Two of the biggest tech YouTubers are lying to you. Or at the very least, they’re spending more money on Mr. Beast style editing tactics and putting AI slop in their video than they are on fact checkers and script writers because today I woke up and chose violence. Actually, I woke up and saw a video on my timeline with a rather inflammatory title. How tech companies lie to you. Accompanied by a scandalous thumbnail of two of the biggest names in tech, Mr. Who’s the Boss and MKBHD, standing on stage with an almost genius level of subliminal messaging with the text, Apple lies.
Now, as someone that prominently covers Apple, I was interested to find out just how Apple lies to me. I mean, I buy a lot of Apple products, so maybe they lied to me when they sold me the Vision Pro and said I wouldn’t look like a total dork wearing it in public. Or maybe they lied to me when they sold me the $200 iPhone sock and told me that it was going to be the fashion accessory of the year. Well, we know those statements aren’t lies, right? Like Apple wouldn’t lie to me about that, right, guys? Right? They wouldn’t lie to me that a orange iPhone looks cool and not tacky, right?
But seriously, this video that they put out is pitched with multiple different thumbnails and titles that kind of express the intent or are leading you to believe that tech companies and kind of more directly Apple is lying to their customers. And I think that deserves some level of scrutiny in itself. So, I looked at the biggest claims in this video surrounding Apple’s deceptive marketing practices and found those claims to be the actual deception.
Now, before we get into this video, I just want to say that I am not mad at, I do not hate, nor do I express ill will towards Mr. Who’s the Boss or MKBHD. Think of this video more as like a spirited debate. I don’t have an issue with the people. I have an issue with the content of the video because both of these creators make good videos and they are capable of making good videos. So, let’s go ahead and debate some of those claims. Tech companies have, I think, reached peak levels of deception.
Actually, hold on. I forgot he had a British accent. I can’t debate a guy with a British accent. They sound so damn smart. Everything they say sounds like it’s from a different realm of intellect. It sounds like everything they say like they’re holding up a teacup with their pinkies up. Darn. If only there was something more powerful and more intellectual than the British accent that I could use at my disposal to seem more convincing in my argument. Wait a minute. I have just the solution.

A few moments later.
Ah, yes. glasses, a sport coat, and a tie. The only thing more intellectual than a British accent. Okay, let’s do this.

Claim Number One: Comparing New Products to Old Ones

Claim number one. What’s with companies now who launch a new product, but then only compare it to another product that came out like 3 plus years ago. Apple is the worst for this. Like, take the latest MacBook Pros. So, we go to the performance section, and the headline number is, oh, would you look at that? up to eight times faster AI performance. So, they’ve got the up two in there. They’ve got the specific use case all to make sure that they have this super impressive quotable eight times number. But then also, it’s eight times faster than the M1 family.
First of all, nothing in what Apple is doing here is lying to you. Nor is it even remotely deceptive. In plain English, Apple tells you in big bold letters that they are comparing the M5 chip to the M1 chip. The only reason it looks deceptive in this video is because it’s edited that way. There is a sensor bar over the text to make it look like Apple put it there. It makes it look very salacious, but really, if you look at Apple’s website, this part of the text is the biggest part of the text. Like, it’s literally bolded on the page. in an increased font size. Apple is not hiding that in this comparison against the M1.

And then to make matters worse, there’s also this claim. Do I upgrade to the M5 or do I instead buy the last gen M4 and save a bunch of money? How much difference is there between those two choices? I don’t know. Apple won’t tell me.
H really? Apple won’t tell you, huh? Well, I spent more than two minutes on this web page and I scrolled down and I saw a little thing that says uh to compare the M5 chip and I clicked on that and right there in front of me was a comparison. You could see the full section of the M5 chip comparing it not only against the M1 but right against the previous generation M4 chip and they compare it through multiple use cases and multiple workflows.

The M4 vs. M5 Dilemma

My decision is not do I upgrade. It’s actually do I upgrade to the M5 or do I instead buy the last gen M4 and save a bunch of money.
Okay, this is a completely madeup scenario. Most users are not going to Apple’s website to try and decide between buying an old M4 or a new M5 MacBook. Actually, it’s kind of a falsehood because you can’t go to Apple’s website and buy an old M4 model, at least brand new. Apple has discontinued them. The only thing you can buy from Apple’s website is a brand new M5 model.

