As if to cement their total irrelevance, with millions upon millions of iPhone 4s flying of store shelves worldwide, “Consumer Reports is now warning users to wait, calling it ‘middle aged’ and doubting whether Verizon will offer the unlimited data contracts it is said it would,” Daniel Eran Dilger reports for AppleInsider who notes that Consumer Reports awarded “Apple’s iPhone 4 its highest ratings across the board last summer.”
“In a blog posting, Paul Reynolds and Mike Gikas write that the Verizon iPhone 4 is ‘promising, but likely to be short-lived,’ saying that ‘it may be quickly replaced by a newer, cooler version more quickly than is customary even for the die-young life expectancy of most smart phones,'” Dilger reports. “Other smartphone makers release new models every few months, with Motorola, for example, releasing the Droid X just months after its original Droid launched, then following up with the Droid Pro and Droid 2 models within another six months. Consumer Reports does not warn users not to buy Motorola’s Droid phones because a new model will be released within six months, making its warnings about Verizon’s iPhone 4 seem inconsistent.”
MacDailyNews Take: There is no doubt, Consumer Reports doesn’t just “seem” inconsistent, they are inconsistent.
Dilger continues, “The blog posting also criticized Verizon’s iPhone 4 offering as being 3G ‘at a time when carriers—Verizon among them—have launched faster 4G networks and phones that work on them.’ However, while Verizon began rolling out its new ‘4G’ LTE data network in December, it doesn’t over widespread coverage and isn’t yet usable for voice calls.”
“Additionally, the 4G phones Verizon showed at CES earlier this month aren’t yet available and won’t be ‘launched’ until the middle of 2011. If Consumer Reports is worried about iPhone 4 being refreshed, it should also be warning all Verizon users to hold off buying phones because of the new batch of LTE models being offered within six months,” Dilger reports. “If it starts doing that, it can continue to warn users to never buy a new smartphone because Motorola, Samsung and HTC will continue to release new and improved models every few months.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Consumer Reports has no credibility (see related articles below). We wouldn’t recommend the rag to a grandma looking for a new vacuum cleaner, much less to a smartphone buyer.
What is this Consumer Reports you speak of?
They remind me of what happened with the buggy whip business. not only are they inconsistent, but are no longer needed. It is really easy and free to research products online. I dumped them for being idiots, and have never regretted it.
I once saw a Consumer Reports at my Grandma’s next to her Woolworth’s Catalog and Saturday Evening Post.
No wonder CR is screwed up. They write to keep consumers [who are] stuck in the past with green carpeting, plastic on their couches and, if married, sleep in separate beds.
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incontinent actually.
Honestly, as a Consumer Reports magazine and online subscriber, I’ve appreciated the magazine and it’s unbiased ratings for years. But, their odd vendetta (good word) against iPhone4 has me doubting their organization and publication. The fact they have not admitted they’re antenna testing was flawed strikes me as alarmingly concerning.
Worse, the magazine’s very liberal/left wing direction is making the now very opinionated rag very hard to read – or trust. I guess not even CR is unbiased these days. <sigh>
@ stophobophobia
Indeed. I used to read it. Used to even belong to their website subscription. No more. We quit about two years back. They’re just doing this because they know Apple news gets hits.
They are like the Sears catalog, no longer.
A bunch of wanna-be-scientist dilettantes. They make up “tests” by the seats of their pants and pass the results off as “scientifically tested.” They wish they were Underwriters Laboratories, but they just weren’t qualified.
Consumer Reports should change their name to FUD Reports so consumers properly know what kind of advice they’re actually getting. Perhaps Consumer Reports could warn users against using Consumer Reports. They would get my respect that way.
I agree with all the above comments, but CR may be right about one thing. It may be a good idea to wait until June to see if Apple releases the new yearly upgrade to the iphone in two versions. One for Verizon and one for ATT. It’s only a four to five month wait.
Back home in the hills of Kentucky, the Consumers Report was the first magazine to be sacrificed in the good old 3 seater shithouse.
I can see things haven’t changed much since then.
I think CR uses the same lab procedures as those 2 guys on Discovery channel that blow everything up when they test it. What’s that show called?
They should be banned from the magazine racks and the internet. They are useless and non creadible.
CR will be livid after apple reports sales of 20+ million unitsand an EPS of $7+.
If everyone waited to buy new phones because the new model is coming, no one would ever buy new phones… Or computers for that matter. Buy what you want when you want.
