Real Rumor Sites: Fun While They Lasted

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Hi all,



We're mentioned this off and on before, but I thought a dedicated threat would be interesting.



I originally joined AI in January or February of 2000, pre-blackout. Back then all the talk was about Pismo. Comparing those days to today, it's clear that Apple has successfully squashed all (or nearly all) rumors and inside info from the web. Their threats of legal action have worked. No leaked pictures. There haven't even been any good fakes lately!



AppleInsider: We're now basically a news and discussion site. The greatest scoop ever was the infamous WorkerBee incident. Remember pictures of the Cube? Those were the days.



MacRumors: Basically another news site.



Think Secret: Once had great rumors, until Apple slapped Nick down. His accuracy was sketchy, but once in awhile he nailed one.



MOSR: More of a joke now than it was. At least it used to be entertaining. Oh yeah, and Meader is still a loser.







Beyond the actual inside info, it seems to me the excitement levels are not what they used to be around here. Maybe it's me. I'm 7 years older and I'm not new to Mac anymore. It justs seems like the speculation was truly "temporary insanity" back in the day. Anyone else feel this way? What is your opinion of the state of the rumor sites?
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 29
    flounderflounder Posts: 2,674member
    Yeah, it's definitely not quite the same. Part of it, also, is the switch to intel, and the well laid out processor road map that goes with it. There's no more sitting around and wondering when the next PPC would come and the cycle of joy/aggravation (OK a lot more aggravation) that came with it.



    For about a year before TS got sued, they had a run of astounding accuracy.



    I remember when I first started following apple rumors (around the same time as you SDW) MOSR had the first report on the cube, and I thought "wow, what a great rumor site"



    That was the last accurate, or even remotely accurate piece of gossip they ever had.
  • Reply 2 of 29
    sdw2001sdw2001 Posts: 18,015member
    Quote:



    That was the last accurate, or even remotely accurate piece of gossip they ever had.



    True. Notice how Ryan has no advertisers anymore?
  • Reply 3 of 29
    I would definately agree that the rumors are not what they used to be....or maybe I am older and have more knowledge of the Apple platform. I don't get the same gushy feelings of excitement like I did when I got my 1st generation iPod and my G3 600mhz iBook.



    To be honest I am bored with the whole thing right now (tech in general). It's like that commercial where they guy says he reached the end of the internet.....now what.



    I did enjoy the European Guys thread. It was entertaining. \
  • Reply 4 of 29
    flounderflounder Posts: 2,674member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SDW2001 View Post


    True. Notice how Ryan has no advertisers anymore?



    I'm still waiting for my dodecahedron!
  • Reply 5 of 29
    sdw2001sdw2001 Posts: 18,015member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Flounder View Post


    I'm still waiting for my dodecahedron!







    That was his best "rumor" ever. "That's exactly the kind of out of the box thinking going on at Apple right now." I still remember that quote. Stupid bastard.
  • Reply 6 of 29
    snoopysnoopy Posts: 1,901member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SDW2001 View Post




    . . . No leaked pictures. There haven't even been any good fakes lately!






    Surely some talented Photoshop users could do something about that.



    I agree that the well laid out CPU roadmap takes away from much of the speculation, but we still have Mac hardware.



  • Reply 7 of 29
    pbg4 dudepbg4 dude Posts: 1,611member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Flounder View Post


    Yeah, it's definitely not quite the same. Part of it, also, is the switch to intel, and the well laid out processor road map that goes with it. There's no more sitting around and wondering when the next PPC would come and the cycle of joy/aggravation (OK a lot more aggravation) that came with it.



    For about a year before TS got sued, they had a run of astounding accuracy.



    I remember when I first started following apple rumors (around the same time as you SDW) MOSR had the first report on the cube, and I thought "wow, what a great rumor site"



    That was the last accurate, or even remotely accurate piece of gossip they ever had.



    Actually, MOSR nailed the Sunflower iMac G4 look. It was only a napkin sketch, but they nailed it.



    The only rumor I saw this year was one talking about a 'multi-touch' device the day before MWSF Stevenote '07. It was (obviously) talking about the iPhone and nailed features that weren't publicly known until the Stevenote.
  • Reply 8 of 29
    Ah, the old days. A lot has changed. For one, Apple is a strong, sound company with a well defined and expanding market. Back then Apple's end was still a valid topic for discussion. We also had the Mac/PC battles back then. The Mac is no longer a rebel machine. It is a trendy machine. Much of the excitement of the past was fueled by the rebel, underdog survivor mentality of Mac users.
  • Reply 9 of 29
    shawnjshawnj Posts: 6,656member
    MacRumors kind of centralized the whole Mac rumors deal.
  • Reply 10 of 29
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    Yeah. The last big hurrah I remember was when the Canadian Time magazine jumped the gun on the sunflower iMac. Those of us who stayed up late to monitor the "temporary insanity" thread got a real jolt.