Now, like I said, you could go hunt down a refurbished M4 model or maybe even go to a third-p partyy site and try and save money buying an older laptop that way, but those products aren’t always going to be in stock. So, someone going to Apple’s website looking to buy a new laptop, well, they really only have one option, and that is any of the M5 laptops. All this is is a thinly veiled tactic to help take what is in most instances like 5 to 10% of real world improvement.
I find this claim to be one of the most misleading in the video because this is actually a stat that you can Google search or something you can test yourself. You didn’t have to make up this arbitrary 5 to 10% number. It’s not based in reality. In reality, with the M series chips, CPU performance has increased about 20% every year. GPU performance even higher. I mean, if we’re looking at the M5 just compared to last year’s M4 chip, and he specifically calls out the AI performance boost like it’s not based in reality. But the AI performance increase is no joke.

The Unified Memory Argument

Speaking of making claims with nothing to back them up on, let’s listen to this one on unified memory. But Apple now refers to their RAM almost exclusively as unified memory. Can you see how this whole concept of unified memory still helps Apple? It makes something as simple as RAM feel like some sort of gray area, which means they can give you a lot less of it and they can charge you more to upgrade it than any other company.
This one is just backed up by nothing. Writing off the term unified memory as nothing but a marketing term is so backwards from a technological understanding of how things work. I’m really starting to doubt that British accent. Unified memory is one of the key reasons why Apple silicon feels so damn fast.

In a traditional setup where RAM and VRAM is separated, it creates extra steps where the CPU has to load data onto the RAM and then that data has to get copied over to the GPU and then the GPU stores that maybe in the virtual RAM. Then the GPU has to process it and then on top of that sometimes it has to send that information back to the RAM. Each of those steps creates latency between the system and each part of that system could have bandwidth limits on how fast it can send that data.

How does a nuclear reactor work?
What? Hardly a simple answer.
Of course, we’re too stupid to understand.
Separate modules that communicate with each other through a motherboard. Think of it like different rooms in a house that are all spread out. If you need something from the kitchen, but you’re in your room on the opposite side of the house, it’s going to take a second to walk over to the kitchen, grab the thing, and walk back to your room. Apple took all of these separate rooms and just combine them into one room. So now, if you need to grab something from the kitchen, you literally just reach over and grab it. This is similar to how unified memory works and is one of the reasons why it’s so great. It reduces the transit time, known as latency, from one module to the other. Good. I know how a nuclear reactor works. I don’t need you.
Unified memory removes that bottleneck because the CPU, the GPU, the neural engine, they’re all kind of on that same chip. They all have access to that same memory pool and they don’t have to copy information back and forth between these different hardware parts. The data is kind of already there. Everything is happening instantly instead of waiting. So the system as a result is much more responsive.
Windows laptops often have dedicated graphics cards that have their own additional pool of RAM. Whereas unified memory means that both the CPU and the GPU share from one small pool. So you’re pretty much always getting less RAM. This is one of the reasons why high-end memory configurations of the Mac Studio are so sought after because these machines can have access to like 512 GB of unified memory. That gives them a huge pool of memory for the GPU, meaning that you can run giant large language models directly on the machine. Whereas like on a machine with a separate GPU, you would have to like hook up multiple GPUs together to get the same result.

Pricing and RAM Upgrades

It makes something as simple as RAM feel like some sort of gray area.
No, it doesn’t make RAM feel like a gray area. Unified memory is a legitimate thing. Also, has Mr. Who’s the Boss seen current RAM prices? It makes Apple’s memory pricing kind of look reasonable. Either way, putting unified memory in air quotes as just some marketing term is wrong,
which means they can give you a lot less of it. and they can charge you more to upgrade it than any other company.
Okay, another wild claim without any evidence to back it up. Just do some research. Apple was charging $200 for RAM upgrades all the way back when they were on Intel and they weren’t using the term unified memory. This is a simple Google search. Apple was always charging ridiculous prices for their RAM upgrades. They didn’t need a new term to sell that to people.

