Under the highly-questionable headline, “iOS 7: users destroy iPhones after fake waterproof advert,” Ben Riley-Smith reports for The Telegraph, “A spoof advert suggesting Apple’s new iOS 7 operating system made handsets waterproof appears to have fooled some users into destroying their iPhone
MacDailyNews Take: “Appears.” Not necessarily actually happened.
“The fake commercial appeared almost identical to Apple’s real poster advertising with images of the iPhone on a white background accompanied by neat text.
‘Update to iOS 7 and become waterproof,’ the poster read,” Riley-Smith reports. “‘In an emergency, a smart-switch will shut off the phone’s power supply and corresponding components to prevent any damage to your iPhone’s delicate circuitry,’ it explained.”
MacDailyNews Notee: As an aside, Apple would never use the word “delicate” to describe “iPhone’s circuitry.”
“After being shared on social media sites by users encouraging people to try the new feature soon angry complaints appeared from those fooled by the joke,” Riley-Smith reports. “‘Whoever said ios7 was waterproof **** you,’ wrote one user on Twitter. ‘Wtf iOS7 isn’t waterproof!! Now my phone’s at the bottom of the river,’ another said.”
MacDailyNews Take: Again, “appeared.”
Those tweets could easily be – and probably better – interpreted as humorous replies from people who get the joke. Obviously, even if you believed the ridiculous spoof ad, throwing your iPhone into a river for it to settle on the bottom as a test of the spoofed feature would introduce further issues beyond simply dunking it into a glass of water.
Riley-Smith reports, “The prank is understood to have been started by controversial forum 4Chan which has a chequered history of hosting faked material.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If concocting “news” from random tweets is the best you can do, perhaps you should try another line of work.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]