On Reporting Rumors

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With Apple’s WWDC keynote less than a week away, most of the Internet has lit its hair on fire and is running in circles, moving from one rumor site to another, trying to glean information on what Tim Cook and company might announce.

While a look at Mountain Lion and iOS 6 seem inevitable, rumors now say the entire Mac line might get updated. They’ll have Retina displays, or at least USB 3. Google Maps is getting kicked the curb (perhaps), on Apple’s fancy-ass, big-and-tall iPhone 5. (Or iPhone 6. OMG WHAT DO WE CALL IT?)

At the very least, sources say, all of Apple’s new hardware and software will include a new coating of unicorn fairy magic dust.

There’s no denying that rumors drive a shit ton of page views. Lots of people are genuinely interested in them, and they fill the time leading up to an event, but I think we as “Apple bloggers” are over-doing it.

With the large number of Apple-centric websites, it seems more and more like the whole scene is a big echo chamber. While some writers do have sources within Apple, the majority of them do not. Some in that majority write like they do, anyways.

This means that a story gets bounced around 100 times, with 100 mediocre writers adding 100 mediocre points to it. By the time I hit refresh in Reeder, what should have been a simple story is all over the place.

It’s all very tiring.

So, this morning, I deleted the “Apple News” folder from my Google Reader account.

We’ll see what sites make it back in there after WWDC.

Most Macs To Be Refreshed During WWDC?

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AppleInsider says yes.

This makes me wonder about the release schedule for Mountain Lion. Either it’s ready now, and these machines will ship with it, or we’ll see a Lion update (or new build, at least, for these machines), with 10.8 coming later this summer. If it does, then at least the company’s “Back to School” sale will be stuffed with new Macs.

31 Months

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Chris Ziegler:

Thirty-one.

That’s the number of months it took Palm, Inc. to go from the darling of International CES 2009 to a mere shadow of itself, a nearly anonymous division inside the HP machine without a hardware program and without the confidence of its owners. Thirty-one months is just barely longer than a typical American mobile phone contract.

On iOS and Google Maps

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According to MacRumors, Apple will be dumping Google Maps on iOS for its own in-house solution.

Of course, as I broke back in March, iPhoto for iOS doesn’t use Google Maps currently. Many have seen this as a dry run for a much bigger change.

If Apple moves away from Google Maps, many will view it as a sign of the growing rift between the two companies. While I do think Apple and Google are more competitive with each other than ever before, I think Apple’s primary reason for such a change is that the company thinks its own solution can offer users a better experience.