Storage Bumps and Price Hikes

But hey, at least tech companies are generous enough to upgrade the storage on our phones and laptops every few years.
The new iPad Pro comes with double the storage, which is now 256 GB.
Oh, thanks Apple. Oh, so we got $200 more expensive. So, they position it to you like they’re doing you some kind of massive favor when in fact all they’ve really done is stopped selling the cheaper, lower storage model, and so you have to pay more.

Oh, I love this little bit of misdirection thrown in about the pricing of storage bumps. And it is particularly misleading with the 2024 iPad Pro. You see, Mr. who’s the boss pitches this to you as all they did for that 2024 iPad Pro was to drop the 128 GB configuration and then charge you $200 more for the same 256 GB configuration as last year.
The problem with this example is that this is the 2024 iPad Pro. It wasn’t a simple spec bump upgrade. This is the year where it got a thinner and lighter redesign with a new dual layer OLED display. Literally two OLED panels stacked right on top of each other. And that was a huge component cost upgrade for this brand new generation of iPad. That is where the price bump came in. That’s why it was $200 more. Not because of the storage.
See that screen right there with the 128 GB config. See how it’s edited for this generation of iPad? It never existed. There was never a cheaper option for the OLED iPad Pros. They never came in 128 GB of storage. They literally did not sell it. So to actually edit this config on the page is pretty deceptive. And you can even tell they edited it because there’s no area where it says that it comes with the M5 or M4 chip. There’s no area telling you how much unified memory it comes with.
And honestly, this is just a really weak argument in general. Sometimes companies do just bump up the storage at no additional cost. I think a really good example of this is this year’s iPhone 17 and 17e. Both kept the same starting price and doubled their base storage. Sometimes a company does do that. They get with the times they increase the storage and they don’t charge you anything extra. It’s not always a gotcha

The iPhone Air Thickness Debate

Okay. Another claim is that the iPhone Air isn’t actually as thin as Apple says it is. And the marketing is deceptive. And I don’t even want to argue this one. I’ll I’ll just let Mr. Who’s the Boss in the past debate Mr. Who’s the Boss in the present, and I will let you decide

Very often in today’s world, the specs that make a product the most marketable are not the specs that are most useful to a user. Take thickness. The spec that matters here really is the maximum thickness. Like Apple calls the iPhone Air the thinnest iPhone ever. And while that’s true for this section of the body here, it’s not true for the whole phone. I’ve got an iPhone 7 here, which is thicker than the iPhone 6, by the way. But still, this is thinner than the iPhone when you factor in the cameras. And it’s not like you can take them off. It’s just such dumb logic.
I’m going to be honest with you. This phone absolutely creates an impression. Like the first time I picked the thing up, my mouth involuntarily formed a silent O. As I truly came to terms with how at 5.6 mm, this is thinner than any previous iPhone. This is thinner than Samsung’s ultras slim Galaxy S25 Edge. The thing’s thinner than a pencil.
I don’t know who to believe here. They both made pretty convincing arguments and they both had really sophisticated, intelligent sounding British accents. This is a tough one. You know, I said I wasn’t going to comment on this, but I’m actually going to comment on this. So, you’re telling me that when you got the hands-on time with the iPhone Air, in the moment where it mattered, where, you know, 6 months ago you could have told people that the marketing deception of the iPhone Air was that it wasn’t the thinnest iPhone, you either thought it was the thinnest iPhone or you just regurgitated the Apple talking points that it is the thinnest iPhone without believing that it’s the thinnest iPhone.
But now, six months later or seven months later, you make a video saying Apple was being deceptive in their marketing. Huh? Almost like you could have told people that before they decided to buy it. I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but I think that information would have been more valuable back then if that is what you truly believe.

