No. Your iPhone is not waterproof.
“Update to iOS 7 and become waterproof” claims the ad (see below) explaining that “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.”
C’mon, people. Use your noggin.
Good to remember how little folks know or care about computers, whatever their size.
Yet when that school IT support guy told us people are fundamentally ignorant about computing and technology, no matter how “plugged in” they seem, we wanted to tear him a new orifice.
It’s hard not to be that guy.
Don’t believe everything you read!
But it’s more funny and also much worse, that this not only applies to people believing this fake announcement, but also to journalists reporting about it.
The German news magazine Der Spiegel reported about it yesterday on its website and used quotes from Twitter users to prove that people really fell for this hoax.
But the first quote was this one:
https://twitter.com/wihe123/status/381415268016455680
The user mentioned he tossed his iPhone in the river!
How can any journalist really believe that? Even users of really waterproof phones don’t just toss them in a river – because there’s usually no way to retrieve it.
And or course – the same user later tweeted this:
https://twitter.com/wihe123/status/382623794432856064
He lied!
So now Der Spiegel, one of the most respected news magazines in Europe, which has also been among the magazines publishing the Edward Snowden interviews etc, is reporting something negative about Apple users, based on false data.
Du musst zwischen “SPON” und “Der Spiegel” unterscheiden.
Bei SPON arbeiten ehemalige Bild-Leute. “Der Spiegel” ist das Magazin wo sich gerade erfolgreich die Journalisten gegen das Einsetzen eines ehemaligen Bild-Mannes gewehrt haben.
—
Translation: the online-version of “Der Spiegel”, “Spiegel Online” (SPON) isn’t reputable but rather a tabloid with “journalists” who came from the leading German print tabloid magazine so this is normal for SPON and nothing special. They will use ANYTHING to get clicks (= ad impressions)
I know that the standards of journalism are much lower at Spiegel Online, but maybe that’s were the problem starts.
I’m too lazy to look up the other tweets that were quoted in that article (I’d guess those users posted stuff like “I like my new S4, Apple sux” in the past, showing that they never owned an iPhone^^) but the first one was sooooo obviously a fake.
Too bad that journalism means “What people on Twitter say about something” nowadays.
“Users who believed the advert reportedly upgraded their iPhones and dunked the devices to test the feature…”
OK, I wonder if this actually works. (plop)
Someone told me $100 bills don’t burn, so I grabbed seven c-notes and tried it out!