Where have all the rumors gone?

T

tencargarage

Registered
I have been a switcher for two years and this is the fewest rumors regarding Apple products that I have seen (on any site). The week before an Apple show would have people tripping over threads "with their expert predictions of the announcements". This Paris show virtual nothing. This entire summer seems dull with respect to rumors. Seems like the rumors sites are fading away or changing their format.

Where are all those rumormongers who relentlessly predicted the "actual" announcement of the G5 for so many many years. Have you all retired? Isn't there some new blood out there that will "put it all on the line" to predict the "actual" announcement date of the (gulp) G6?

Did the surgery of Mr. J have anything to do with the lack of rumors?

Ok, my prediction. The G6 will be announced at MWSF and it will be so cool that the heat problems of the G5 will be forgotten. But it will be so cool that it will require the heat from your fingers to HEAT the processor which means Steve J wil have another reason why not to have a wireless keyboard from the factory.

Or I will go way out on the limb and predict (based on nameless reliable contacts), he will add a second button to the mouse only to heat the G6.

Go Cubs
 
That's probably because this is for rumours, and not wild predictions. Many people on this board are probably sick of ridiculous and wild speculations. The G6 chip is speculation that isn't founded on any facts, however tenuous they may be.

Btw, you aren't mi5oav, are you?
 
Besides, Steve J swore those of us with the G6 Macs to secrecy, or he'd take back our machines.
 
He's not mi5moav -- mi5moav has no concept of sentences or paragraphs, whereas this thread shows the promise of proper English usage! :D

Still, they share the same passion for ridiculous speculation based on absolutely no fact whatsoever. ;) As Viro alluded to, "wild speculation" and "rumor" are two things that share nothing in common. This is a forum for fact-based rumor, not, "let's see what ridiculous crap I can think up."
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
He's not mi5moav -- mi5moav has no concept of sentences or paragraphs, whereas this thread shows the promise of proper English usage! :D

Still, they share the same passion for ridiculous speculation based on absolutely no fact whatsoever. ;) As Viro alluded to, "wild speculation" and "rumor" are two things that share nothing in common. This is a forum for fact-based rumor, not, "let's see what ridiculous crap I can think up.

"
Click to expand...
Maybe YOU are mi5moav because if you recognized proper English usage AND understood proper English you have noticed the appropriate use of quotes. Which is an implied placement of the human tongue planted into the cheek. A sense of humor should be recognized as separate and distinct from ridiculous speculation. FACT-Based rumor must some esoteric term that ....oh well why bother!
 
Perhaps my English isn't up to snuff, but how does predicting the launch of the currently non-existent G6 chip at MWSF constitute humour? Rumours aren't fact based in the strictest sense, but are based on some facts.

For example, earlier this year IBM moved their chip fabrication process to 90 nm. People expected this move to cause the G5 line of chips to scale to 3 GHz and beyond. It didn't. Based on published specifications of the chips at the time, a rumour started that IBM hadn't perfect the 90nm process and there was excessive current leakage. Months later, IBM confirmed those rumours.

Wild speculation on the other hand is like saying that Big Foot is actually Elvis wearing a costume. Absolutely ridiculous, without being based on any fact at all.
 
in my humble opinion, i think a big reason was that this year before the paris expo, there was a general consensus that there would be a g5 imac, it was just that no body knew what it would look like.
 
hey tencar ...
welcome on boards ;)
the people who said something about the imac g5s are still out here...

ps. sox!!! ;)
 
You musts have missed all the Apple Tablet rumours sparked by the Register some time ago ... quite a good load ... Rumors are alive and kicking: where's the Tablet? Will the G5 get to 3GHz at MWSF? When will we see the G5 PowerBooks? WWDC05? Lots of questions and lots of interesting speculation.
 
Also, people learn over time. Back then (long ago, say, 2002) before every bigger show, people tended to expect much too much from the shows. Also, because Apple, back then, wanted to focus on these shows to have more effect in the press. Apple learned that this hurt them two-ways: First, they have to announce machines when they're available, so people can actually buy them when they want to. Second: Apple gets good press coverage anyway, big show or not.

