“What a week for Apple. The Cupertino tech giant was clobbered with PR-hit after PR-hit, fueled by a viral YouTube video that appears to show the physical bending of an iPhone 6 Plus,” Jennifer Booton and Barbara Kollmeyer report for MarektWatch. “Social media went nuts. Twitter and YouTube users, people on Facebook and the mainstream media, all cried foul. A candy bar company even used ‘bendgate’ to its marketing advantage. But in retrospect, it seems the critics might have gotten a little too bent out of shape.”
MacDailyNews Take: Gee, ya think? No retrospect required.
“‘Let’s get real!’ Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Brian White said Friday in a note to clients, where he reiterated his buy rating on the stock and a price target of $123,” Booton and Kollmeyer report. “‘We believe the concern around an average person bending an iPhone 6 Plus with typical everyday use is irrational,’ he said. In his opinion, the last few days have been nothing but a ‘media blitz.’ ‘After taking both new iPhones for a spin at Apple’s Special Event, and again this week in Hong Kong, concerns with bending the iPhones never crossed our mind as both felt very durable,’ White said.”
“If anything, this signals a buying opportunity, Cantor Fitzgerald told clients on Friday, particularly as Apple ramps up production of the phones,” Booton and Kollmeyer report. “Take a look at this tweet from BTIG Research analyst Walter Piecyk:”
Just stopped in an AT&T store to try and bend a 6+. You have to be kidding me. That is not bendable. $AAPL
— Walter Piecyk (@WaltLightShed) September 26, 2014
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “David E.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Apple: Only nine customers have complained about bent iPhone 6 Plus units – September 25, 2014
If ‘bending’ is all Apple’s iPhone 6 Plus rivals have left, they’re roadkill – September 24, 2014
Apple posts new how-to guide: Switching from Android phone to iPhone – September 16, 2014
iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus tested at Disneyland: ‘So badass’ – September 17, 2014
Re/code reviews Apple’s 64-bit iPhone 6 Plus: ‘A statement phone,’ not a ‘plastic toy’ – September 17, 2014
Megapixels mean nothing: Apple iPhone 6 trounces Samsung Galaxy S5 in camera shootout – September 17, 2014
The Telegraph reviews Apple’s 64-bit iPhone 6 Plus: ‘It’s peerless’ – September 17, 2014
TechCrunch reviews Apple’s 64-bit iPhone 6: ‘The best smartphone available’ – September 17, 2014
USA Today’s Baig reviews Apple’s 64-bit iPhone 6/Plus: ‘Smartphone stars’ – September 17, 2014
Walt Mossberg reviews Apple’s 64-bit iPhone 6: ‘The best smartphone on the market’ – September 16, 2014
The Wall Street Journal reviews Apple’s 64-bit iPhone 6: ‘The best smartphone you can buy’ – September 16, 2014
Macworld reviews 64-bit iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus: Bigger is better (in the right hands) – September 16, 2014
And Samsung’s trigger-happy & disingenuous PR dept. is left standing mouth agape on the boomerang bag – of flaming dog poop.
Now that this is looking more and more like a fake video, are we seeing Samsung’s infamous dirty tricks department at work here? There are billions at stake, and iPhone 6 can only hugely accelerate the problems for Samsung’s high end begun by the 5S.
Oh god, I don’t know what to do now. I always do the exact opposite of what the analysts say… I’m not used to them actually talking sense…
Hey, I just found out that if you shoot an iPhone 6 Plus with a gun . . . time goes backwards!
I know … This whole “bend-gate” thing was actually planned by Apple themselves. They knew that there would be some cases of bending phones (the don’t deny it can happen – only that its very rare) … so they made sure a few bloggers would post iffy videos showing bent phones which would give them a chance to show everyone their testing facilities so they could impress everyone with how thoroughly tested the iPhone 6 & 6+ are … and at the same time get everyone to be more careful with their phones. Genius!
I wanted to bend the iPhone 6 plus at Costco today, but afraid of the sale man would kick my ass. 🙂
Anyone wanting to bend an iPhone x is seriously bent. 😌
What idiot would buy an $800 phone and then with his giant hands, bend it just to post on GooTube? Is it any wonder who owns You Tube? Why didn’t he buy SAMEsung, LG and HTC phones if he wanted to show his point? This is all propaganda that looks to me to be staged and is clearly an attack at Apple. I wish Apple would just take their entire chip production to TSC and leave their knock off copy cats without the billions in chip orders.
These videos showing iPhones &etc. being destroyed go beyond this new ‘bend-gate’ and predate it. They are very popular amongst certain groups, and generate income. But they are fundamentally tech pornography, snuff films for consumption by extremists along the Luddism spectrum and Android cultists. Of course, information-seekers and the curious also take a look, but they tend not to cook popcorn first and do repeated viewings. And I admit my own fascination with the ordnance deployed in some of them. (Military family and all that.)
Like it or not, www is the wild west of the web, where anything goes in Tombstone and Dodge City, and where the dark impulses of the human psyche can be exploited and magnified as never before. In owning YouTube, Google’s clawed hand is at the switch, intoning ‘free speech’ until a moral outcry forces them to restrict a video; meanwhile, quietly doctoring the algorithmic rankings to promote more hits for any that advance their own agenda—in this case, tweaking Apple’s nose.
Gallagher’s been doing it to fresh produce for ages.