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Two people complained about the ad which showed someone navigating various of the iPhone’s features and finished with a voiceover saying: “You never know which part of the internet you’ll need. The ‘Do you need sun cream?’ part? The ‘What’s the quickest way to the airport?’ part? The ‘What about an ocean view room?’ part? Or the ‘Can you really afford this?’ part? Which is why all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone.”

The complainants said that this last sentence was misleading because the iPhone did not support Flash or Java.

In its defence Apple said that it had decided to exclude proprietary software such as Flash and Java from the iPhone and focus on open standards such as

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CSS, JavaScript and Ajax that enable access to every website on the internet, if not all the content on each site.

“Apple believed that it was clear that the reference in the ad to ‘all parts of the internet’ referred to internet site availability, not to every aspect of functionality available on every website,” the ASA notes. “They said the decision not to enable some proprietary software would not affect the ability of the iPhone user to access any part of the internet, only their ability to access particular content that used third party technology.”

This claim had been approved by Clearcast, which was set up by UK commercial broadcasters to clear ads before they are shown on television.

But the ASA rejected Apple’s defence.

“We noted Apples argument that the ad was about site availability rather than technical detail, but considered that the claims ‘You’ll never know which part of the internet you’ll need’ and ‘all parts of the internet are on the iPhone’ implied users would be able to access all websites and see them in their entirety,” it said.

“Because the ad had not explained the limitations, viewers were likely to expect to be able to see all the content on a website normally accessible through a PC rather than just having the ability to reach the website.  We concluded that the ad gave a misleading impression of the internet capabilities of the iPhone.”