And yet they are promoting there App for iPhone in the February issue for $9.99. Not available on Android. Please
I wonder…if Consumer Reports did a report on magazines, would they recommend their own magazine to consumers?
I dropped my CR subscription after their iPhone fiasco last year. Just could not take it any longer. They keep begging me to renew: like I want to keep paying them a fee to lie to me? I think not. CR has always had anti-Apple bias. They no longer get my money or my attention.
My parents used to get that magazine. It was good years ago, but they have been clueless for many recent years. Who needs them when there are on line reviews of people using stuff.
What’s going on ,check out The article in The new york times on the iPhone exposed on verizon network.wow when you get to the top people can’t stand it .what a hack job
The folks who run Consumer Reports are too embarrassed to admit they fell for the anti-Apple “antennagate” hype last year. iPhone 4 goes on to become the most popular consumer electronics product of all time, despite their so-called “recommendation” that contradicted even their own product evaluation. Now, while everyone else (even “bloggers”) have conveniently forgotten about the whole “non-issue” from just six months ago, Consumer Reports can’t resist the opportunity to make fools of themselves once again.
‘ it doesn’t over widespread coverage and isn’t yet usable for voice calls.’
OFFER! Read before publishit
Yes – publishit – apt description of today’s writers.
I have a iPhone 4. I love it, the only thing I dislike is the lack of non annoying text tones
I recently received an email from CR asking me to resubscribe to their online service (I was on it a few years when looking to buy a car). I told them “No thanks,” and that I wouldn’t resubscribe until they retract their flawed and biased iPhone 4 crap. After that publicity-seeking episode I don’t trust anything they say any more.
http://nyti.ms/eCUJj0 here’s the link iPhone 4 on verizon article read it what bs
CR – as most people and/or organizations – is good at reviewing things they understand. That can be a simple as a washing machine, or as complex as a 401k plan. If they have the staff expertise, and the time to study something thoroughly, CR is as good a resource as any consumer will ever find.
However, there have always been some products that CR just doesn’t ‘get’, and as a result their conclusions tend to be less useful about them – certainly they can’t be used alone.
For example, I remember when CR was an absolutely horrible resource for reviewing cars. They understood repair histories, and MPGs, but when it came to the emotional side of things – ‘fun-to-drive’ factors and so on – they were clueless. This reliance on all things empirical would also tend to lead them into some epic Windmill Tilting Contests. The Audi ‘Unintended Acceleration’ saga comes to mind. Empirically, they were getting data that said many Audi drivers were having this problem. But they seemed to have no ability to understand that mechanically there was no way it could be happening due to a design fault (no drive-by-wire black boxes were at work back then), nor did they ever seriously consider driver error and mass psychology as factors at work. They kept Audi in their doghouse long past the point when the rest of the world had moved on. Granted, some of that was due to their own readers not moving on either, but given their mission that’s really no excuse for them. Their own sense of importance – and expectation of their testing processes leading to infallibility – also seemed to keep their dander up longer than it should have.
The same thing seems to be happening here with the iPhone. CR caught a legitimate kink in the iPhone’s armor, but without seeming to have noticed that every other smartphone on the market with internal antenna (including previous iPhones) had the same reception flaw. The mass psychological impact of the news reportage on the ‘problem’ seemed to affect them also, in ways VERY similar to CBS’s Audi story way back when. And, when the rest of the world has so obviously moved on, there CR is – beating on a lonely drum, almost out of willfulness.
I would say, for 98% of the products made out there, and for financial and medical service information as well, CR is indispensible. It really is an unbiased source. It’s just a shame they can’t seem to admit a mistake. Or learn how not to keep making the same one over again.
Those other 2% can be a real bitch.
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Has anyone considered the possibility that there may be more going on with CR’s stance (in this instance and possibly others) rthan simple inconsistency or incompetence?
What ever happened to good old fashioned corruption?
Wait, Consumer Reports? Isn’t that something from back in the days when they had those big sets of encyclopedias? Make sure someone at CR turns out the lights when they close the doors for the last time…Wankers
“I think CR uses the same lab procedures as those 2 guys on Discovery channel that blow everything up when they test it. What’s that show called?”
MythBusters
it is okay.
consumer reports loves android/google cawk just like macdailynews loves apple/jobs cawk.
