Admittedly the add is lying if you use the weaker interpretation (To convey a false image or impression.) instead of the stronger and more common one (To give false information intentionally.). Yes, the images do the former form of lying but the numbers are still correct.
But if you start to use the weaker interpretation of lying to judge adds, than all adds not mentioning the product's weaknesses are lying and I guess the number of non-lying adds will settle very close to zero.
How is showing two images not to scale not giving false information intentionally? The whole point of having the graphical representation is so that you can compare them visually, otherwise they could just list the dimension as a number. They intend for the reader to compare them visually, and the result of that comparison is an incorrect understanding of the relative size. The only way this isn't giving false information intentionally is if they made their diagram not to scale by accident somehow, which strikes me as unlikely.
It does not give false information intentionally because they nowhere claim that the images are to scale - it is just your assumption that they should be to scale. Therefore it is (almost surly intentionally) deceiving by exploiting a reasonable assumption. But for me this is as much lying as a price of $9.99 is lying because it is trying to trick the customer into the impression that the price is way below $10.00.
(Almost) every add uses beautiful images, good looking people, nice music and so on just to manipulate you. I don't say that this is a necessarily a good thing, but it is definitely a wrong thing to bash a single add for doing this and behaving as if nobody else does it.
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Because the text 10.1" is wider than 9.7" they could have ended up with similar images by just making them the same height and using the same padding on the left and the right (but they did not - the 10.1" image has more padding than the 9.7" image).
> It does not give false information intentionally because they nowhere claim that the images are to scale - it is just your assumption that they should be to scale.
You'd make a good lawyer, but in the real world any reasonable adult would conclude that this is lying.
If people are going to interpret the diagram as being to scale, and they know people are going to interpret the diagram as being to scale, and they deliberately make it not to scale in order to mislead, then they are lying. I don't really care about some nebulous "it doesn't say they're to scale" that neither side of this ever considered.
As someone else pointed out, they used the same image for all models, the 11.6" has the same image (actually they removed the images a few minutes ago and now there are only numbers). Admittedly the images are not to scale even for the largest model but I think they just created an image larger than that of the iPad and did not really think about scale.
If you insist that showing the images not to scale is a really bad thing, what about the add photos of say a Big Mac? Mine never looks that beautiful, fresh and large. Bad thing? No, advertising. No one seriously expects that the product exactly matches the one shown in an add. That's what they do, highlight things, hide other things, make their product look good.
I am with you, they could have avoided the images but the result is not much different - most consumers will see 10.1" vs 9.7" and conclude the 10.1" display is the larger one.
If they showed a Big Mac next to a Whopper where the Big Mac was clearly bigger, but the real-life Whopper was actually bigger (no clue if this is true, just an example), in an explicit size comparison, I would have no compunction at all calling it a lie.
