“Although I don’t want to belittle the lives lost in the single tragic Lexus accelerator issue, it’s abundantly clear that Toyota was unfairly blamed for a number of issues that weren’t its fault,” Biggs writes. “Fast forward to the oil-streaked summer of 2010. Apple’s new iPhone had a fairly egregious error in signal strength representation and attenuation, a problem, that, in all fairness, from which all phones suffer.”
Biggs writes, “I wrote last week that Antennagate was, in short, schadenfreude… So when such a visible and reproducible (under the right circumstances) problem appeared, the world piled on. Mainstream news, including local stations, picked up the story. Apple eventually had to pass out some bread and circus tickets for the downtrodden masses, ensuring that people would forget about attenuation and focus instead on all the free cases they’d be getting. As we move into the post-BP spill news cycle, rest assured that Antennagate will be forgotten and all the ink spilled will be for naught.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: All the ink spilled will be for naught, just like the last time they tried antenna FUD to slow down iPhone.
I’ll be enjoying my iPhone 4 from the comfort and safety of my Toyota Highlander soon enough.
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Hysteria created with nothing more than bullshit. It destroys companies and costs jobs.
Notice how even though the Government is well on its way to exonerating Toyota, you hardly hear a word about it in the media? Even though in 100% of the data they looked at they found that the driver had never touched the brake and their foot was on the accelerator, i.e. they lied, hardly a peep in the media.
You recognize when the media has gone over board with Apple because you understand the subject matter. You know technology. I always wonder when they report on things I know nothing about, how can I tell if they’re telling the truth.
Tell me one refrigerator is worse than another, I dunno.
Tell me one green tea is better than another, I dunno.
Like my old daddy used to say, “No truth in the news, and no news in the truth.”
No question in my mind that the U.S. media (fed by the U.S. Congress) were on a “witch hunt” to discredit Toyota in light of the U.S. automakers’ part in the U.S. financial crisis and the hard times that were befallen upon our automakers (largely from their own ineptitude). It was just too blatantly obvious for my taste. My proof? I don’t have any, other than history. Though it wasn’t done under the guise of any legal system it was done in a tyrannical manner (just like with the iPhone 4).
Watch Kunstler describe this type of tyranny to a tee:
http://www.pbs.org/pov/disturbingtheuniverse/additional_video2.php
Just read that report last week.
In virtually all crashes the black box recorded the accelerator was pushed down and no recording of the brake being touched.
Journalism 101:
No headlines until you collect the facts. Oh I’m sorry, they are in it for the money. Sell as many newspapers as possible, at all costs. Who cares about backing up the truth.
And that’s why they’ve gone ballistic on Apple. I guess Jobs should have listened to the people who told him to leave the Gizmodo hacks alone. This is what happens when you make a stalker mad!
Media loves controversy and will play it up to sell ratings, increase visibility etc. It is wrong and yet many people buy into it because..well…the media wouldn’t lie would they?
Is there a pill for this illness? I don’t think so. People are pretty lazy and will not take the time to dig for the facts themselves and therefore readily rely on ‘an expert report’ as the gospel truth.
That Toyota thing goes way back. A large number of us Prius owners had been noting failed FUD attacks since 2003. They just got worse and worse over time. At one point the government was even trying to require noisemakers on “the silent killer”, sponsored by a group claiming to represent sightless victims of auto accidents. Turns out that more blind people were killed by pickup trucks going in reverse than any other vehicle, and not a single injury from a Prius. Of course that final outcome never made it into the news, but the sudden acceleration syndrome quickly took over. I wouldn’t care except for people asking me if I was going to keep driving that rolling disaster area. Now I get grief about my phone of choice… sheesh!
When I hold my iPhone 4 a certain way, the accelerator on my Prius gets stuck…
Those of us who lived through the “unintended acceleration” claims by Audi owners in the mid 1980s are hardly surprised that, as then, most of the problems were ultimately traced to operator error.
But lots of folks – including some with a special interest at stake – aren’t yet ready to drop the story. Even after Jobs’ presentation last week, news reports still refer to Apple’s “ongoing problem” with reception, and Leno is still making jokes about it. (Yes, it’s Leno’s job to make people laugh, but humor works best when it’s based in reality, not fantasy.)
The Toyota anti-buzz was just a coup for beleagered old fashioned car manufactors to sell crappy and technically poor american cars to scared, pollution unaware, and narrow minded national-traditionalists.
A few points, and I’d like to note that there are multiple issues being confused here:
First, the floor mats do cause the accelerator to stick. Toyota confirms this.
Second, the accelerator can stick due to the problem that required the “shim fix”. Toyota confirms this, as well.
