Snake Oil, Eh?

Jack Schofield raises a stink in The Guardian because the chart Steve Jobs used in his Macworld keynote to depict current U.S. smartphone market share was in pseudo-3D perspective, which made Apple’s 19.5 percent slice look bigger than the 21.2 percent slice for “Other”:

Apple boss Steve Jobs is the king of snakeoil salesmen, and his Macworld Expo keynote included a great example of manipulation.

It’s a shame Jobs seems to be a fan of pseudo-3D anti-Tufteian chartjunk, but this is pretty weak sauce. What’s next? A complaint that the MacBook Air doesn’t look quite as cool in real life as it does in Apple’s promotional photographs?

Schofield also complains:

Another great piece of deception is deciding to illustrate market share by brand. Anybody who wanted an honest appraisal of the market would look at it by operating system, because there are several operating sytems used by many different smartphone suppliers.

Exactly as with its computer business, Apple, unlike Microsoft, is not in the business of licensing an operating system. Apple is in the business of selling phones.

★ Thursday, 7 February 2008