past 12 months is akin to saying if Donald Trump is having a bad hair day. Losing marketshare, and some unkind pundits saying that its handsets are going the way of the Dodo, have only been a few of the barbs being thrown its way recently. However, don’t despair! There is still a use for the handset. British woman Georgina Campbell has written a 55,000+ word novel on the mobile phone. Why? Who knows? Surely a desktop or laptop surely would have made the task a whole lot easier. But it does prove that even the humble handset can multitask, and gave Campbell – and Blackberry – a stack of publicity.

Kiwi Takes Apple To Disputes Tribunal
A New Zealand man is taking Apple to the country’s Disputes Tribunal after buying products online from Apple.com. Even though Adam Crouchley thought that the pricing of a range of Apple accessories was too good to be true, he bought NZ$35 worth of gear that had a retail value of NZ$1600. Even though some of the equipment was shipped, some wasn’t. He then received an email saying there had been a mistake on the pricing even after he had live chatted with somebody from the website at the time, so the rest of his order would not be sent. Crouchley didn’t accept the reason and is now going to take them to the Tribunal. One thing in his favour – the company isn’t denying the pricing, but says it was a mistake. One thing going against him – he admits to the aforementioned live chatting with somebody because he thought the pricing was too cheap, which Apple might exploit as a good reason not to cough up the rest of the goods.

Republican Party Accidentally Tags Along With Racist Tweets
America’s Republican Party has shown what can happen when you don’t keep an eye on your Twitter account. The political party accidentally hitched its Twitter wagon to a hashtag called #votewhite. As you can imagine, any hashtag with that name can’t be good if you’re trying to win election in the US. According the Washington Post the RNC “bid on the keyword “vote” and got placed on the #votewhite [Twitter] stream”. Ouch. Not that it made any difference to the election result, with Barack Obama getting a second term in office. What it does show is that you need to think carefully, and laterally, when getting on the social networking bandwagon.