this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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• Steve Jobs faked full signal strength and swapped devices during the first iPhone demo due to fragile prototypes and bug-riddled software.

• Engineers got drunk during the presentation to calm their nerves.

• Despite the challenges, Jobs successfully completed the 90-minute demonstration without any noticeable issues.

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[–] [email protected] 182 points 11 months ago (27 children)

This is old news, and perfectly normal for stage work.

[–] [email protected] 178 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (20 children)

I know it's already normalized, but...

Maybe it's just me, but maybe we shouldn't be normalizing outright deceiving people when you're selling a product.

How is that not false advertising? Why should companies be allowed to magic up a fake example of their product actually working, and sell that to customers, when the real product doesn't actually work yet?

Just because it's "perfectly normal" doesn't make it okay to peddle propaganda and lie to people for profit.

It's like the Tesla "robot" that was clearly a person in a weird suit. Why are they allowed to advertise things that functionally don't exist? Why are they allowed to sell unfinished products with promise they may one day be finished (cough full self driving cough)?

I mean holy fuck it's like Beeper offering paid access to a service that allows Android and PC users to use iMessage, but Apple keeps breaking each new iteration every few days... Like there was no long-term plan to make sure that the service would work long-term before asking people to pay for it.

It's all fucking bonkers, man. We've just allowed snake-oil salesmen to rule the roost. The bigger the lie, the bigger the profit.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I agree, but what’s more, I am not trying to defend the behavior of Jobs here. But…to me anyway there is a material difference between say this, where the product did live up to the demo ultimately. In this case the demo was done on pre-release versions and so problems were expected and planned for.

Contrast this with say the cyber truck launch. Similar situation but 1. they failed to properly anticipate and plan for failure (broken window?) and 2. they made promises about wishes and desires, because the delivered product thus far does not live up to the promises.

The whole behavior is shitty to be sure, but I’d be ok going back to demos about planned yet achievable and deliverable features.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I think that's kind of rhe point of these sorts to demos to begin with.

The company says we're developing a product that, we are not ready to ship today, but will be this awesome. Give us some money and you can see how awesome it will be.

I generally assume that anything a company says about a product/service that is not shipping today is the best possible spin on the best version of what they'd like to sell. What you buy probably won't be what is shown as an early demo

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Just because you've adapted to the lies doesn't make them ok, nor the best version of what is possible

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