MKBHD and Smartphone Glass

Okay, after a second rewatch of this video, I got to be fair. I think most of my complaints do stem from Mr. Who’s the Boss’s segments from this video. The arguments overall are very sensationalized and every time they’re not really backed up by anything. So, I think for the most part, MKBHD, the second collaborator of this video, um, he does a pretty good job.
He described some of the more deceptive marketing and branding companies use like a 1.5K screen, 1 inch sensors not actually measuring out to one inch, and how companies love to use material grading terms like aerospace aluminum or surgical grade stainless steel even though like so many products use those materials that they kind of lose their meaning. However, I do have one exception where he talks about smartphone glass and he obviously feels very passionate about this because he put a full video up on his channel talking just about this specific segment.
It’s actually a much longer video in this video. It’s actually a really short segment, but basically he does an explainer about how companies either have to choose between making glass softer or harder, whether they are prioritizing uh scratch or drop resistance, and how each year basically um the company has to choose one or the other. Like they can’t get both more scratch resistance and more drop resistance at the same time. It’s a pretty good explainer. It’s very educational going over the trade-offs.
Except there is one problem that I have with this argument, and that is that there have been actual advancements to glass technology pretty recently with Apple’s ceramic shield, too.
I can already hear some of the comments down below already were typing about how ceramic shield on the iPhone is on some other level. Now, Apple talks a lot about the manufacturing process of ceramic shield 2. You could dismiss this as marketing, but I think it is a legitimate advancement in glass technology. At least from everything I can read, it appears to have the same shatter resistance or drop resistance as Ceramic Shield 1, but with the coating of Ceramic Shield 2, it is also much more scratch resistant. So, you kind of get the best of both worlds.

It’s one of those topics that does fall apart when you look into it a little bit because one of the things I remember about this iPhone 17 launch in particular was the annual torture test that JerryRrier Rig Everything does. And you know what? I’ll just let him explain it in his own words.
Let’s start with the scratch test of the new Ceramic Shield 2, which is supposedly three times more scratchresistant. We’ll see about that. Plastic usually scratches at a level two or three. Glass scratches at a five or six. and sapphire usually scratches at a level eight or 9. And as you can clearly see from my pics, the level six marks are basically non-existent. And we also barely see any scratches at a level seven. So I can’t even say the thing I always say, Apple ruined it. It was three times more scratch resistant specifically. Every single one scratches at level six with deeper grooves at a level seven because it’s still glass. The ceramic shield 2 from Corning is definitely a massive improvement this year.
Back in his video about this literally says Apple has made a significant improvement to its glass this year. Something that he has not seen before on any of the various iPhones that he put through his scratch tests. But just like we’ve done with hundreds and hundreds of other phones over the past decade, let’s start with the scratch test of the new Ceramic Shield 2.

So, why are we being told that this is marketing deception when in reality it appears like there has been improvements to the glass material to make it more scratch resistant than ever before.
Every single one scratches at level six
with deeper grooves at a level seven.
No, it doesn’t. But, but it doesn’t it it literally doesn’t get the scratches at level six. It it and the level seven it’s not as it’s not as bad as it was before.

Misleading Claims a ndthe Need for Evidence

Now, listen. And I kept these claims to the Apple related topics. It’s the one where I’m the most knowledgeable and it’s the area when I watch this video where some of the false or misleading claims immediately jumped out to me. But I do want to be fair to the video. I think there are some topics where they do a good job at explaining deceptive marketing tactics that are used by other companies. Areas like peak brightness on smartphones or TV motion rates and how more megapixels doesn’t necessarily mean a better photo.
But see, even in that example that I just pointed out, which is true, it is also a little misleading in this video. Like, I don’t need to defend Samsung here. But you can actually set the camera to take 200 megapixel photos on a Samsung phone, even if by default the photos are bin to 12 megapixels. Like, that was not explained in the video at all.
Is resolution, which beyond a certain point doesn’t matter at all on a phone. Like the last four generations of Samsung phones have had a 200 megapixel resolution. They’re still shooting their actual photos in 12.
I think that’s really all I have to say, right? Like the video is littered with so many talking points that are either confusing, misleading, maybe even flatout false at sometimes. I think the whole video feels poorly thought out. And if this is aimed at the everyday user who isn’t going to do any research beyond watching this video, that’s bad because they’re just going to walk away watching this video and accept a lot of these claims as true.