Pirate completely correct Clearly CR flawed org without internal controls or standards Antennagate not a simple error – vendetta is precise word It would be an ideal subject for a respected publication to do a thorough investigative story adhering to established journalistic standards What is most troubling beyond their not admitting their mistake is that they are so arrogant that they continue to attack apple
Haven’t trusted CR since I read their ratings of the Ford Explorer vs the Mazda Navajo many years ago. The Navajo received an above average rating. The Explorer was rated below average.
In case you don’t know or remember, the Navajo was built by Ford for Mazda and came off the same assembly line as the Explorer. The Navajo even had a Ford key.
I dropped my CR subscription but my decision was unrelated to iPhone.
Its amazing that individuals worship a company & its products to the point of canceling a magazine subscription because of a negative review of ONE product.
I believe CR’s recommendation about waiting for a revised version is sound advice. I will let the drones stand in line for hours & report various issues for the next few months before buying iPhone.
I suggest that all of the posters review Apple’s 1984 commercial on youtube. On the screen replace Big Brother with Steve Jobs ; and include yourself among the drones in the audience.
Do not trust consumer reports
Who’s more inconsistant that MDN whining on in this blurb while three entries later on the home page we see a rumor about big changes for the phone? The CR advise is sound: hardware old, capabilities old (read the FAQs at the Verizon website, bed-wetters), new version tk this summer.
I’ve waited this long, I’ll wait a little longer. I will not hobble myself with a two-year contract on a year old phone.
Having a discussion and analysis on Zune Tang’s level serves no constructive purpose. My grandma is dead, but many media outlets quote CR on a regular basis. Voices carry. Laughing at them in our little corner of the universe doesn’t make them less destructive or relevant to many out there who still read it, even if only to pick and choose recommendations.I’m surprised they haven’t done more damage.
Consumer Reports just continues to show that they are bias and have no credibility in what they report. If you subscribe, you should stop your subscription immediately! You are wasting money on a piece of bias paper that shows they don’t report the facts, only report there bias opinion which they are the only ones in the world with that bias opinion as iPhones fly off the shelves at record rates where ever they are sold.
“I never buy any electronic or mechanical device. I walk bare feet 10 miles to work and back. Wear skins from animals I kill with my hands which I then cook on my fire pit. You see every electronic and mechanical device will get upgraded, cars get new models every year, computers, TV sets, even the goddam coffee maker and I REFUSE TO BE SUCKERED BY THEM”
— Staunch follower of Consumer Reports. “I read them by home made animal tallow fat candle”.
If M$ can pay off writers and publications why can’t Google, ATnT, VZ or any other company.
Starting with overblown mythology spread by jealous Apple competitors, enhanced by their test, consisting of observing a diminution of bars, the self-important CR jerks jumped to a conclusion. When Steve Jobs showed them their error, they became enraged, and are now standing against the tide of the most wildly successful consumer product in recent history.
While I doubt Apple’s competitors have anything to do with this, it is a simple fact that CR has been anti Apple for many, many years.
Even prior to the “dark days” of Apple CR would publish truly asinine reports.
They did one evaluation back then comparing Macs to IBM compatibles using MS Office products as one of the key components of the comparison. Even though the Mac had the cutting edge processor and the IBM compatible did not, thier report claimed that all the MS Office product ran twice as fast or faster on an IBM compatible as they did on the Mac. Some of the evaluations (such as double precision floating point calculations in MS Excel) “proved” that the IBM compatible machine was way, way, *way* faster than the Mac.
I was so insensed over this “test” that I openly accused them (in a letter to them that I sent to other publishers I know) of running the test with MS Windows versions of MS Office on both machines with the Mac running Windows under an emulator. That was the *only* way they could have gotten the numbers they published. Why else would the scroll rate in MS Word be more than twice as fast on an IBM Compatible than it was on the Mac? (Yes, I know the Mac OS [Mac System back then] had a speed limiting feature for scrolling back then, but even this could not explain the extreme difference in their report.)
Clearly, in all these years, CR has not changed their stance on anything Apple.
Consumer Reports is a bunch of dik-eatin bitche$/homos. F@&k them and their a$s poking Droids. they suck androids’ dik$ for dik money. and then, to top that off, as if it weren’t enough, Consumer Reports begs windows and droids to rub their gooches and sing and have their pet dogs F them in the A. True story.
It will be a great, great service and favor to readers if they close shop
and cease publication!!!
From a former subscriber!