First things first, read this excerpt from Mark Gurman’s 9to5mac article on Apple Senior VP of Retail Angela Ahrendts’ pitch, suggesting Apple Watch as a back to school gift:
Besides talking about improvements to business sales, showing off the Apple Watch in store, and stating that a “global solution is coming shortly” for promoting Apple Music in stores, Ahrendts used her own personal experience with her children to introduce a new Apple Watch sales tactic. Ahrendts told employees that the Apple Watch is “the greatest back to school item this year” as it can be used in the classroom without a teacher seeing, unlike with a larger iPhone. “I don’t think the teachers have caught on to the Watch yet,” Ahrendts said, adding that retail staff should tell students to “jump on it before the teachers do.”
Now switch gears to Andy Faust, writing for WatchAware, in response to this quote:
Classy.
A company that for the last 20 years or so has made education one of its primary focuses (via Mac discounts for schools, August student promos, iBooks textbooks, and other longstanding measures) is now undermining all those inroads by cynically trying to sell a niche product to pupils as a classroom distraction. Even more unfortunately, taken in the above context (which, frankly, is the only context to take it in), Ahrendts seems to be openly advocating for far worse than that.
Indeed, Apple’s senior VP of retail and online stores appears to be specifically pushing Apple Watch as a convenient way for students to cut corners. While the most damning line from the block above is a summary of an unpublished internal video to sales employees, Gurman — who apparently watched the thing — sums up the intent well enough. Plus, Ahrendt’s actual quotes completely support the notion. This lady is practically saying, “Hey kids, you can use Apple Watch to ignore your teacher and cheat on tests!”
Hard to disagree with Faust’s point. It sure seems like Ahrendts is pitching the Apple Watch as a cheating tool. This is not what I’d expect from Apple or from Ahrendts.
UPDATE: Commenters and Twitter mostly seem convinced that Ahrendts did no wrong here, that any suggestion that Ahrendts had cheating in mind was all a twisted interpretation. That being said, Gurman’s article contained two quotes:
- “I don’t think the teachers have caught on to the Watch yet,”
AND
- “jump on it before the teachers do.”
If these quotes are accurate, they certainly convey a sense of pulling one over on the teacher. This is not the sort of message I’d expect from Apple.
As to comments that suggest that the Apple Watch can’t be used for cheating, consider this: At the very least, you can send yourself an email or text with a hard to remember formula, or some critical history dates, ready for recall as needed.
Only Angela Ahrendts can say what she meant by her remarks. All else is individual interpretation, myself included.
Prepare for damage control. Another head of the Apple store canned quickly? Probably not. But she’s going to be eating crow soon enough.
I think she was talking about cheating, but about the constant electronic chatting between students which is a far bigger problem. Either way, it was a stupid comment.
They hired a person from the fashion industry… an industry that focuses on using material, surface “things” to make you feel better inside. What were they expecting… the second coming of Scott Forstall?
Massive fucking eye roll.
Gurman paraphrases a (what is probably a joke) comment from a video he (maybe) saw, takes it out of context and twists his panties. Faust paraphrases Gurman’s paraphrase, removes it further from context and faints from a bad case of the vapors. Faust mentions that he owns a couple of private schools… and is therefore almost certainly a douche (and I know this to be true because I heard someone who saw a video that maybe describes him as a douche.) Since I, like Dave and Faust, haven’t seen the video in question, and further, absent context, don’t know if Ahrendts was talking about illicit texting rather than… horrors!… looking up answers, I’ll reserve my fainting spell.
Get a grip, Dave.
Have any of the commentators actually used an Apple Watch? How are you going to cheat? There’s no keyboard to tap, so you need Siri to dictate. And you can’t take photos cos there’s no camera. You could use the Photos app to look at photos someone else has taken presumably of the paper, but that would be noticed. You could use Digital Touch to signal answers but that would take too long.
If I had to guess (which is all anyone can do), she may have meant kids being kids– exchanging notes, heartbeats and emoji during class.
Um, good point. A lot of times I would love to start a text on my watch, but I’m in too public a place to speak it.
Apple’s new public relations regime seems a bit sloppy. This is really uncharacteristic from a company that use to totally control the message
Just moving on to the next Gate.. Cheatgate. I think a lot of longtime Apple writers suffer from a weird mashup of PTSD and Stockholm Syndrome. I hope they get the help they need.
You have to intentionally misrepresent what she said in order for her quote to be read as advocating cheating. But controversy drives clicks, even if it’s completely manufactured from thin air.
This is what I read, too. The Apple Watch is a way to check incoming messages without using your phone. Without an ability to send arbitrary messages easily and without voice control, there’s really no way the Apple Watch is in any way useful for cheating. Even if you’re imagining someone in there with the test, they still need to send the answers to the others.
