In this brave new electronic world where every bit of information can be blogged, emailed, texted, chatted, Tweeted, and posted to Facebook, it’s sometimes hard to make sense of it all. Specifically, sorting the wheat from the chaff. The truth from the rumor from the downright wrong. It’s made even harder when websites talk about their “reliable source” who knows someone who knows someone who is the roommate of someone who sweeps the floor at a Chinese fabrication plant. What to believe?
For example, last October Apple said they were making a big product announcement. Everyone just KNEW it was the iPhone 5. The blogs, the rumor sites, the news outlets, all of them printed in big bold letters “It’s the iPhone 5! It has to be, because we said so!” Then the announcement is made, and it turns out to be the iPhone 4S.
Suddenly there was so much backpedalling you’d think the entire Internet had turned into a health club. There were a few retractions, some apologies, and a whole lot of “Why didn’t Apple release the iPhone 5? They said they were going to! They lied to us!” Well, the truth of the matter is, they did not. Apple never says anything about a product’s release until the day they release it. People read rumor sites and took it as fact, when really it was just one blog trying to one-up the others.
Today’s news brings more of the same. A techno blog is saying in an “exclusive” report that Apple’s iTV is being released in April. They apparently know this for a fact, and are reporting it as such. What makes it more fun is that a competing blog is calling the article “laughable nonsense,” because they have even better and more reliable anonymous sources. So, to translate it, “our rumor trumps their rumor.” Their reason? Because the iPad 3 is being released at the same time, and Apple would never release two products at the same time. And they know this how? Because a financial news site says so.
One way to tell the facts from the wishful thinking is to read the article carefully. More often than not, the “reliable source” is a high ranking official at some big electronics company, all of whom shall remain nameless. This is akin to the news starting a sentence with “people are saying…” Actually, no one is saying it but the guy writing the news story. He just doesn’t want to admit that he’s making it all up to add credibility to an otherwise unreliable story. The harder they try to cover their sources, the more they are really saying “no one has confirmed this, but we need to make it sound like we have better information than the other rumor blogs.” Even the aforementioned business news site included the line about how Apple does not comment on rumors and speculation.
If they do name names, keep reading to find out where that guy works. The head sales guy at Fred’s Electronics knows no more about the release of the iPad than the guy running the corner sandwich shop. I lost track of how many times a software company has said that a game was being delayed, but the local retailer says “nope, they’re wrong, it’s coming out next week, wanna hand over $50 for a pre-order?” And all those representatives of Chinese factories who send in design specs for a new device; a few days later it turns out it was a fake, but during that time, the web site’s hits (which equal advertising revenue) tripled.
My advice? Keep it all in perspective. Until Apple posts it on their site, or Tim Cook gets up there on a stage and says it, it’s just speculation. It doesn’t exist. If you need proof of this, go read back articles from those rumor sites who swore that the iPhone 5 was coming in October. All those iPhone 5 cases that were being sold in anticipation of a phone when no one even knew for sure what it would look like. Will there be an iPhone 5 or an iPad 3? Most likely. Both have been highly successful products, so it makes sense for Apple to continue upgrading them with new technology. But as far as when this will happen, we can only guess.
