Years ago, Apple published a developer magazine. I don’t even remember the name of it, but it covered various topics on programming on the Mac or Apple II, but it would also occasionally have humor articles. One in particular stuck with me.

The author said that when you are getting ready to start developing your application, the single most important thing to do is you need to develop a killer icon. The desktop icon could make or break your application and it really should be your first priority.

As humorous a suggestion as it was, I think what I found most amusing was that there was a slight bit of truth to it… or at least it didn’t come from that ridiculous a place in the mind of the developer.

As much as this was a big joke for Mac applications, I think it’s a pretty accurate view of the importance of App Store icons. I’ve often been asked my opinion why certain games seem to just take off in the App Store. Some seemingly simple games just seem to rocket to the top. What could it be?

While the type of game is certainly important, it seems pretty clear that a good icon and a good screenshot are the main impact you have on casual App Store shoppers.

The same question can be asked of what causes an app to skyrocket to the top 10 when featured by Apple? Apple is basically giving you an itty bitty banner ad in the most trafficked area of iTunes and your icon is what represents your app. It seems obvious this is going to make a difference in attracting potential customers.

These suspicions were corroborated by one small focus group study of iPhone usage published late last year. Comments by this small group of individuals indicated that icon design was pretty important in deciding what app to get:

I think that many developers have already realized the importance of their icon but are they really looking at it as scientifically as they could?

I’d think that a really serious iPhone developer would spend time working on a variety of icon designs and try to figure out which has the highest click through rate when lumped on a page with other icons.

These sort of A/B testing trials are done all the time with regular banner ads. Click through rates can vary substantially between different banner designs. And the most clickable designs aren’t always immediately obvious. For example, color choices alone can make a big difference in banner ads click through rates. And when dealing with featured App Store positioning, I’d think that a small percentage increase in click through rates could make a substantial difference in sales.

I’m not sure where such an experiment could take place, but it does raise some interesting possibilities.

Things have gotten even more competitive since with Gameloft and other studios drastically cutting their prices on older games down to $0.99. While this is good for consumers in the short term, the long term effects are potentially more troubling. There is a constant debate on TouchArcade as to these long term effects. One camp says that the App Store must sustain higher priced games in order to promote more quality titles. The other camp disputes this. I’m with the former camp, as is id Software’s John Carmack. In an interview, he said:

If [iPhone] games could have a reasonable shelf life at $9.99, you will start seeing multi-million dollar development budgets as the market continues to grow. But if it turns out the only way you end up being successful on the iPhone is games that cost a couple dollars, you’re never going to achieve that parity with the other handhelds.

One major effect of this $0.99 economy has been seen by EA’s announcement that they have created a micro-studio within the company to produce casual $0.99 iPhone titles. These titles are going to be in development just a short time (a month or so), presumably to recreate the success of some of the most popular games in the App Store, which also happen to be $0.99.

Let’s think about that for a second… EA is putting resources into low-risk casual $0.99 games. But imagine the flip side to this: What if EA had announced they were creating an division just to produce high quality iPhone original titles? Imagine big-budget original iPhone games with the resources of a major studio behind them.

Could it happen? If there was enough money in it, I’m sure it could happen… but it’s not going to happen at a $0.99 price point.

Now, I don’t blame consumers for buying $0.99 games, nor do I blame studios for following the money. But I do think the long term effects are going to result in a market of two types of games. 1) inexpensive casual titles and 2) inexpensive ports from other devices. Meanwhile, deep, high quality, iPhone original titles will become more and more scarce. Of course, the market will balance itself out over time, and opportunities will appear for developers to fill the gaps. I do expect downloadable content will result in more episodic apps with level packs and add-ons.

Indie developers are also going to be squeezed out further. There are only 100 spots in the top 100. Flight Control, Pocket God, Fieldrunners and Koi Pod pretty much have permanent spots. There are a few Chillingo titles that are on $0.99 sale that take up another 3 spots or so. A few major titles, a few novelty apps, and now EA’s $0.99 game of the month, and you’re down to fewer and fewer spots that you are really competing with.

Meanwhile, Apple is the only one with the power to really change the dynamics of the market through changes in the App Store rankings… but I’m not sure if they will. It’ll be interesting to see where things go from here.

Online Ads vs Newspaper Ads

Here’s a promising chart for all online-media folk published by Alley Insider.

Newspaper ads dropping, online ads keep growing… and they it looks like they’ll intersect in a few years. It’s no surprise, but interesting to see in chart form. So, good news for those who depend on online ad revenue.

Blogs vs. Mainstream

Like many, I do vanity-searches on my own name from time to time. One article that I ran across late last year was written by a journalist by the name of Amy Eagleburger. She wrote an article about how the mainstream media has been slow to adopt online and blogs. Nothing particularly groundbreaking but an interesting comment about MacRumors:

One of the many complaints from journalists is that they don’t have time to blog and write stories. So why aren’t newspapers hiring more professional bloggers? MacRumors.com is a blog Dr. Arnold Kim started as a hobby. It was so successful that he gave up his medical career to blog full time. He’s not just a guy in his pajamas but someone with a knack for news gathering. Why did that blog not start at a newspaper? I’ll admit that when I wanted to read about the new iPhone, I went to Kim’s blog before other publications.

That’s the million dollar question. Why wasn’t MacRumors (or any major blog) started by a newspaper? Or another mainstream media source?

In some ways, it seems absurd. Indeed, if you had asked the same question 5 years ago, the answer would have been simple: there’s no money in a “blogs” like MacRumors. In 2009, however, the answer is entirely different. There’s an enormous amount of money in online media which is becoming increasingly dominated by blog-like publications. And as a result, money is now being invested in these markets.

