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Tim Cook finds himself receiving Twitter snark over motion-blurred Super Bowl photo

Update 1: As of 9th Feb, the tweet has now been deleted.
Update 2: Some of those @timcook-ing him in mocking tweets have now been blocked (via PhoneArena)

Apple CEO Tim Cook found himself on the receiving end of a lot of ‘Shot on iPhone’ snark when he tweeted a blurry photo at the end of the Super Bowl 50 game. The photo appears to be motion-blurred due to the slow shutter speed in the low light.

As The Verge noted, the tweet attracted a lot of replies drawing attention to the poor quality of the photo, many of them using the ‘Shot on iPhone’ tag Apple used for an award-winning ad campaign for the iPhone 6 and recently rebooted for the iPhone 6s.

The iPhone 6/s Plus offers optical image stabilization, while the smaller models don’t.

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Comments

  1. rzozaya1969 - 9 years ago

    So? It was a shot in low light and no tripod. I think that the iPhone cameras are good, but that pic was not shot on optimal conditions, even if it was a night shot.

    • cdm283813 - 9 years ago

      When you give the orders to start a advertising campaign about how good iPhone takes pictures one does not post a crappy picture taken by an iPhone. And you’re the person that signed off on the deal.
      I would figure that the guy would have taken better shots than this while at the game. I know the small screen can be deceiving but maybe he should have viewed it in a iPad pro or Mac first.

      • rnc - 9 years ago

        Because what?

        All cameras can take bad pictures

  2. cdm283813 - 9 years ago

    Tim should know better. Need to vet anything and everything before posting stuff online. Of all the people you would figure he would know that. Tim must have been drunk when he took that pic.

    • rzozaya1969 - 9 years ago

      I honestly guess he was more exited at being there than if people would look with glass and mirror to all his posts..

    • rogifan - 9 years ago

      Oh good grief. Hardly anyone would even know about it had The Verge not plastered it on their front page because they love click bait. I pulled up the tweet earlier this morning and it had less than 50 replies with only a handful mocking the photo. Besides its Twitter what do people expect?

      • chrisl84 - 9 years ago

        Yeah if the CEO of Google pulled this crap you’d be having an ever loving field day….take you medicine.

      • Richard Graham Poster - 9 years ago

        I unfollowed the verge for their love of internet polluting disgusting annoying clickbait

  3. iSRS - 9 years ago

    A couple of things.

    1. We all have a ton of those types of pictures. There is so much going on that the tiny cameras, no matter how good they are for what they are, don’t have enough in them to be clear.

    2. Mr. Cook asked for it. Why in the world would he have posted that?

    • Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 9 years ago

      Yeah, Tim should check his work before he posts photos. Duh….

    • darwiniandude - 9 years ago

      We all have a ton of pictures like that? I don’t. Every shot on my iPhone 6 Plus is tack sharp, unless the subject is moving at night (eg passing car). The iPhone is really good at automatically producing quite good shots. Volume button shutter creates movement, tapping screen to take shot moved the phone less.

      I have more issues with my real camera at f1.2 because if I slightly miss the focus point the nose may be in focus but the eyes aren’t etc.

      • Jassi Sikand - 9 years ago

        Then you’re a perfectionist. Most people are not. I have tons of pics like that but I don’t post them

    • vkd108 - 9 years ago

      Just a minute, “…the tiny cameras… don’t have enough in them to be clear” ??? What are you on about, pal?

  4. minatory - 9 years ago

    At least, you could hold down the shutter button for a while and take multiple photos, then just pick that one, that was shot while hand was not shaking too much.

  5. Motion blur is not the same thing as camera shake. This image has zero motion blur in it as the subjects are nearly all in static poses. OIS will also not do anything to prevent nor correct any kind of motion blur, but it can be effective for camera shake – it’s doubtful it would have helped Tim here though.

    Ben, I expected a better headline.

  6. chrisl84 - 9 years ago

    Almost DSLR! Amirite!

  7. It can happen to anyone. Just get over it.

  8. Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 9 years ago

    I think he probably had a few beers and to him, this looked clear as a bell.

    • chrisl84 - 9 years ago

      Pretty sure Tim doesnt drink, I’ve seen him at college games drinking water……at the beer vendor sponsors tents.

      • cdm283813 - 9 years ago

        He’s been drinking too much of the Apple cool aid if he thinks this picture is fine to post.

  9. irelandjnr - 9 years ago

    This mistake only happens once.

  10. He’s holding it wrong.

    Maybe he had his glasses off and it looks ahh-mazing.
    The second picture he posted, from higher up, looks better.

    AND…I’ve had DSLR photos look this crappy before. it can happen to the best cameras/photographers.

  11. Torrey Huerta - 9 years ago

    Yea, he definitely should have known better. The snark is justified.

    • Jon G. - 9 years ago

      If “The snark is justified.” is true, then the addage of not saying anything at all if you don’t have anything nice to say must be outdated – or perhaps treating others as you would like to be treated no longer applies either… Any wonder there’s so much negativity and condescension?

  12. RP - 9 years ago

    This is kinda how Apple is today. Nothing bad or anything like that. But obviously not run by a methodical perfectionist anymore.

    The ios7 re design was grotesque,…but hey it’s new looking and didn’t someone arbitrarily say flat was the new hip thing?

    The iPhone 6 is overly humongous for its screen size, and cheap and ugly looking, but hey I put a cover over it no big deal.

    All the details matter, and they add up. And there doesn’t seem to be anyone looking out for the details, that cares as much as that meniacle methodical perfectionist than once ran the company.

    Apple is still sufficiently great, everything is fine. But I don’t think that’s enough.

    • Inaba-kun (@Inaba_kun) - 9 years ago

      Personally I find iOS 7’s design to be a huge improvement over the very dated looking iOS 6. I’m with you on the iPhone though. Ugliest iPhone by far. It’s embarrassing. No other phone covers the back in absurdly huge antenna lines, has massive top and bottom bezels, and has a shape so slippery it’s guaranteed to be dropped. Such an poor and ugly design. The iPhone 4 was a thing of beauty.

      • rzozaya1969 - 9 years ago

        HTC One M7 (I think). Honestly, when I saw the iPhone 6 spy photos (or whatever they’re called), I thought that the blogger missplaece a HTC device photo instead of the iPhone.

        I do like the new one, but not that much. I liked that they are experimenting with screen sizes.

      • RP - 9 years ago

        The older ios UI was always the best in it’s class. It was the nicest UI by far. Was it showing it’s age? Sure it was. Was the sloppy and rushed looking ios7 an improvement? No, all it did was transfer from an aging UI, to a badly designed one. I’ll take the aging one vs the badly conceived one.
        No biggie though, the beauty of design is that it can be improved upon. My concern though is a pattern of lack of attention to detail. It’s adding up.

  13. Isitjustme - 9 years ago

    It is easy to make fun of people having blurred shots and perhaps you can do better.
    Why not take some time and look at the shot and it is a digital zoomed one hence the large amount of noise and at a slow shutter speed which I believed when it was taken accounted for the blur because it is very difficult to hold a light device steadily. Now you know why pros used lenses with large aperture that is f2 or f2.8 to minimize handshake and at a decent shutter speed when taking they cover a sporting events also sometimes with help of a tripod.

  14. Inaba-kun (@Inaba_kun) - 9 years ago

    Maybe he should use a real camera next time? One with a full size sensor and a quality lens with OIS. He can certainly afford one. Phone cameras are cameras of last resort, nothing more.

  15. ericisking - 9 years ago

    I thought it was intentionally artistic? It reminds of a painting by Munch.

Author

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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