“No, that’s going way too far, but Consumer Reports still deserves more well-deserved criticism,” Gene Steinberg writes for Tech Night Owl. “CR just can’t get tech gear right. More to the point, their undefined test methods result in skewing the ratings against Apple in curious ways, without an iota of apparent support with facts and figures. Worse, ratings are buried under generic labels, with no indication how the conclusions were reached.”
“So in the August 2012 issue, for example, the iPhone 4S gets, at best, middling ratings, a 67, compared to the other smartphone offerings from the major wireless carriers in the U.S.,” Steinberg writes. “Now such ratings would be deserved if all the other products examined were demonstrably superior, but there are serious questions about CR’s test standards and results.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Consumer Reports blasts Apple because they need free publicity to get a continuing stream of oblivious subscribers or the POS would mercifully cease to exist.
If you’ve unfortunately endured a brain injury and are therefore still subscribing to Consumer Reports, please cancel your subscription. Consumer Reports is garbage. Unscientific tripe. Anachronistic fish wrap. You couldn’t waste your money any more thoroughly.
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I agree. Consumer Reports tries too hard to create a balance between the mediocre and the excellent like they don’t want to contribute to Apple’s already substantial lead in tech. Even if it is against consumer’s interest, ironically, to do it. Their tests are faulty and conclusions erroneous which reminds me of a line from GHOSTBUSTERS: “Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable! You are a poor reviewer, Dr. CR!”
“but the kids love us.”
and by kids i mean AARP members.
Cancelled my subscription after the iPhone 4 BS they published.
I stopped reading them when they rated the then brand new 1965 Ford Galaxy 500 the best car on the road. Remember that same year there were Porsche 911s, big block Corvettes, Jaguar XKEs, Mustangs, Camaros, and the fabulous AC Cobra 427.
I had one and it was a good car. Not everyone has the disposable income to afford those other vehicles, or the delusions of Speed Racer grandeur you apparently possess. I’m sure you pee yourself when cars like the Honda Accord or Toyota Camry are awarded kudos.
Delusions? I’ve been a race car builder and have owned most of the cars I mentioned. So who pee’d in your Wheaties, little man? Is your Dell a “good” computer?
Race car builder huh? Yeah, it takes great skill to put glass packs and an STP sticker on your mom’s sedan. You can go back to masturbating over your recent issue of Road & Track now dipshit.
Same here….
Did the same…
I canceled my subscription to that POS rag the day they gave a terrible review to a product I knew and used each and every day and couldn’t live without. (Forgive the hyperbole.) I wrote them with my objections to their article, asking if their tester had used the product for any length of time . . . or just for a few minutes/hours. A reasonable question, I thought, but one they declined to answer in any fashion.
That’s the way of this bird cage lining rag: “We have our opinions, we can’t be wrong, we can’t be questioned, take our word for it, don’t use your own mind, BEND OVER.”
Scroom AND the horse they rode in on.
…maybe one day soon, when Ballmer T Clown is looking for a job, he can become editor-in-chief of Consumer Reports. It would be magical.
Consumer Repo who?
They only offer biased opinions with no facts what so ever to back them up. Worthless.
MDN, why stop going back further? You don’t have any records back further than 2005?
I remember back in the “dark days” when a CR article compared “equivalent” Mac and Windows and claimed the Mac was a factor or two or more slower then the Windows machine. Turns out in order to do a “direct comparison” they thought they needed to use the Windows version of Office on both machines! (Presumably in the completely delusional attempt to have the exact same software running on both machines.) Thus they were running Windows on a PowerPC based Mac under emulation. Obviously, this slowed things down a LOT.
It should have been abundantly clear to anyone with two functioning brain cells (but not CR) that emulating an Intel chip on a PowerPC chip should have been dead slow.
However, when CR did their report they did not mention this emulation at all. They merely stated that one of their primary benchmarks was running identical versions of Office on both machines.
CR has not gotten any better since!
I cancelled CR over 20+ years ago when they trashed several items and I knew they were wrong. That was before I got a computer or the internet.
I dumped that piece of crap as well. They can’t seem to get it right especially with Apple. They are LOSERS!
It’s a shame… Once upon a time, Consumer Reports was an important publication providing an invaluable service to consumers. But the world has moved on and the magazine hasn’t moved on with it. Really, it’s worthless now.
I came to this conclusion when I tried to use their ratings to help me buy a new microwave oven, only to learn that every model they reviewed was no longer available to buy, rendering their ratings utterly worthless. And the issue in question was only a few months old. I mentioned this to the appliances guy at the store, and he said that appliance models turn over so fast these days that CR can’t keep up.
Before that experience, I figured CR was still worth looking at for non high-tech stuff. But now I understand — this magazine no longer has a reason to exist.
