Threatt said he was clued into the discrepancies by a Friday post at the blog. He was aware of the FTC's online , because he had used it before.

"Whenever the urge strikes me and I feel like someone is being deliberately misleading, I go to that site," Threatt said. "I never know if I'm screaming into the void or not, but it makes me feel better."

In his complaint, Threatt briefly explained the technologies to the FTC, and then summed up the problem.

"In several advertisements and images representing the Apple products in question, Apple has purposefully elected to show these devices correctly displaying content that necessitates the Adobe Flash plug-in. This is not possible on the actual devices, and Apple is very aware of that fact. ... This constitutes willful false advertising and Apple's advertising practices for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the new iPad should be forcibly changed," Threatt wrote, in part.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The FTC was not able to give details about the complaint or how it would respond.