Rumor Has It (For Tech Rumor Sites, and With Apologies to Adele)

It, it isn’t real,
And even if it was it’s no big deal.
It is a fiction,
You’ve never got it right before what’s with your affliction?
Yeah, it’s got it all
Directly from the marketing cabal.

Get a grip, you know you’re giving us fits.
You don’t care if you’re a fool, we know it’s all for page hits.
You published the trash even though you’re in the dark,
And then cover your ass by using a question mark.

Rumor has it, rumor,
Rumor has it, rumor,
Rumor has it, rumor,

You, have half a brain,
But I’m guessing it’s the other half you strain.
I know you’ve an empty cup
So you’re telling people things you just made up.
But when you creep about and facts ain’t around,
Why must you resort to rumors?

Knock it off, you look more dumb every day.
Most of this stuff makes no sense, you should just send it away.
There’s no escaping from your publishing crimes,
But that’s what you get for listening to Digitimes.

Rumor has it, rumor,
Rumor has it, rumor,
Rumor has it, rumor,

All of these words keeping your ear full,
Tell stories of a device impossible.
Just ’cause they said it, don’t mean they’ve got credit.
People say crazy things.
Just ’cause they said it, don’t mean they’ve got credit.
Just ’cause you heard it…

Rumor has it, rumor,
Rumor has it, rumor,
Rumor has it, rumor,

But rumor has it Apple TV comes out this year.

TAB – Rumored Mac Mini: I Don’t Think It’s Fake

Seems nearly everybody believes the rumored Mac Mini is fake. At least, that’s what I see in most of the comments to the published rumors.

Predicting what Apple will do next is nearly impossible, and I usually don’t bother going there. But today, what the heck. I think these rumors are valid. My issue with a lot of the comments saying “Fake!” are that they don’t pass any reasonable test I apply to them…

Read the rest of this article on theAppleBlog >>

TAB – Photo From Apple’s Design Studio: Latest Apple Product Revealed?

In promoting his upcoming film, Objectified, a documentary maker published a photo (above) of Jony Ive from “inside Apple’s design facilities.”

Naturally, tech bloggers the world over will examine the photo in detail in the hope that Apple slipped up and left something in the photograph that reveals their next “sooper seekrit” product. Rumors and speculation will run rampant. After all, if every Chinese newspaper or two-bit tech pundit or analyst publishing nonsensical information becomes grist for the rumor mill, then certainly an actual photograph of “mad scientist” Ive’s lair should give us material for months. 

I’m getting ahead of the curve to reveal that, after close inspection of the photograph, I can report on Apple’s latest cool new device…

Read the rest of the article on theAppleBlog >>

Rumored interface for 6G iPod.

Many sites have published links to a video with the alleged new interface for the 6G video iPod (here is MacDailyNews’). The video doesn’t necessarily remind one of the iPhone, though clearly elements have been borrowed.

I’ve gone on record stating the 6G iPod would have the iPod interface from the iPhone, or something very close (for example, the iPod might add a virtual scroll wheel for games).

What does Apple gain by making the interfaces different? Don’t they just open the door to iPhone or iPod owners thinking they got the “lesser” interface? In that case I believe the iPod must have the “better” one (after all, it’s the dedicated media device), but then what would that say about the iPhone? According to Jobs it’s “The greatest iPod we’ve ever made,” but it lasted only a few months?

I like the iPhone music interface, and while I feel that with 80GB instead of eight some sort of search is mandatory, I otherwise prefer it to the existing 5.5G iPod.

I believe the new iPod is coming relatively soon, despite some reports of a January release. They need the 6G in plenty of time for Christmas, so I don’t see how it could be later than October. Rumors that it will be sooner seem believable to me. This rumored interface, however, I’m questioning.

Of course, guessing what Apple will do, and why, is a crap shoot. The video may well be legit and, since it’s short, there’s more to it than that. Further, I can see that the cascading menus might be considered necessary for the same reason I believe search is (i.e., 10 times the amount of data storage). With that much data to go through simply scrolling is not enough. In other words, the iPod would be a superset of the iPhone interface, with the extras owing to the far greater amounts of data it will hold.