    I wonder if the drop-off in fakes is because everybody pretty much knows that Apple has iron clad security now and any "just managed to get a picture of this in the elevator" stuff will be dismissed out of hand?



    For me a lot of the fun is parsing those fakes, and the crazy forensics that crazed Apple fans can bring to the table ("I've done spectrum analysis of the shadow detail and correlated that against the actual date, time and position of the setting, which I derived from information in that tiny bit of window you can see at the back of the shot.....").



    Remember the video of the hand held thing booting into OS X? Get busy, people.
  • Reply 11 of 29
    fran441fran441 Posts: 3,715member
    Taking a look back, there's no wonder why the rumor mill isn't the same as it used to be. Heck, Apple's not what it used to be either. The Classic Mac OS is dead, no longer supported by any currently shipping Mac. There's no such thing as a Power Mac or PowerBook any more, never mind the fact that there wasn't even an iMac at the beginning of 1998. We also can't forget that the prospect of an Intel chip in a Mac back in 1998 was unthinkable as the PowerPC had so much more potential.



    Up until late 1998, we didn't have a rumor mill at all beyond wondering what speed the next processors might be and if they might be faster than their Windows counterparts. In fact, most of the 'rumor mill' was guessing when Macs would run Windows or when Apple was going out of business. Once Jobs came back to Apple, everything started to change and that's when AppleInsider first launched in late November.



    Before that, in May of 1998, Apple showed off the Bondi Blue iMac. I remember people going crazy over it just because it was colorful. I also remember the complaints about the switchover to USB, the 'tiny' mouse, and the all in one form factor. But it made people pay attention to Apple again, including my parents who got us a Bondi Blue iMac the day that it launched. Apple decided to stop making printers and other accessories, dumped the Newton (I'm still not completely over this), and over the next few years, got things back on track.



    I remember going to Macworld New York in 1999 and seeing the iBook for the first time, it was amazing. I remember how I wanted to get one so badly, and even worked an extra summer job trying to get enough money for one. Within that short amount of time, Apple had narrowed the product line from countless Performas, Power Macs, and laptops to the Power Mac, iMac, PowerBook, and iBook lines.



    Then we saw the Power Mac G4 in August of 1999. The announcement turned out to be a train wreck because the G4 was shown to be so powerful compared to the Power Mac G3s and Pentium PCs yet weren't going to be available for months. Not only that, but Apple 'speed dumped' the entire line by 50 MHz. People on these boards were foaming at the mouth they were so crazed about what was going on. But Apple had really turned things around and with all of the drastic changes, everyone wanted to know what was coming next. Plus, we were really getting to see the start of Mac OS X and how things were going to shape up.



    The Pismo speculation started right after the introduction of the G4. People wanted to know if there would be a major case redesign like all of the other Macs got, they wanted to know if it would have a G3 or G4, etc. The Pismo was launched in February but the stores around me didn't get it in stock until my birthday in March. I had been saving for an iBook for quite some time but as I was getting ready for college and just about to graduate high school, my parents helped me buy a 500 MHz Pismo. It's still the favorite Mac I ever owned, despite it needing so many trips back to Apple for repair. Apple eventually replaced it with my current PowerBook G4 since I had to have it repaired so many times.



    The Power Mac G4 Cube was launched at MWNY 2000 but didn't last longer than a year. People just didn't want a higher end Mac with no real upgrade options. Again, people didn't really see it coming until right before MWNY.



    Since Apple didn't launch a PowerBook G4, people started doing major speculation about when the PowerBook G4 would actually launched. Codenamed Mercury, it was probably the height of the rumor site craze. This forum went crazy when nothing was announced at Macworld New York and everyone set their sights on Seybold where the G4 had been introduced the year before. Some of us (Pismo owners) thought that the G4 wouldn't be ready until Macworld San Francisco, while others (applenut) were convinced that Seybold would have the PowerBook G4. The PowerBook G4 eventually launched at MWSF 2001 but didn't have the specs people were expecting.



    The redesigned iBook was the next big thing in 2001, the last major redesign of an Apple laptop. While there have been some slight redesigns, there haven't been any major changes.



    Then came the iPod which almost no one predicted. Most of us believed Apple was working with Palm on a PDA/Newton replacement, the iPod really came out of left field. It was then that people started seeing that the rumor mill wasn't as accurate as it had once been.



    Apple did a few redesigns over the next few years, including the iMac G4 (iLamp), the Power Mac G5 tower, launched the Mac Mini, then redesigned the iMac again for the G5. But for the most part, the drastic redesigns in the short periods of time were gone.



    So we look at the rumor mill now and it's hard to think about what else Apple could do that we haven't considered. There hasn't been a drastic redesign to the laptops in years, the iMac, Mac Mini, and Mac Pro lines will probably just get speed bumps for the forseeable future. We also finally saw the introductions of an Apple set top box (Apple TV) and an Apple Phone/handheld computer. Considering all of that, what other major speculations are there beyond the normal speed bumps?