I suppose one could take photos of notes covering the material of an exam, a la writing answers on the inside of your forearm, but this would be futile due to the size of the screen and how obvious one would be doing so. I don’t think she was suggesting cheating. Rather that there is a bias against “smart” devices and that the Apple Watch is new enough still to be under the radar of that bias.
I can’t help but think that anyone who tries to cheat this way will do very, very poorly on their test.
Faust is jumping to conclusion and self-righteously refuting any conclusion but the one he’s drawing. Many normal humans, not pre-disposed to finding non-existent issues, would conclude that this is about peer-to-peer communications.
There’s nothing here to control. Just someone eager to find a problem misinterpreting a misinterpreted quote.
Besides what others have picked up on (kids can have a way to send secret messages that teachers don’t know about yet), Ahrendts is also likely just tying in to that age old thing: hey kids, check this out and get it before the old people make it un-cool. (They still say cool these days, right? 🙂 )
Read articles in order. Faust is twisting things very, very badly according to his own agenda. I’m a bit surprised you got sucked into that interpretation. While there’s a story here, it’s what a moron Faust is.
Is there any context to the 9to5Mac story?
Could Angela just have been joking and the hacks at 9to5 took it out of context to make it look like something it wasn’t?
It also says nothing about cheating… sounds more like a method of communicating without the teacher seeing … passing notes in the classroom, etc.
“Hard to disagree with Faust’s point”
Very surprised by this line. If you bother to look at all his other “posts,” it would be very easy to dismiss and disagree with anything he has to say about Apple. There’s a hilarious one about Apple killing animals to make the leather straps.
I could easily use Sketch to cheat on multiple choice tests. For example, my friend sketches “8” to me and I respond “C”.
Of course, I would never do that. Others might, but not me. No siree Bob.
Honestly I think she had a momentary lapse of judgement and was making a silly joke, nothing evil. Unfortunately she is about to discover that when you work in a senior position at Apple then you have to watch every single word you say since the press and the internet will pounce.
Satya Nadella learned the same thing when he became CEO at Microsoft.
As stated above Sketch + multiple choice makes it pretty trivial.
Welcome to the big leagues.
It’s important to remember A) Angela is British, B) she’s female C) the people ticked off at her are male and American.
Different cultures have different views on cheating. In the Ukraine for example it’s completely normal for everyone to cheat and if you didn’t even the teacher would think you’re weird. (Or so the people from the Ukraine that I know say.)
I think she’s probably more referring to passing notes and not having your teacher take away your watch, when they would have taken away your phone. My guess is that she was implying the more relational “It allows us to be out of Teacher’s control together” which is quite common among young girls, rather than the, “let’s compensate for our stupidity!” which is a more boy thing to do.
I’ll give you that, but you’re both no longer being subtle at this point. I think that’s just as catchable as the phone at that point. But maybe I’m wrong.
Update seems even worse. You acknowledge what people are offended at isn’t actually there, but continue to be offended.
Does it not seem out of character to encourage cheating? Just in the last 4 years Apple has made it’s ethics and morality very clear. Forgetting this, how many times has any executive at Apple been on the record saying something just plain dumb.
I believe Ahrendts’ comment had more to do with in class communication, a replacement for passing notes. I imagine she believes, as many heavily involved in education do, that it is ludicrous to prevent children from communicating with one another in a classroom environment and that Apple Watch is (currently) a way around the strict rules regarding it.
That’s what I would have assumed.
Dave, please refrain from stoking the internet outrage echo chamber.
Every now and again I come back to the Loop, and then I read a Dave Mark article and remember why I stopped reading this site. And I’ve heard Jim praise Dave on podcasts, so I should know nothing will change…
Agreed, it’s clearly her alluding to the 21st-century version of passing notes under teacher’s nose, nothing more nefarious than that.
Oh, Good Lord, Dave. Even your “Update” with Angela’s quotes don’t prove anything. They point back to covert messaging. Don’t you remember being in high school? Apple’s always been the rebel. Why is this out of character for them? You’re starting to sound like a “Get off my lawn” caricature!
No she won’t.
What are you promoting here? People should stick to politically correct, buzzwordy and sterile marketing babble or shut up? Don’t agree.
