Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “What happened with me and Apple”.
Portion this video is sponsored by great toothpaste. It’S been four years. I think it’s probably time to tell the story. I don’t know how much damage i can do at this point. Are you sure not really? This makes me really more nervous to like actually share the story um, but i think it’s i think we would handle it like we’ll see what happens? Oh secret police heard us. They say the phones aren’t listening i’ll put on speakers. You can hear.
Oh, hey tim, hey good morning, hi uh, so uh your ears must have been ringing um, it’s been four years. I think i like to tell the story about why i got blacklisted. You guys are probably okay with that. Now right, it’s something we wouldn’t advise. I mean four years is a long time. I think i think i’m going to do it.
Oh you break breaking break you’re breaking up. Let’S do it that’s perfect, so the story that i want to share uh is how i got blacklisted from apple pr uh. This happened back in 2018., so it’s been about four years.
Since all this went down, i’ve insinuated and i’ve shared it privately. Uh even told a story on a podcast or two, but i’ve never sat down and actually said what happened, why it happened and how it actually turned out in the long run, to be a good thing. Although it took four years for me to see that it was a good thing, so just for context, this is me i just go to apple dance. I was sitting second row behind al gore next to uh lorraine jobs. I had the opportunity to see all these amazing products be announced and it was awesome and it helped shape the early days of my career.
I was never one that got early apple review units it just. I was able to go to events, but i wasn’t i guess, on the list or, however, they structured that uh for getting reviewed early. I was always rushing and struggling to get the phones on launch day to share that in the early days there was always sort of me and mark watson trying to figure out who can get the phones first and he always beat me by two hours, because the Dude was in st louis in two hours ahead of me, and those are some of my best moments um, but in 2018 apple completely stopped talking to me stopped replying to any emails, and i thought it was a better part of valor to just kind of bury It but now it makes a really good story, so i don’t think much of a secret to say that apple pr is uh, tough, they’re, very cautious. First of all who they work with they’re very cautious.
The message that people share uh, who they work with they’re very cautious of the products – everything i think most people uh know that so let’s go back to the iphone 10s and 10r announcements. So again, 2018 september-ish apple is announcing the iphone tennis and like most modern years, most people knew it was going to come from the phone. There were dummy units that had come out had the opportunity to get those dumb units beforehand. It was actually the first time i’d ever had dummy phones before so we pre-filmed some stuff and in the thumbnails and in the video i was holding the dummy units out. Uh and video went up. We got those videos up nuts fast, i mean, i think we got those videos up even before apple put their keynote up. It was awesome. Our whole systems worked perfectly so next day.
I get a phone call uh from cupertino and it is a representative from apple pr uh advising me strongly to take the video down. So obviously i asked why they said it looks you’re making it look like you have the phones and you’re making it look like apple gave you those devices beforehand and that’s not the case. You need to take that video down. If you want to have a relationship with apple moving forward – and i guess in a way like holding him in a thumbnail, did kind of look like we had the phones, but the video was just talking about the announcement it wasn’t like.
I have a phone. Let me show you um, but it was the first time i had seen apple come in strong and try to dictate the message of my content. So since i’m on the topic of talking about issues, i have with apple it’s a nice segue for this video sponsor great ducky by greytoothpaste. So right now in the u.s and other parts of the world, it is crazy.
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Try to ask, we could change how things are worded or how things look? Can you expect that because it’s sponsored – but this was my video on my channel with apple – not being involved officially uh at all um and it quite frankly caught me off guard and i made a decision that i i now regret um but trying to see what I thought was a big picture and again this is back in technobuffalo days when i had the website and apple was really important part of what we were doing so i acquiesced. I i took the video down and i believe it’s one of the few videos that i’ve ever taken down. I regret it now, but i did it uh, i emailed apple. You know set up, we can save the relationship, but you know it’s. It’S been taken down per your request and i didn’t hear anything um after that at all when that one was announced, the 10r uh was also announced, and i had that phone. I was testing it. I was reviewing it and this is part of the story that you guys probably don’t know, but if you go back and watch that 10 hour review, if you can see it in my eyes and my face, but that was one of the hardest times for me. I’D ever had professionally technobuffalo was having just a ton of issues. I was the most stressed i have ever been in my professional career and i remember having to go in and film that 10 hour review and i remember that feeling of just feeling really really bad um. But what was also really bad was my experience with the 10r. So when it came out, i bought one and it just it wasn’t working. Well, i had a ton of crashes uh.
I had boot loop issues it just it wasn’t. The usual experience that i expected uh from an iphone um, so i went and bought another 10r. I thought. Maybe it was just the the phone that i had so to see if they could be duplicated and it was better, but i was still having issues so i actually emailed apple. I tried to be a good sport. Let them know hey, i’m having issues with these. Two 10r’s that i bought uh, i want to let you know they got back to me and thank you for letting us know. Can we track your phone? They got to give them my imei or icc id some way, they’re able to come in and sort of see the error logs in the phone they say. Can you give us? You know some time to try to troubleshoot, i said sure, but i have to get a wrap, get a review up.
