It will be interesting to see how this goes, personally I'm cheering for the guys pursueing the suit.
I don't think the guys bringing the suit are morons or don't understand the nature of advertising. As I understand things this is a matter of the product simply not doing what it's supposed to be capable of.
The problem is that like most suits they are taking a "shotgun" approach and throwing as many angles of attack into it as possible, which is a viable legal strategy. The idea being that some of them will fail, but will present points that Apple will have to cover, increasing the chances they will make mistakes, contridict themselves later, or leave openings. A lot of these accusatons are ones that should be fielded easily, and would not be valid reasons for a suit on their own, but that probably isn't the point. In there though are a few good points though like the issue of the iPhone not being able to process abstract requests. Basically, if you ask the same questions demonstrated clearly in the ad to the product you should get the same results, even if one could technically argue that they cut out the search time and loading time, if the iPhone is inherantly unable to interpet the question and reach the same data, then it's false advertising and the guys bringing the suit should by rights win... whether they will or not remains to be seen.
To be honest I am of the opinion that just because advertisers lie does not mean it's right for them to do so, or that they should get away with it. The very fact that it has gotten to the point where people are jaded to the point of dismissing ads as lies or misrepresentations is a problem, and shows that we really do need to come up with tighter standards for what companies are allowed to claim and how they go about it.
People laugh about "honesty in advertising" and makes jokes about a mediocre product being presented as mediocre, but really I don't see anything paticularly wrong with that, and while it seems unapprochable now, look at the situation with medications being advertised on TV and the much mocked sequence where they list all the potential side effects as part of the ad due to the requirements. Since the ad industry and sponsoring companies won't police themselves it might get to the point where the goverment needs to put similar requirements on ALL forms of advertising. A few good lawsuits and some precedents established in cases like this one with the iPhone and we could very well see a better world as far as ads go, all it takes is one billion dollar lawsuit to go through and the business world takes notice, and if enogh judges makes rulings your going to see laws requiring specific things.... such as requiring companies to do things like require the exact specs of their product as part of advertising and not use "trade secrets" as a defense. I think you'd be surprised how many people would actually understand information on how fast an iphone processes data for example. In an ad where they shorten things for time constraints to cut out the loading, there should be a mention of how fast the system would actually process a request, much like how a drug
company discloses side effects.