The good news for iPhone users is that perhaps that device would just be a software update away from having those same interface improvements. I mean, if their respective initial interfaces have significant differences, Apple’s longer-term plans may be to unify them. This assumes the iPod will become an OS X device (why port the same interface two places?), but I already believe that will happen.

Unlike the iPhone, I won’t get a 6G iPod when it comes out (I’m very happy with my 5.5G 80GB), but it will be interesting to see what interface it includes, and if Apple works to make both devices work the same in handling media.

Ah, yes, the last-minute rumors and "scoops" for Apple’s WWDC.

This one takes the form of a German site supposedly getting the outline of Steve Jobs’ keynote. There is already much speculation over whether it’s legitimate or not.

It’s not.

First, a lot of this list has been talked about for months, so some of it will likely be correct. But anybody could put an outline together that’s partially correct. Big deal.

Second, it has every wish list item on it. New iMacs? Check. New ultra-portable? Check. Integrated iLife/iWork into Leopard and Google? Check. Revamped .Mac service? Check. Unified interface in OS X? Check. And on and on, right down the line. There is no way all of this is ready to be discussed tomorrow, even if it’s all being worked on (which itself is debatable).

Third, all of this is going to be presented (and demoed) in a 90-minute keynote? Please. The complete impossibility of that alone should lead any rational person to conclude the item is fake.

Apple’s 2007 Developer Conference Starts Monday, 6/11!

Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference runs from 6/11-6/15 in San Francisco next week. Like many of Apple’s staged affairs, it will kickoff with a keynote speech by Steve Jobs. Will new products be announced? Will new products even be hinted at? What about new partnerships or services? An iPhone SDK? Will there be “one more thing”?

So many rumors, so little time. Will we see:

• A major push to bring Windows developers to the Mac?
• New iMacs? Yes, or no.
• Top Secret Leopard features?
• A revamped, new and improved .Mac service?
• New user interface for Leopard?
• New iLife and/or iWork suites?

Oh, what’s the point in even listing anymore? There are as many rumors and predictions about this year’s WWDC as there have been days since last year’s WWDC.

As for me, I’ll be paying close attention to Steve Jobs’ keynote Monday at 10a PDT.

Rumor has it the Mac Mini is soon finished.

According to this piece by Kasper Jade at AppleInsider, the Mac Mini may be on its way out. The article outlines what most Mini-followers already know: The Mini has been pretty low key in Apple’s lineup, with very few updates or price breaks.

There are a lot of Apple rumors. Many of them are ridiculous, and a large percentage are dubious, but this one has merit to me. However, I don’t necessarily think it’s because Apple doesn’t want to have a low-cost, quality machine. Rather, I think it’s because the very design of the machine that keeps it cool also prevents it from ever getting real price breaks. Look at it. A six-inch square is likely using a few custom boards that do not lend themselves to cheap mass quantities and efficiencies of scale.

In my opinion this happened with the G4 iMac (a.k.a. the “iLamp”). Many praised its dome base and hovering display, but the custom boards necessary for that dome were likely responsible for the prices not sufficiently lowering over its life cycle. When it was replaced by the G5 iMac (the one like the current model), the price break at the low end was $500 (almost 28%)! A much better machine, yet it cost $500 less. I believe this was because it was less expensive to manufacture, and required fewer custom components.

Back to the Mini, so here is a machine into which Apple can maybe put better processors (with its small space is the heat generated by faster chips too much?), but can’t really lower the price anyway. It becomes less and less of a value as time goes on. It only makes sense to can it.

My hope is that, like the G4 iMac, the Mini is replaced with something that serves the same purpose while keeping an eye towards the fact that it’s a consumer model and must make concessions to cost. Only time will tell, but I can certainly understand why the current Mini might have to go.

Another option would be for Apple to just forgo profits on the thing. A “loss leader”, if you will. I don’t believe Apple would take an actual loss, it’s not their style, but they may skip some profit to get more people in the Mac fold. Still, that seems dubious to me. If Apple wants to remain in this arena I think they’ll design a new model. I hope so.