Originally Posted by dfiler
It seems that the crux of your beef with consumer reports is that you disagree with their findings. If you agreed, you'd likely not have a problem with them publishing that finding.
On top of that, you probably wouldn't have attributed devious motives to their actions if you agreed with their review.
Because i personally have the antenna problem, I don't have an issue with consumer reports publishing their iPhone review. Nor do I believe that they are publishing something controversial simply for the publicity. Instead, I have a much less paranoid assessment, that consumer reports retested a product after widespread reports of a flaw. Once they had more information about a flaw, they were able to reproduce it reliably.
And what's all this nonsense about consumer reports being ill-equipped to test if the antenna flaw exists? Seriously?
I can prove it exists with a single iPhone4, one hand, and five minutes of labor. I've made quite a believers out of deniers at my local bar. "Oh really? You don't believe the antenna problem exists? Let me prove it to you right now". Five minutes later they admit that the problem is real after I consistently drop to zero connectivity via my normal grip on the phone. Tested with the bumper in place, the phone remains usable.
As for why satisfaction remains high? I'm satisfied even though I have the antenna problem. The reason is quite simple, I'm using a bumper on my iPhone. Problem solved, for me.
What consumer reports has done really isn't that outrageous or sensational. It is only us rabid apple geeks that find it outrageous that they dare publish an unflattering review of an apple product. They publish negative review all the time. We just don't normally notice.
I disagree with you. I'm not going to deny that you have had a problem. Sure, there are those who have, though most have not.
And yes, their testing methods have been in question before, and there have been times when they even retracted statements they made.
What I don't like is that when they actually used the phone, even knowing about the "problem" they were of the opinion that it was minor, and not very important. But only when they tested it in their lab, they then said that it was important. So it wasn't much of a problem in use, where it really matters, but in the lab, they could detail the actual numbers, and that seemed to be more important to them.
I'm not happy about the way they did this, because for one, they really didn't need to take that big piece of duct tape, and slap it on the phone. It was pointed out that most any small, thin and clear tape makes a major difference for those with the problem, so that was a deliberate affront. It's as though they were making a joke about it, which isn't their supposed purpose.
In addition, many products over the years have been given "conditional" recommendations. If this is done to the product, then we can recommend it. Often, that's something the consumer can do, and they'll show how. But they didn't do that here, even though Apple spent a lot of money to give cases to every buyer.
Usually, in a situation like this, they would say that without a case, they can't recommend (check rate) it, but with a case they can. They didn't do that either. They would have praised the manufacturer for taking quick steps to rectify the situation by giving everyone cases.They seemed miffed that Apple didn't quickly jump to recall a couple of billion dollars of phones, halt production for several months, and possibly destroy their business, just because they they said that about the phone.
I know that you seem to think that CU is beyond politics, but they are not. They play it as much as anyone, and they do what they can to obtain readers, and negative reports is how they do it. They are honest, but sometimes they push that to their own advantage.
Now, if a case didn't help, it would be a different story. But return rates are still far below that of most other phones, so people are obviously happy.