And listen, I think it is great when we hold tech companies to high standards. But I also think we should apply those same standards to the people that cover tech. Words have meaning. To say a company is lying to you, is a bold claim that needs to be backed up by factual evidence, not just feelings. The more we toss around these powerful words without the receipts to back it up, the more our audience tunes us out. The more we lose credibility. And when a real issue arises and there are plenty in the tech world that demand this type of attention, well, the next time maybe the people won’t listen to us. It’s like that line from Spider-Man. With great power comes great responsibility.

The Responsibility of Influence

Mr. Who’s the Boss and MKBHD, they are the biggest tech channels out there. They have tremendous influence in the way that tech is covered, how it’s conveyed to a mass audience, and it impacts everyone in the tech community. What they say matters, and this is a collaboration between both of them. This video is going to get millions and millions and millions and millions of views. And unfortunately, people are gonna watch this and walk away misinformed.

Tech shouldn’t be this inflammatory, unless it needs to be. People come to us not just for entertainment, right? They come they come to see me put on glasses and a stupid sport coat and a tie. But they also come to be informed. They come to us with purchasing decisions. We are literally helping customers spend their hard-earned money. And that is a responsibility I do not take lightly. I do not make a joke of it. Am I perfect? No. I’ll be the first one to tell you. Greg’s Gadgets, he gets things wrong all the time. I probably got some stat or figure wrong in this video. And with the nature of YouTube, I have been known to put a clickbaity title or a thumbnail. Not necessarily because I want to, but because everyone knows there’s a YouTube algorithm, you got to play the game to some extent if you want people to see your videos.
However, when you click on my video, I always aim to provide accurate content to the best of my ability. I always aim to inform users, not misinform. Like, on the off chance either of these creators stumbled onto this video, like you’re watching me right now. Hello, how are you doing? Uh, I would just ask, what was the point of this video? What were you trying to accomplish? Because if these tech companies are truly lying to their customers, why are you guys actively participating in a system to promote these lies? You both have had the chances to interview top tech execs. Why not call them out on these practices for your audience?

Missed Opportunities for Real Accountability

Like if you want to see a real profile and courage about tech companies lying to you and let’s use specifically Apple, this interview by Joanna Stern is a master class.
So I do want to get to what you announced yesterday and some of the big announcements. I want to talk a little bit about last year’s WWDC. Start there. Last year you announced a smarter AIdriven Siri.
Where is she?
So two parts of this that I want to unpack. I mean one is that you marketed it though. You you showed this.
Yeah.How did that happen? It it’s great that you set this high bar. You’re also Apple. I mean you’ve got >> more engineers, more cash than most companies, maybe any company. Why can’t why couldn’t you make it work? You have mentioned Apple intelligence a lot and you to be honest I’m not really a big user of Apple intelligence. I’m using a lot of your competitor’s products. Can you or will you keep up with that competition? And will that include these features that you had previously announced and more? I mean there’s is this the effort to make Siri this more interactive AI companion?

One of the lies that Apple told you, one that you could use for this video that would have been legitimate and actually would have been useful to the current state of Apple is about Apple marketing and lying about a more personalized Siri assistant coming to their smartphones. Not just with the iPhone 17, not just with the iPhone 16, but with the iPhone 15 Pro. We are looking at a 2-year promise that hasn’t been fulfilled yet. A real lie from Apple. real deception, a real marketing tactic that could have had a customer spend money on a feature that they didn’t need.