And rumour sites learned _not_ to overdo such shows... Guess they've learned that Apple stopped using the shows for major overbombing.
 
Viro said:
Btw, you aren't mi5oav, are you?
Click to expand...
A quick host name check says no.

Tencargarage, welcome to the forums. However, I would like to counsel you to not utilize bold in an entire post, especially if you are replying to someone else's thoughts in an angry tone; it's a causative factor in what we lovingly refer to as a flame war.

It makes my job as moderator that much more difficult when I have to close a thread that has become ineffectual to provide further spirited discussion.
 
Ahhh mi5moav... my best friend. I better leave it there, before I get the chance to begin.
 
I think rumors often ruin the announcement of a product because they are too factual. It is like doing research on all the different aspects of one subject and dissecting it until you have a 90 page report. I'd rather have wild speculation in addition; to balance out the uptight, so called, "mac politically correct" thinking. By the way, content is often more important than grammar.

So here is a normal speculation:
Nov. 23, 2004
Apple Computer is expected to release their new "Apple X4" line of products today based on the idea of their older machines. This is an exclusive line focused toward the low-end and educational market. As yet we haven't found any evidence if this product exists or the design ideas but we are working hard to find them and will report back as soon as we do.
 
I hate to interject again, but that's not speculation nor rumor -- that's pretending to be a reporter for a news/rumor site who is wildly speculating.

I mean, come on -- if you want to speculate about something and NOT have people react like, "Damn, shut up! That's idiotic and out of line! Man, that came out of left field! You got no evidence and it's just unfounded babbling!" then you could pose thoughts instead such as, "What if Apple were to return to the education market with an advertising campaign and new machines remeniscent of their older, OldWorld machines? I think that would help them re-take their lost share of the educational market as well as introduce some new machinery specific to that area." I guarantee that would be much more well-received than what has been going on here as of late.

What differentiates rumor from wild speculation is that wild speculation has absolutely no hope of coming true, or is either too far off in the future to determine whether it will happen or not, or is just too vague and becomes a blanket statement like, "Apple will release newer, faster machines in the future."

So far, every single time someone has accused someone of perpetrating wild speculation, it has fit into one of those categories and therefore was rightfully called "wild speculation" instead of "rumor."
 
Besides, they'd release something expensive on November 23rd...being that its my birthday. :)

Its funny, most people, myself included, thought we'd all hit a dry spell after the iMac G5 for rumors and speculation, but I think we've moved along quite nicely, considering we just had a major product announcement.
 
And we're still in kind of a dry period regarding Tiger - and yet there _is_ information about it. Wait until the Tiger builds get rolling. There'll be reports, there'll be questions, there'll be speculation... Someone somewhere will find support for a strange kind of machine in the new OS' code which will lead to 1.) wild speculation (including Apple Tablet and Newton II), 2.) educated guessing and finally rumours that will or will not come true when the product is finally announced. :)
 
In the time before the proliferation of the Internet Mac rumors were wide and far. With the Internet and the rise of the wild .Com stock boom & bust Apple has learned that rumors can hurt their company more than they can help. So they started by not giving press passes to rumor sites at Apple events. Then came the policy of Apple not putting all their eggs into one event (i.e. MacWorlds). They (Apple) are slowly pulling away from one or two yearly events. It's hard for them to do this (by the evidence) but they are slowly breaking old habits. We all know it is hard to break habits and Apple is in slow process of doing that.
 
My initial post was a two part post. I never expected it go in the direction that it did. The first half was an observation from a person only two years into this MAC industry. Although I have a life long career in data processing now known as information technology or whatever term du jour is used today. For the last 12 years I owned my own business selling networking products and building fiber optic subassemblies, attenuators, and patch cables. I have a switched CAT5 networking running Macs and XP machines, Ipod with a lot of other electronic "toys" in my home.

So I have seen trends and have been part of scientific wild ass guess (swag) rumors, and rumor droughts for a long time. Sometimes the lack of rumors "says" more than the spoken word. Which is what I was alluding to.

For all of my life I have had a sense of humor. The second part of my post was an attempt at humor and not a fact based or unbased rumor.