“Selling It” is still funny, though. But I can read that on the shelf.
——RM
They are as dumbass as Hussein.
Ya, Saddam was such a dumbass he lost his head. That is what you’re referring to, right?
Consumer Reports?!
like everything in our society in USA, it’s all fake, all facade.
we do not live in democracy but pseudo-freedom.
Consumer Reports is supposed to protect us consumers from corporate hype or corruption and media bias or lies.
just as FDA is supposed to protect us citizens from the pharma industry but the government labs don’t see, and the people don’t boycott, the fact that there’s a huge conflict of interest, since those protection labs are funded by the pharma industry?!
just as the FDA approves all the food we take in, whose labs are sponsored not by tax $ but the industries they’re trying to protect us from. no other country is so immature & highly irresponsible. our diet industry is even worse than our junk food industry, abusing, getting us addicted and consume more food! but it’s FDA or gov-approved!
Consumer Reports should be boycotted and killed. period. but then again, so should the media. our news media is so biased, so full of shit. it’s an epidemic in our society but the real blame is us people who don’t mind it or it wouldn’t exist. we’ve become numbed down drones or droids, no longer human or intelligent.
we can choose to kill those dumbed services/product companies 1 by 1, though.
enough is enough.
Consumer Reports have gotten it so wrong for so long I have never made a purchase decision based on their “research reports”.
In the middle 70’s I worked in the photography business and 35mm SLRs were in their heyday.
Consumer Reports listed the Rollei SL35 as having a hot shoe. In fact, the camera didn’t even have an accessory shoe.
I was as fanatical about accuracy and precision then as I am now.
Consumer Reports can not be used as a useful authority for anyone to make informed purchase decisions and clearly can not be used as an endorsement for any product.
Consumer Reports, that mainstay of the progressive/liberal/well-informed who will vote for Husein.
That’s just plain dumb, with a capital D. Maybe you need to check out who buys/subscribes to CR.
Ignorant as well as dumb, you can’t even spell Hussain correctly.
Well, you could waste your money more thoroughly. Buy an iPad or iPhone wannabe!
I lost faith in CR when I purchased a used car based on their repair and reliability ratings. The car was disaster. It was recalled six times before I drove it to a junk yard, got $200 for it and then ran all the way to the nearest bus stop before they found out how bad it was. The year was 1976….and the car was a 1971 Lincoln Mercury Capri, “the sexy European”. The Capri had Ford, Lucas, and Bosch parts — the manuals would list all three because you would never know which parts were actually installed in your vehicle. Sound familiar? No integration, no total user experience considered…just like PC chassis from the other guys!
Hang on folks… the Press can make or break you and several companies have felt the wrath of a Press that take a dislke to you. They can create fiction and get a lot of mileage with it about any company and that includes Apple as no matter how much you love Apple, Apple is still doing most of it’s manufacturing in Communist China and yes they do try to circumvent paying US taxes hence Apple is an easy target if the Press do decide to take Apple down a few notches. Ask Toyota how a very minor issue was churned into the mot horrific recall in automotive history.
wow.
Apple “circumvent paying US taxes”
1. so what, is US gov or its tax system superior or invented by God, that it’s blasphemous not to?
2. tax loopholes make it possible, it’s legal, so don’t blame
3. funny how everyone attacks Apple for circumventing, when a. EVERY bloody competitor does it too incl. using child labor factories abroad and b. when it’s legal anyway
the point is mute
Dear Anonymous Coward Pat:
This is an ignorant statement:
Ask Toyota how a very minor issue was churned into the mot horrific recall in automotive history
Much of what else you stated is of interest, but i have to point out that Apple has NEVER been the tech press’ darling. Apple became the #1 company on the planet IN SPITE OF endless puking and gagging from the TechTard press. Apple is insistently DIFFERENT in a good way, no matter how much the TechPress insists upon mediocrity. It’s the CUSTOMERS who drive the machinery. Even the most die-hard of propagandists know this to be the case, much as they hate to admit it. [Get the hint, Bimbaugh?]
CR – these are the first two letters of the, very fitting word, ‘crap’.
That explains why there is no more CR app at the App store!
Consumer Reports is for toasters.
Many, many years ago, CR reviewed a Vespa motor scooter. It was clear they couldn’t handle that technology review either. They presented as fact blatant errors and falsehoods. I doubted at the time anyone had ridden one off their parking lot. I never forgot that (obviously).
I had a Vespa at the time and rode it from Los Angles to Rhode Island and, two years later, rode the same machine from Los Angeles to Virginia on I-40 most of the way. I knew something about Vespas. CR knew almost nothing. (Well, I think they spelled it right.)
It’s not simply that they don’t like Apple. They’re just blatantly incompetent. Still.