You know again techno buffalo days we got to get a written review. We had to get the video review up and live so i did that and i waited about five days to hear anything back. I followed up, didn’t hear anything back followed up for, i believe about three days straight, didn’t anything back.
Eventually, i had to get the video up and again these are phones that i bought. They didn’t send me uh these devices, so i shared my opinions on the 10r and they were not positive. Video goes up say about 12 o’clock. Video goes up. Maybe around 2 o’clock phone rings, cupertino uh area code um, i answer it same apple, rep and again i’ve been doing this for a long time and still in my now, like 15 years of doing youtube videos. I’Ve never been spoken to like i was spoken to on the phone. I was scolded like a child. How dare you not give us a chance to resolve these issues? How dare you put up a video? You didn’t give us a chance to fix these problems.
You didn’t, i miss a whole litany of uh, don’t say accusations, but i was being schooled. Like i talked to my children um i was like flabbergasted take the video down um. Obviously i chose not to take the video down, despite me, not being very proud of that video, because of how i felt at the time what i said about the phone was very true, and it was my experience uh with the iphone 10r. So we had the interaction with apple i emailed the reps and the pr people that i knew there.
So listen! Sorry, we had a disagreement hope we continue to work together. Uh never heard anything back, never heard anything ever again. Uh from apple uh never had invitations. Uh i’ve had devices beforehand um, but at that moment that i was apparently blacklisted from apple and if this sounds like i’m salty, i’m not invited to events anymore.
I’M honestly, not our videos have actually been more successful, not being at events being able to get our videos up quicker and being able to do hands-on with our own phones not having to be constrained by what apple pr wants us to say or needs to say Or worried about saving relationship, that’s not what the story is about. It was more of just sharing this just crazy experience of working with apple and apple trying to dictate the contents of the video. Now i have worked with mostly every major tech brand in the past 15 years and i have never experienced that level of oversight from apr departments before uh and usually, if we’ve had issues. Sometimes they don’t agree with the review and that’s fine.
Usually we can talk. We can iron things out and ultimately sound your relationship uh, but to have a company essentially say it is our way or no way with something that was a really new experience, and i heard stories from colleagues about how apple’s pr can be tough and hard to Work with, and you have to kind of walk the line of wanting to share your genuine thoughts, but also not pissing them off, and it was really that interaction that um made me realize how strong that was, and this has sort of been a story. Maybe i should write a book one day about all the crazy stuff. That’S happened over my you know, decade and a half of doing this uh, but the apple pr side is something i get all the time like.
Why aren’t you out of benz? Why don’t you have devices at launch, and now i can just reference this video and be like that’s the reason they don’t want to talk to me anymore again. It’S ultimately worked out better um for for the channel for the business and for me um to have sort of full freedom over what i say and when i say it. But it’s a story that i wanted to share and no other point than just to to share the story: it’s not to bash apple.
I still obviously use and wear apple products. I like apple as a company. I think they’re pushing the tech envelope very very far forward. I think, as apple goes, the rest of tech industry tends to follow and have a successful apple. You know successful, you know whole industry, so i don’t harbor any ill feelings towards apple whatsoever.
It was just this story, and now, four years later, i can kind of laugh about it. I just thought it was time to to share it. I got a lot of stories from the years that are making me uh, remember and smile and sometimes cringe, and i just wanted to share them with you guys, because i do get this question quite a bit, especially when it comes to new iphone launches. So that’s my story about how i got blacklisted from apple pr, maybe it’s not as salacious as some people had expected, but it was a very interesting story, a fun aside to that story. So, ultimately, after that 10 hour review was when i decided to to sell technobuffalo and then i went to claremont and i filmed this video with john morrison uh talking about his experience at the tanner, because i thought maybe somebody else had a different experience. His was very positive, so i thought maybe it was just my devices, but it was sort of at that moment when i started realizing that i had to make a change that i had to sort of focus on video refocus on video and sort of refocus.
On doing the things that i love and that was ultimately making content, i started filming actually uh with him uh and austin up in claremont that totally changed kind of my life and career. It’S just a fun chain of events and how things happened if it wasn’t for apple, probably wouldn’t have gone up there, probably wouldn’t have shot up there. I probably wouldn’t be in this studio where we’re at right now, i’m kind of wondering how life would have shaken out. So if there’s a moral even at really bad times, you do not have a crystal ball to see, what’s going to happen in the future. So anyway, that’s my story: that’s happened with apple. I’M sure there’s going to be a bunch of crazy comments, uh down below uh about this, but just wanted to share it and give you a little glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes.
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