From the Editor’s Desk: Misleading (Premium)

Last week, I saw a tech story about iPhone 15 Pro owners experiencing screen burn-in issues. As the owner of one of these expensive devices, I was understandably concerned about this problem and so I read further. And I discovered that an upcoming system update, iOS 17.1 would fix this problem, as it's not really burn-in but rather a "screen retention issue," a software problem that mimics burn-in (which is a physical problem and not solvable once it happens).

And then it happened. The next day, I saw multiple headlines in my tech feed indicating that iOS 17.1 had arrived. "iOS 17.1 changes iPhone 15 Pro Action Button behavior." "iOS 17.1 fixes various iPhone 15 problems — but not this annoying bug." "iOS 17.1 Allows AirDrop Transfers to Continue Over Cellular on iPhone." And others. So, I did the obvious: I picked up my iPhone and navigated into the Software Update interface in Settings with the intention of installing this update immediately.

There was just one problem: Apple had not released iOS 17.1. Instead, iOS 17.0.3 was still the latest version, and that's what was installed on my iPhone. "iOS is up to date," it told me.

So, I went back and reexamined those headlines. Was I missing something?

Yes and no. Those headlines were purposefully written to be misleading. When I opened each, I saw that iOS 17.1 was still being beta-tested and would hopefully be released soon. This is information that should have been in the headlines, a change that would not impact whether I or any other reader would click into the articles. For example, "iOS 17.1 to change iPhone 15 Pro Action Button behavior" is no less clear or interesting than "iOS 17.1 changes iPhone 15 Pro Action Button behavior."

Misleading headlines are a huge problem in personal technology, just as they are elsewhere. And while I could regale you with tales of the misleading health and nutrition headlines I see, for example, in the mainstream press, I'd like to confine this conversation to what matters most to me right now. Our world. Personal technology. And there are many offenders.

The worst that I see, by far, is Neowin. And because this site's headlines pop up in my tech feed so often, I am treated to an incommensurate number of poorly written headlines each day. I can forgive bad writing; we all have those horrible moments of typewritten confusion. What I cannot forgive is writing that deliberately misleads. And when it comes to headlines, there is no site quite like Neowin in my tech feed. I have spent months and months trying to passive-aggressively convince them to stop writing these headlines by mocking them on Twitter. But they are as immune to that as they are to writing accurately. And I've had it.

Here are the most recent examples as I write this.

Windows 11 Subsystem for Android updated with graphics improvements and more. As with my iPhone example above, this suggests that this WSA update is generally available, but this update is only avai...