Final Thoughts on the Collaboration

Now, do I think Mr. Who’s the Boss or MKBHD, Aaron and Marquez, do I think they are lying to you just like they claim these companies are lying to you? No. Like I said at the start of this video, think of this video more as a debate. Think of it more as a conversation. I like that. Listen, I just think the claims in their video were poorly researched, over sensationalized with the express intent to kind of get you angry and to keep you watching. But other than that, I don’t think these creators made the video with the express intent to deceive or lie to you.
Actually, in reality, these YouTubers have kind of grown to unimaginable heights. They have a giant team of people to research, script, and edit these videos. So, to say that Aaron or Marquez is lying to you would be wrong anyway, considering there’s a really good chance they didn’t do most of the hard research for this video. It’s kind of like I’m debating with CNN right now or like a news outlet. These people are kind of just the faces of media companies at this point.
I guess that’s why when I watched these videos, I wasn’t angry. I was more kind of like disappointed. I was disappointed that there wasn’t more care and attention put into this video. Because to me, it is also a shame that these two incredibly popular YouTubers with their big teams and their incredible amount of resources couldn’t tackle some of the legitimate issues going on in big tech right now. privacy violations, social media addiction, AI potentially replacing the workforce, AI psychosis, or big tech building massive data centers and literally displacing communities, literally making drinking water undrinkable.
Like for all the topics they could have covered as big tech lying to you, there are legitimate things here where you could have had a real impact. But I guess those topics aren’t as clickbaity as like with the premise of this tech company lied to you or Apple lied to you even when they didn’t.

Setting the Bar High

And the more I think about it, the biggest disappointment again with this video is just the amount of resources these two have. You have two channels, both with over 20 million subscribers, the biggest tech channels out there, making a video that I could make. Like, you’re supposed to set the bar high. You could set the bar anywhere you want. You guys are at the top of the game, but you set the bar to my level. You shouldn’t do that because I’m not good at this. I don’t make good videos.
So, you shouldn’t set the bar to an area where I can respond in turn. Like, with the teams you guys have, with the resources you guys have, think about like the scientific testing you could have done for this video that would have made any of my arguments null and void. Like, if you truly believe Glass hasn’t been getting better, take the iPhone 17. Go back all the way to like the iPhone 10. Line up all the phones. Show us how each year this one had better scratch resistance, this one didn’t. This one when you impact it a certain way, it shatters. This one didn’t. Show us show us those trade-offs in like a scientific testing where the evidence is there and I can’t do a rebuttal.
Like if you’re going to go against Apple’s claims, have a stronger argument. And the same for that whole thing about the chips not getting that much stronger. Like if you truly believe there’s only a 5% improvement or that Apple is deceptive with their claims of performance increases, you have all the laptops. You could do those tests in person. It’s not that hard. You you you can literally do some benchmark and go, “Look at this. It’s actually not increasing that much.” And then your argument becomes a little more credible. But just saying the thing with nothing to back it up doesn’t make it credible.
So it’s a shame that there’s all these re like I wish I could have those resources. I wish I had all that money and a crew to tackle some of these issues. It’s just me in here though. I can’t I can’t do that right now. But uh yeah, I I think of the possibilities of like what you can do long term with some of these videos. So to put out a video like this that is so poorly researched from my point of view, I just wonder why.

Conclusion

Anyway, I think I’ve went on a tangent long enough. To the much smaller amount of people that watch this video, not in the millions, maybe the 100 thousands if we’re lucky, I hope you came away more informed. Maybe you learned something useful, or maybe you just came to watch the drama. And again, I’m not trying to start drama here. I’m not actually I don’t want to start a beef with these two YouTubers. They make good videos. It was just this video in particular that I had an issue with.
I wasn’t even going to make this video. I I slept on it. I was going to make it yesterday and I slept on it and I was like, “I’m not going to make that video.” But then I woke up. I watched it again and I was like, “Okay, I really want to say something.” Like, it was bothering me. I’m like, if I don’t make this video, it’s just going to like itch away at me that I didn’t say anything cuz if I can inform or, you know, start a debate between like a few people, like I guess that’s like a good thing in my head. I don’t know.
But, uh, yeah, hopefully you enjoyed the video overall. And hopefully you learned that glasses don’t actually make you smarter, but the British accent does. I’m a firm believer in that. All right, thanks for watching. I’m a little afraid to read the comments. I think that’s why I’m stalling here. And uh let me tell you, this is a hard button to get off. Okay, I can assure you next time I I won’t be wearing this. Maybe maybe the glasses. What do you guys think? Yeah, baby. Yeah. Yeah.

The Scrutiny of Tech YouTube