But the truth is, pretty much every company does this.. except Apple.
Any evidence or even subjective reasoning why I'd believe Apple is any different from any other company? In the absence of evidence I wouldn't accuse Apple of anything but only a fool would give Apple a pass on something that "every company [supposedly] does".
Lots of bashing and irresponsible reporting while bending the truth on Apple. Coincidence
Good point; Apple never trashes the competition, that's above them.
Apple simply does not engage in anything even remotely resembling astroturfing. The simplest reason is that they don't need to, but the more accurate reason is that it's not in the company culture to do things like that.
As a semi-related example, I'm sure you're familiar with product placement in TV shows and movies. Most product placement is done because the company paid for it to be there (for example, all of the Windows 8 stuff I've seen in Arrow I'm certain is paid product placement). However, despite the fact that Apple products are used frequently in TV shows and movies, Apple does not pay for product placement; all the Apple product placement you see was free.
In any case, I personally don't think Apple is the only company that doesn't engage in astroturfing. I'm sure there are many large companies out there that don't do it.
Apple has a team dedicated to making sure their products are easy to access and deploy in a movie/TV, and a preferred choice. They don't pay cash, but they absolutely push their products into movies/TV.
No, they "lose" phones in bars though (twice) and do other very sneaky things. Apple is super sneaky. They also do things like making gimped software and drivers for other platforms part of their business plan. I consider this worse than astroturfing.
What are you talking about? Trust me, when a prototype device gets stolen in a bar, that's absolutely not guerrilla marketing. That was serious business, and I'm certain the only reason the engineer didn't get fired is because it would have been bad PR. Apple takes its prototype hardware extremely seriously.
And I really have no idea what you mean with the "gimped software and drivers for other platforms" claim.
So how many happy Samsung customers does that translate to, when the rest of their phones are not doing so well and GS3/GN2 are hardly as numerous as any model of iPhone?
Any evidence or even subjective reasoning why I'd believe Apple is any different from any other company? In the absence of evidence I wouldn't accuse Apple of anything but only a fool would give Apple a pass on something that "every company [supposedly] does".
Except in this case I don't think this claim was true at all.
Any evidence or even subjective reasoning why I'd believe Apple is any different from any other company? In the absence of evidence I wouldn't accuse Apple of anything but only a fool would give Apple a pass on something that "every company [supposedly] does".
Lots of bashing and irresponsible reporting while bending the truth on Apple. Coincidence
Good point; Apple never trashes the competition, that's above them.