[lleger]

For the life of me I can't figure out why this is a big deal. Every marketing department uses doctored images in their promotions. It's a fact of consumerism. But it doesn't matter — really. That single image, no matter how embellished, didn't sell any iPads. The iPad sold itself.

[hga]

It's a doctored image about ... image quality. That goes a bit deeper.

[tdmackey]

It's not like they take a camera and snap a few pictures of it playing Star Trek anyway, every one of the pictures showing the ipad with some image on the screen is 'digitally altered' or any image on any screen in actual marketing data whether its from apple or htc or dell anyone else. This is because taking a picture of the actual screen actually doing something doesn't turn out very good when trying to emphasis the device. Apple wasn't the first to do this and they certainly won't be the last.

[lleger]

A doctored image about any aspect is still a doctored image — the same principles apply.

But still: it doesn't matter. Consumers aren't buying products based upon a photo. With the iPad, they've either already decided they want one or went into the store and saw it for themselves and then decided. This one picture really doesn't matter.

Why is Apple the only company being called out? If anyone — besides Apple-haters — really cared about this, image doctoring wouldn't be such a pervasive technique used in all forms of marketing. Other companies would be the focus, too — Apple isn't alone here.

This has nothing to do with image doctoring and everything to do with Apple.

[blueben]

Or, perhaps, it's about a culture where little lies and cheats like this are accepted as "no big deal".