Third – there are oddities about Prius acceleration, which I believe have been confirmed by third parties, although I don’t know if Toyota has confirmed them. They tend to be linked to the use of cruise control, in the reports I’ve seen. It does not seem implausible to me that a car controlled by computer – largely lacking mechanical linkages for speed control – could have occasional failures of this sort.
That said – if you stomp on the accelerator, thinking that it’s the brake, bad things are probably going to happen. That people have been injured or killed in this way is tragic but it doesn’t make those injuries Toyota’s fault. The top two issues, however, Toyota is at fault for. If your accelerator sticks and you stomp on the brakes, you’ll get the car to stop (although it will take a greater stopping distance and you might not avoid an obstacle in time). If your accelerator sticks, you freak out, and stomp hard on the accelerator when you think you’re hitting the brake pedal, well, that’s just got bad news written all over it.
@theloniousMac:
your father was russian?
It’s easy to see that piling-on Toyota helped ailing Government Motors. It also helped resurgent Ford and Fiat’s Chrysler Division, not that Chrysler is an American company any more.
Exactly what American company did nailing Apple to the cross help? Not Google, they give away their wares. Just Motorola and maybe Verizon. Trouble is Apple is the most successful American company. Why are Americans attacking their own to help a fifth rate American phone manufacturer and several major foreign phone manufacturers?
This isn’t like the Toyota rape at all.
There are certain allegiances that are desperate to keep a focus on this tiny flaw and try to blow it out of proportion. Have you taken a close look at the iPhone’s competition? They have no answer for this, the most astonishingly advanced phone/digital device yet. They are years away from matching it and they want the world to focus on the minor antenna problem instead of the glory of its capabilities. All of Apple’s enemies want to taint the perception of the company.
Not to toot my own horn or anything, but regarding Toyota, way back on February 3, I totally called it.
I graduated with a degree in journalism, and my eyes were opened during some of my first courses when we had exercises to choose which story was the most “newsworthy.” I argued with my instructor that the murder story wasn’t as “newsworthy” as my choice (something like a group of volunteers rehabbing a baseball field or something). I was eventually told I was just wrong because he said so, not that there was any reason.
The fact is the media needs a villain or a story doesn’t sell. So Toyota became the evil corporation (reporters love to bash corporations, because they make money and reporters don’t), and now it’s Apple’s turn because something somewhat negative and unexpected happened to a popular product.
Hearst said it best regarding Times magazine: (Paraphrased) If we get it right 90% of the time, we’re going well. By that he meant that if they are wrong but still sell papers and magazines, oh well, move on to the next issue and don’t be too concerned with the errors, even though those errors may be significant and may seriously harm people.
Sorry C1, I think PJ O’Rourke scooped you with the Audi almost two decades ago. Megan McArdle made me pull Parliament of Whores off the shelf:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/07/nhtsa-no-toyotas-do-not-suddenly-accelerate-unless-you-press-the-accelerator/59696/
But I otherwise acknowledge your prescience in this case. Kudos. Now to Implement my new business strategy based on the Bachelor Home Companion.
Actually, there is no reason to even remotely consider the Toyota accelerator DEATHS with the iPhone 4 ‘Death Grip’ signal attenuation problem.
Death by car crash,
or
dropping a phone call.
Which of these two is critical to you? Which of these two subjects deserves a ‘great media piling-on’?
∑ = stupid article.
Also kids, Toyota made PROFOUND APOLOGIES for the HIDING and BURYING the PROVEN bad accelerator hardware problem and OBFUSCATING the problem with the public via the ridiculous ‘it’s your floor mat subterfuge.
∑ = The Toyota accelerator problem was REAL and Toyota admitted it. This rubbish about the “National Highway Traffic Safety Association basically said the crashes were caused by ‘pedal misapplication” never did explain the entire problem. It only indicated that this was an alternative way of crashing your Toyota car. Interpreting it as letting Toyota off the hook is bullshit. Bad call.
However, I must heartily agree that this incident was spun to maximum velocity in order to assist Government Motors after their pathetic BAILOUT.
“TV is their friend. They believe whatever it tells them.”
Cobra Commander
“”TV is their friend. They believe whatever it tells them.””
So true. As a middle school teacher who has been around a long time, I have never seen anything like the present situation.
Is this generation the smartest ever? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?
These kids believe that a cartoon show outweighs the laws of physics. What cartoon characters say outweighs Einstein in their minds. According to a survey in Britain a couple of years ago, more people believe in the existence of Batman than Winston Churchill.
Batten down the hatches. Hard times are coming, and its not the kids who will save us. Its the old farts that will do it.
Wish the media would concentrate more on the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and give BP and the Administration far more flack than they’ve been getting. Pile on like they did with Katrina not being solved and being such a disaster.
Toyota. Moving forward.
Whether you want to or not.
News media, Wall Street *bankers*, TV evangelists – sometimes I’m embarrassed to be a member of the human race…