Wednesday, July 20, 2005
So this is how Apple rumors get started
Two separate instances regarding the impending new iBooks in the past twenty-four hours have both demonstrated, rather humorously, how Apple rumors can sometimes get started, and just how little they can be based on. Yesterday I wrote an article asking if this was going to be the "Third Age of iBook," and today both instances happened as a result:
1) Some guy sends me the following email this morning:
Hey, it wouldn't be the first time Apple prematurely posted specs for a soon-to-be-released product by accident. So of course I race over to the Apple Store Canada, but I can't find anything. Apparently, the images had gotten pulled nearly as fast as they'd been posted. I checked around on various Mac news and rumor sites and couldn't find a word about the Canada thing, though. So I wrote back to the guy who had written to me, and after going back and looking at the same page again, he realized that he was mistaken, and that he had somehow managed to confuse the fact that the 14 inch iBook is wider than the 12 inch iBook in their joint photo, and mistakenly thought that it was in fact the new widescreen iBook.
Can't blame him for anything, he just made a mistake in what he was looking at. And it's not as if he was trying to start any rumors, as he was using Apple's own website as his source. In fact, he was trying to help me after reading that I was planning on buying a new iBook the minute they appeared. He thought they had appeared, so he alerted me to it. He just goofed, was all.
But imagine if I (or some Mac rumor site) had reported it as fact. The entire Mac Web (and possibly portions of the mainstream press) would have lit up like a Christmas tree today over the fact that the new iBook had briefly appeared in the Apple Store Canada, and no one would ever have known that it never really happened.
2) This evening, someone sent an email to MacMischief, stating the following:
I thought gee whiz, I've only ever heard the phrase "third age iBook" one other time in my life, and it just happened to be yesterday, when I wrote an article whose title mentioned that same phrase. Apparently this read my article this morning (or more likely, just looked at the headline posted on another site), and then spent the rest of the day trying to find out something about this "third age of iBook," which if you check Google, is a phrase that has apparently never before been uttered in the history of the internet. The guy apparently had no idea that the Mac news site he was writing to ask about the "third age iBook" just happens to be run by the same person (me) who wrote the headline that got him up and running in the first place. He probably wrote to a bunch of other Mac news sites as well, and some of them probably began scratching their heads as to what this "third age iBook" might be.
So there you have it, kids. Two separate instances of someone jumping the gun. One guy thinking he saw something he didn't really see, and another guy reading a headline without reading the whole article, both resulted in cases of unfounded Mac rumors that, thankfully, didn't actually spread, but easily could have. So the next time you read a "confirmed Apple rumor" from a "reliable source," you might want to stop and think about how this stuff gets started in the first place.
That having been said, I'm all excited about the new Third Age iBook, and I really don't understand why the Canadians got to have it before we did.
Two separate instances regarding the impending new iBooks in the past twenty-four hours have both demonstrated, rather humorously, how Apple rumors can sometimes get started, and just how little they can be based on. Yesterday I wrote an article asking if this was going to be the "Third Age of iBook," and today both instances happened as a result:
1) Some guy sends me the following email this morning:
"Apple Store Canada has pic's and specs of new iBooks right now. Widescreen, same old G4's."
Hey, it wouldn't be the first time Apple prematurely posted specs for a soon-to-be-released product by accident. So of course I race over to the Apple Store Canada, but I can't find anything. Apparently, the images had gotten pulled nearly as fast as they'd been posted. I checked around on various Mac news and rumor sites and couldn't find a word about the Canada thing, though. So I wrote back to the guy who had written to me, and after going back and looking at the same page again, he realized that he was mistaken, and that he had somehow managed to confuse the fact that the 14 inch iBook is wider than the 12 inch iBook in their joint photo, and mistakenly thought that it was in fact the new widescreen iBook.
Can't blame him for anything, he just made a mistake in what he was looking at. And it's not as if he was trying to start any rumors, as he was using Apple's own website as his source. In fact, he was trying to help me after reading that I was planning on buying a new iBook the minute they appeared. He thought they had appeared, so he alerted me to it. He just goofed, was all.
But imagine if I (or some Mac rumor site) had reported it as fact. The entire Mac Web (and possibly portions of the mainstream press) would have lit up like a Christmas tree today over the fact that the new iBook had briefly appeared in the Apple Store Canada, and no one would ever have known that it never really happened.
2) This evening, someone sent an email to MacMischief, stating the following:
"i recently heard that there is a third age iBook coming out. i searched all over the internet and i can't find a picture. is this true and do yall' have a picture??"
I thought gee whiz, I've only ever heard the phrase "third age iBook" one other time in my life, and it just happened to be yesterday, when I wrote an article whose title mentioned that same phrase. Apparently this read my article this morning (or more likely, just looked at the headline posted on another site), and then spent the rest of the day trying to find out something about this "third age of iBook," which if you check Google, is a phrase that has apparently never before been uttered in the history of the internet. The guy apparently had no idea that the Mac news site he was writing to ask about the "third age iBook" just happens to be run by the same person (me) who wrote the headline that got him up and running in the first place. He probably wrote to a bunch of other Mac news sites as well, and some of them probably began scratching their heads as to what this "third age iBook" might be.
So there you have it, kids. Two separate instances of someone jumping the gun. One guy thinking he saw something he didn't really see, and another guy reading a headline without reading the whole article, both resulted in cases of unfounded Mac rumors that, thankfully, didn't actually spread, but easily could have. So the next time you read a "confirmed Apple rumor" from a "reliable source," you might want to stop and think about how this stuff gets started in the first place.
That having been said, I'm all excited about the new Third Age iBook, and I really don't understand why the Canadians got to have it before we did.
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