Even ignoring the tongue-in-cheek comment being blown miles out of proportion, everything else here is wrong as well. Pupils have been exchanging paper notes and other means of assistance / communication forever. Those who do not participate in that are either dead, or up and coming sociopaths. Better students helping others is an important mechanism in socialization, nothing at all wrong with it. If you want robots, stop having sex and try engineering.
hes ok. i actually read that one. you realize he was mocking some charity or bleeding heart lib group for calling out a custom leather company for making ostrich and aligator straps for apple watch right? watchaware dot com/post/14630/animals-being-cut-up-to-make-apple-watch-straps
yes, in the same way as NOTE WRITING is pulling one over the teacher. says nothing about cheating. phones are often banned as distracting comm devices, and that’s the only way I interpreted her comment. cheating was never mentioned.
indeed, grip is needed. I swear the hand waiving from some of this blog’s contributors is worse than on the troll sites.
sketching each question number during a test would be obvious.
sad that this site does it now, of all places.
Very good observation. I can’t prove it, but I am confident that e.g. Phil Schiller saying the same things would have not caused the same reactions. Even if you are a C-level executive, as a female you must talk like soccer mum or shut up. Sad.
I find it strange Jim lets his blog be used for that.
How much can be stored and replayed on a watch, for crying out loud? I am shocked by the lack of thinking behind this. It smells like people are looking for reasons for AA to mess up.
Let’s not forget that Faust is usually pretty negative on Watch. Go to watchaware and you can usually tell which articles were written by Faust as they’re negative. Since I haven’t seen Ahrendts video I can’t criticize it.
This was not a message meant for public consumption. The only thing Apple PR needs to do is find the leaker(s) and fire their asses.
And Faust is a known to be quite negative on Watch. Notice too that watchaware doesn’t allow for comments so they can post whatever they want without any blowback.
Angela Ahrendts is not British. She was born in the US, grew up in the Midwest.
You wouldn’t need to do it for every question and it’s quite trivial to make it look like you’re writing with your pencil when you’re actually using your finger on your watch. Especially if you sit near the back.
pencil on paper on desk != finger on wrist. I don’t think that would be trivial or successful. and it still doesn’t make that what she was suggesting.
Actually, I think she’s from Ohio.
While I think Ahrendts comments are out of step with Apple’s education objectives and strikes me as seriously tone deaf, I honestly didn’t read it as a call to “cheat” academically. I think she was referring to being able to text/IM/email/social network from the watch without the teachers knowing it. Still troubling comments. Coming from a family of educators I know how hard they work to keep kids engaged and that modern electronics is making this harder and harder for them. I just saw a great photo of a teacher that has a board with pockets on it at the front of the clase and students have to place there phones it to be counted and present. Brilliant.
Not entirely.
I’m positive on Apple Watch’s potential (particularly as a health monitoring device) and industrial hardware design, but I’m negative on its current software state. I think it’s a pretty bland and useless device with its initial (and IMO misguided) framework. watchOS 2 should help quite a bit in that regard, although the contextual navigation and “steps per task” may not change for some time.
As for WatchAware not allowing comments, we aren’t worried about blowback. We were simply trying something new: using Twitter as the comment platform. But I’ve been pushing for a return to Disqus for some time, and I’m fairly confident that the powers that be will implement it eventually. We’ve found that, while Twitter is great for comments, it’s not very useful for comment discussions, and a native comment platform would work quite well in tandem with what we already offer.
At the end of the day, all I can assure is that I never give anything but my own true and honest opinions in my posts. No parroting, no false outrage, no trolling, no stoking meritless rumors, etc. I owe nothing to nor have any relationship with anyone in the industry, and I have no agenda or allegiance to anyone but my employers and coworkers. They give me the freedom to write only what I want to write about (with a few exceptions re: NSFW content). I have no problem being viewed as a contrarian so long as readers understand that I do not play Devil’s Advocate and that my (often minority) opinions are genuinely mine.
You may not agree with anything I ever have to say, but I agree with it, and I’m happy to share my thoughts with anyone and everyone willing to read them or, in the case of the podcast, listen to them.
Nailed it. this isn’t about tests, It’s about being able to sneak screen time while in class.
Even so, I’ve come to the conclusion that Ahrendts is not the ideal mouthpiece for Apple. She’s arguably tone-deaf to the way Apple – as a company – communicates publicly. That’s to say, she’s not hip to the way Apple does not communicate.
“You may not agree with anything I ever have to say, but I agree with it…”
Self-serving, solipsistic and hilarious. With just a tad more snobbery, you could be a Linux enthusiast.
Defending my position is, I suppose, inherently self-serving. I fail to see why that is a flaw or a negative by default. Long-winded, I cop to. Solipsism is not compelling and my post isn’t indicative of any such belief. There’s nothing here that conveys the idea that I’m the only person in existence and that all my critics are manifestations of my own mind. I like to think I’d give myself more friends if that were the case. As for your sense of humor, I can’t debate that. I dont see the snobbery, though. I’d appreciate some examples if you’re willing to help.
Add “dissociative” to the list.
:'(
It would have from me.