Have you ever received a traffic ticket you felt was underserved, and just wanted to serve the police officer a platter of snark? Apple doesn’t see why you can’t do that.
The following is one of the snottiest public tweakings of a court of law I have seen, not that I go looking for this sort of thing. In Cupertino, Apple calls it “Friday.”
The lawsuits Apple pursued against Samsung alleging the latter copied the iPad design for its Galaxy tablets has been reported elsewhere better than I will explain, but there is this: in the UK, Apple did not win at least part of its argument, and the judge ordered Apple to publicly apologize to alert the British public that the Samsung products are indeed not knockoffs of the iPad. Sounds unusual to me, the legal naïf, but there you go.
After losing on appeal, Apple did as ordered, including posting the apology on its own web site. If you read that link, you may note that apple was hardly contrite, choosing instead to mock Samsung, and by extension the British legal system, in the process.
Of course, Apple fanboys (and girls) likely saw this as a clever display of Apple’s omnipotence and superiority in design, as a PR professional my first reaction was: could any client get away with such hubris? The answer, of course, is no – unless you are Apple, where hubris is their PR.
With any other PR client, a letter like that would be the start – or escalation – of a crisis. For Apple, it’s “Thursday.” Such is life in the tech world.
Photo credit: passiveaggressivenotes on Flickr
Exactly, Doug! When I read that poor excuse for an apology, I just thought of the whiny little kid that’s been caught red-handed doing something they shouldn’t have, and looking to blame someone else.
Get over yourself, Apple, and just concentrate on making the products.