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Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?

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Re: Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?

#61
post #46

[This PDF]( http://media.wix.com/ugd/bbfb8a_2ea66bffc09b40d099237bb83813... ) appears to provide information about their methodology -- noting it was linked from [this article]( https://www.macrumors.com/2015/07/20/apple-watch-tops-iphone... ). In short, it looks like potential-respondents first had to apply (e.g., in response to [this Facebook post]( https://www.facebook.com/Wristly.co/posts/apple-watch-owner-... ))…

Apple is NPD manifested as a corporation. Everything they do is self-gratifying, so of course also this. "All-new"... Pffft.

NPD?

Re: Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?

#62
post #7

They are using Google reviews as proxy for customer satisfaction. I really can't take rest of the article seriously after that, knowing anyone can leave a review at Google and there's no guarantee they own the phone. Sure, 99% satisfaction rate is pretty much impossible, but if all Apple asked was "are you satisfied with iPhone 14" with "yes" & "not at all" options and only surveyed iPhone 14 owners, I can easily see…

I'm quoted in the post. We're using Google reviews as one of several imperfect comparison points to Apple's 99% claim. You're absolutely right about a key downside to Google reviews. The limited information 451 provides on their survey methodology shows that they aren't asking about satisfaction as a yes-or-no style question.

If you want to go really deep on online review manipulation, I'm co-author of this research paper on ratings inflation in online marketplaces: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mksc.2022.135.... If you get in touch, I can send you more papers on fake reviews that I like.

Re: Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?

#63
post #46

[This PDF]( http://media.wix.com/ugd/bbfb8a_2ea66bffc09b40d099237bb83813... ) appears to provide information about their methodology -- noting it was linked from [this article]( https://www.macrumors.com/2015/07/20/apple-watch-tops-iphone... ). In short, it looks like potential-respondents first had to apply (e.g., in response to [this Facebook post]( https://www.facebook.com/Wristly.co/posts/apple-watch-owner-... ))…

Hey - I'm the post author. Thank you sharing these details on the Watch survey.

Re: Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?

#66
post #46

[This PDF]( http://media.wix.com/ugd/bbfb8a_2ea66bffc09b40d099237bb83813... ) appears to provide information about their methodology -- noting it was linked from [this article]( https://www.macrumors.com/2015/07/20/apple-watch-tops-iphone... ). In short, it looks like potential-respondents first had to apply (e.g., in response to [this Facebook post]( https://www.facebook.com/Wristly.co/posts/apple-watch-owner-... ))…

Hey - I'm the post author. Thank you sharing these details on the Watch survey.

> Hey - I'm the post author. Thank you sharing these details on the Watch survey. I wonder if 451 Research is doing something similar with their iPhone survey.

Isn't that something you should've researched before writing the post? Methodology seems like an important factor here.

Re: Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?

#67
post #7

They are using Google reviews as proxy for customer satisfaction. I really can't take rest of the article seriously after that, knowing anyone can leave a review at Google and there's no guarantee they own the phone. Sure, 99% satisfaction rate is pretty much impossible, but if all Apple asked was "are you satisfied with iPhone 14" with "yes" & "not at all" options and only surveyed iPhone 14 owners, I can easily see…

Do you think that (even if that was the survey) it is an honest survey? Do you not care about the richest company in the world being so blatantly dishonest?

Re: Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?

#68
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Later on they said they use Mailtrack [0]. I looked at their FAQ and they just use a tracking pixel. I don't really think that mail clients in a coorporate environment (i.e. Apple) download external images automatically. Mailtrack seems to be confident, that only 5-10% of recipients aren't "trackable" [1], but I haven't seen a mail client that by default downloads external media in a while. [0] https://mailtrack.io […

See my peer comment: Apple Mail really does download external images automatically, on a server to hide your IP address. It then rewrites those emails to reference the cached images from the server. Every tracker pixel sent to a mail account with this feature will be counted as read, whether or not the user opens it.

Gmail does that too, no? I remember an HN discussion on this many years ago.

Here, I found a corroborating link from 2013: https://www.litmus.com/blog/gmail-adds-image-caching-what-yo...

Re: Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?

#69
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am totally out of the loop when it comes to these things. My client always opens in plain text or html render with JS and external content disabled. I believe this is true for most clients. On the other hand security scanners, browsers engines and other Middleware stuff can trigger such a counter without any user interaction if I am not mistaken.

The pixel is just an image, so unless you disable email images loading by default, the server will still count you. Pre-caching will sometimes mess with the counters though, making the counts lower than the actual.

I understand. The last 3 email clients I used do not load images by default (that what's included in external sources [previous comment]).

Re: Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey - I'm the post author. Thank you sharing these details on the Watch survey.

> Hey - I'm the post author. Thank you sharing these details on the Watch survey. I wonder if 451 Research is doing something similar with their iPhone survey. Isn't that something you should've researched before writing the post? Methodology seems like an important factor here.

I agree. Apple is making an extraordinary claim and we think they should share their methodology.
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