    Looking back, it amazes me how Apple was able to get back on the right track after the terrible shape the company was in by late 1997 and how they were able to get things completely turned around in less than a decade. It makes me wonder what we will end up seeing in the next 10 years.
  • Reply 12 of 29
    dappledapple Posts: 44member
    Apple is convergence, IMO.



    Convergence is revolutionary, IMO.



    I am not bored. lol
  • Reply 13 of 29
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Fran441 View Post




    So we look at the rumor mill now and it's hard to think about what else Apple could do that we haven't considered. There hasn't been a drastic redesign to the laptops in years, the iMac, Mac Mini, and Mac Pro lines will probably just get speed bumps for the forseeable future. We also finally saw the introductions of an Apple set top box (Apple TV) and an Apple Phone/handheld computer. Considering all of that, what other major speculations are there beyond the normal speed bumps?



    Well, let's see..... there's the tablet, the mid-sized tower, the Apple designed TV/Projector, some astonishing implementation of MultiTouch that Changes the Way We Interact With Computers Forever, the sub-notebook, the next big iMac redesign, the next big MBP redesign, the next big tower redesign, and some super secret death ray thing that leverages Leopard to crush the world.



    So what's the problem? People need to start claiming to have talked to a drunk Apple genius who spilled the beans, or making P'shopped fakes, or blurry videos of things made out of cardboard.



    There's your list, above. Get to it!
  • Reply 14 of 29
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by addabox View Post


    Well, let's see..... there's the tablet, the mid-sized tower, the Apple designed TV/Projector, some astonishing implementation of MultiTouch that Changes the Way We Interact With Computers Forever, the sub-notebook, the next big iMac redesign, the next big MBP redesign, the next big tower redesign, and some super secret death ray thing that leverages Leopard to crush the world.



    So what's the problem? People need to start claiming to have talked to a drunk Apple genius who spilled the beans, or making P'shopped fakes, or blurry videos of things made out of cardboard.



    There's your list, above. Get to it!



    In the "new era" (past 3 years) the fricking cardboard-box-in-elevator was tops, in my mind.
  • Reply 15 of 29
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SDW2001 View Post


    ..... I'm 7 years older and I'm not new to Mac anymore. It justs seems like the speculation was truly "temporary insanity" back in the day. Anyone else feel this way? What is your opinion of the state of the rumor sites?



    All the other rumour sites have kinda yeah, tanked somewhat, I hang on AppleInsider (and lurk as a different user) mostly nowadays... Macrumors.com is too "congested".



    I don't know how much more insane things could have gotten the 72 hour period around Macworld and WWDC these past few years. The Appleinsider AIM chat room was pretty damn almost-permanently insane.
  • Reply 16 of 29
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    DigiTimes has been fun sometimes... ....And the analysts.
  • Reply 17 of 29
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SDW2001 View Post


    ....it's clear that Apple has successfully squashed all (or nearly all) rumors and inside info from the web. Their threats of legal action have worked. No leaked pictures. There haven't even been any good fakes lately!...



    I believe one of the name changes to Apple, Inc. is because they will be an outsourced contractor for major defense counterintelligence/ security deals for covert divisions of various national and state governments. ...Obligatory: All your rumors are belong to Apple !!!!!...
  • Reply 18 of 29
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    I'm generally bored with the Internet (and still have no fracking idea WTF "Web 2.0" really is - like why is cross-browser compatibility STILL an issue ???? ) ... but I seem to not be bored with Apple. Hence, I mostly surf Intarweb now for AppleInsider, emailing people, starting an internship of sorts, [OMFG real life..!!!] ... so wooo... well, ok. Pretty lame post from me here but just throwing down some ideas.
  • Reply 19 of 29
    Great post Fran. The exiting years here were Apple's rebuilding years. There was one surprise after another. We watched Apple mold total chaos into what it is today
  • Reply 20 of 29
    sdw2001sdw2001 Posts: 18,015member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by addabox View Post


    Yeah. The last big hurrah I remember was when the Canadian Time magazine jumped the gun on the sunflower iMac. Those of us who stayed up late to monitor the "temporary insanity" thread got a real jolt.



    I wonder if the drop-off in fakes is because everybody pretty much knows that Apple has iron clad security now and any "just managed to get a picture of this in the elevator" stuff will be dismissed out of hand?



    For me a lot of the fun is parsing those fakes, and the crazy forensics that crazed Apple fans can bring to the table ("I've done spectrum analysis of the shadow detail and correlated that against the actual date, time and position of the setting, which I derived from information in that tiny bit of window you can see at the back of the shot.....").



    Remember the video of the hand held thing booting into OS X? Get busy, people.



    That last fake you mentioned was the best. Well done!
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