If I knew (as a switcher) knew that Steve Jobs hates two button mice I felt that I could use that in a group that has a lot more Mac experience than I, without using an emoticon. Many of you did. A few did not see the trees. I did not say which WMSF he would "announce" a G6 because it was only meant as humor. I mean think about it. The G5 is at the beginning of a product life not EOL.

Given the heat related problems of the G5 I used the word cool to describe the "G6"; not a word typically associated with a new processor even Intel. Given the heat problems of the G5 and the delays it has caused I used satire in the other extreme - it was too cool. So instead of the requiring water to cool a new processor but HEAT to cool the cool processor. You would need body heat via the keyboard or the mouse to cool it. SATIRE!
To all of those you who got it sorry for the explanation.

Those quick on the trigger with an ascerbic keyboard is what keeps so many of us as lurkers.

Back to the first half of the post. In the last 6-9 months APPX I have noticed that the rumor content has dropped off considerably. The new IMAC at Paris was a non event because it was preannounced earlier. It seems that a couple of other rumor sites have disappeared such as MACS Rumors and another one that I can't think of. The Airport Express Itunes product came out of nowhere and caught everybody by surprise. Do we think that this is the end of that product direction? I don't think so. (My opinion)

If you look at SpyMac they have changed their format away from a "Spymac orientation" to a hosting site. They used to be a good source prior to the change.

Think Secret and Mac Rumors and the Appleinsider seem to be quoting each other in terms of rumors vs posting individual new stuff on their own. If you look at the past rumors on their web site home page they seem to be commenting on info and photos released about Tiger, stating that new security updates are available, and have info about applications that are released. Most of their stuff after and prior to Paris was after the fact info.

I am sure that the delay of the G5 and the heat related problems have caused a lot of delays in other G5 product announcements. Also Steve' surgery might also have closed up lips around Apple.

Rumors that are wild are just that. Since at the start of product develop ment a small number of people are involved. The source of a leak at that stage of development would be easier to determine. As the product development evolves more people get involved (such as contract mfg, advertising, legal etc) and leaks of info become harder to determine. Sometimes the source may only reveal a slice of info to avoid detection.

So my unfact based swag guess is that something big is going to be announced later this year or early next. Probably in the home arena vs corporate mac usage or traditional office software. I believe that the Airport Express is the tip of the iceberg along with sharing and home applications. The last major new piece of application software was Garageband (that came out of nowhere as well).

I know that tablets and video sharing etc have been rumored for awhile but I have the feeling that this is being held so close to the vest and hence the lack of rumors.

Think about dashboard and a "tablet" controlling your home video, music via the MAC but also operating as a remote for your DVD, cable box, Receiver tuner. Maybe RSS to get your news as an alternative to watching it on CNN. Maybe using Expose as a way to get your cable providers version of TV guide to select channels, select home movies, select and PURCHASE streaming movies. Kit a key and bring up a virtual remote control. If you really want to "blue sky" why couldn't you use the Mac tablet and the dashboard as an X10 controller to dim the lights in your home while viewing or listening? Remember MS does not play well in this home application marketplace. So this could be ground breaking and maybe the tight lid on leaks.

Apple doesn't even have to deliver this for a year. IBM for years would preannounce OS's, CICS releases and DB announcements just to keep customers in the fold and competition at bay only to deliver a year or more away. With Longhorn being leaked and still a long way away. Apple could dominate in this market.

The brick and mortar video stores are losing business to the Internet rental companies. DSL is gaining popularity across the country, Is the next step on demand video? Steve Jobs is CEO at Pixar.

I am not trying to take credit for anything but my purpose for the original post was this sort of discussion.

To those that want to flame me. I have two words for you.

Hello, Newmann!

Moderator, I did not mean to caps so much in my last post. The text editing that this board provides does not work like traditional text editors, highlight and click. You are required to type what you want highlighted into a window. I wanted to highlight a sentence but forgot to close the window and I did not want to rekey the entire paragraph over.
 
I think users think that you rather wote too much than too much caps-locked. ;-)
 
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