But besides money, however, I think a site like MacRumors succeeded because it was started by someone who was a genuine enthusiast of the topic and not just going for a paycheck. Especially then, there was no incentive for a traditional journalist to stay up late at night to report on the latest news and rumors. Those stories, if deemed news-worthy, would be published the following day. That fact wasn’t lost on the audience either, and MacRumors generated a reputation of frequently being the first source for news and also the place to connect with others.

Of course, there’s a million other reasons why traditional media was slow to adapt. It’s just the nature of the beast. People stick with what they know. Blog-style news simply didn’t fit into their belief system. Meanwhile, those without traditional journalism training just made it up as they went along.

Oh, we knew it was coming when they released the iPhone… but the iPod Touch is essentially Apple’s return to the PDA market and effectively ends future Apple PDA rumors.

iPod Touch is based on Apple’s new Touch OS X platform which we first saw with the iPhone. It’s OS X at its core, driven by a multi-touch screen. I think its inevitable that an official SDK will be released. I am excited to see where Apple takes this new platform.

Of course, this will only add fuel to the fire of Apple Tablet rumors….

The prototype keyboard photos that were posted to Chinese forum were real.

It really is a significant event that will make the rumor-mill a bit more exciting. For the first time, Apple has let photos of a pre-release product be widely distributed, and not take any efforts to suppress their distribution. Good or bad, this is going to make future “spy shots” harder to assess.

Whether or not the iPod UI will be a shipping product remains to be seen, but I think we’ll see the iPod UI shortly.

Engadget goes on to “debunk” this rumor, making a big deal about it.

Gizmodo even goes so far as to say that this is the reason why you should “Never ever trust rumors.” I’ll counter and say, this is why you should never ever trust rumors from sites that don’t regularly deal in Apple rumors. Now I think Gizmodo and Engadget do a great job in general, but they’ve never been a reliable source of original Apple rumors.

It’s no shock to me that someone submitted fake rumors to a popular gadget site. Submitting fake Apple rumors has been a long time sport. MacRumors gets fake submissions on a daily basis. If we posted every submission that sounded at all plausible, we would lose a lot of respect from our regulars.

In the first instance, some iPod user interface videos were leaked (and later pulled)

In the second, photos of a keyboard purporting to be an unreleased slim iMac keyboard was revealed (and never pulled).

With any supposed image leak, many self-proclaimed experts come out of the woodwork dissecting the images and video with “proof” about why said image is real or fake. For the record, in these instances, the general initial response leaned towards the iPod UI videos being fake (not designed by Apple) and the Keyboard being real (designed by Apple).

This general impression continued despite Apple’s Legal involvement with the iPod UI interface videos, and a notable lack of intervention with the iMac Keyboard photo.

In reading through comments across the web, there were some common claims. I’ve taken samples of these and quoted them here:

1. “Apple were probably the ones that requested this fake news be taken off the website” – GreenAlien

2. “Folks, Apple Legal always gets involved” – tobsterius

3. “…though it should be noted that Apple Legal has previously sought to squelch rumors of products that never materialized. The failed attempt to sue sources from the supposed “Asteroid” breakout box for GarageBand comes to mind.” – Charles Jade/Ars Technica

If you read on, I’ll show that, historically…

1) Apple Legal never gets involved for Images/Video of Fake Products
2) Apple Legal always gets involved for Images/Video Real Products
3) Apple Legal never asked Asteroid information to be pulled

Looking Back

First of all, I need to specify that in looking back we are looking at only leaked images/videos which Apple can rightly lay copyright / trade secret claims to. With a few exceptions, Apple Legal does not demand removal of textual descriptions of rumors of upcoming products.

Real Images

2000. PowerMac Cube Images – Pulled by Apple Legal.
2001. New PowerMac G4 Case Images (image) – Pulled by Apple Legal.
2002. Leaked Mac Pro Photo (Image) – Pulled by Apple Legal.
2004. New PowerMac Photos – Pulled by Apple Legal.
2004. Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Screenshots – Pulled by Apple Legal.

Notice a pattern? This doesn’t mean that a prototype or never-to-be-released product could never be leaked, of course. But the history is telling.

Of note, there is one exception to Apple Legal not getting involved with a real leaked image. The 5G Video iPod was leaked (image), but only 30 minutes prior to the keynote address for its release. I guess Apple Legal can’t quite act that quickly.

Fake Images

This list can go on forever. Some highlights of some of the more popular ones.

2001. iWalk
2003. PowerMac G5
2004. iMac G5
2005. iHome
2005. Video iPod
2006. Video iPod.

None of these or the thousands of other fake images floating around the internet have been pulled by Apple legal.

Once, there was a questionable claim by MacShrine that fake iPod AV shots have been removed by a “DMCA request” from Apple.

This claim, however, is highly questionable for a number of reasons:

1. No other site received a notice from Apple despite the images being widely distributed
2. Apple historically has never used the “DMCA” for these requests
3. MacShrine follows up with a Screw the DMCA post with another image that remains up to this day.

On Asteroid

Despite Apple’s legal action against individuals who leaked Asteroid information, Apple didn’t actually issue a cease and desist on the information that was leaked.

Appleinsider’s original Asteroid article remains online for you to read.

Conclusion

So, based on history, my final verdict is Keyboard Fake. iPod UI Real.

If you have an example of Apple pulling a fake image or not pulling a real product image, I’d like to know.

We take rumors seriously — well before it was popular to do so — and we certainly don’t make up stories just to draw traffic.

But it’s one thing to say that, but another for readers to really believe it.

Recently, the site had a run in with Apple’s legal team which required us to remove some content from the site. As always, the removal itself generated a big stir/discussion.

Some outside users not familiar with the site even questioned whether or not we might have just made up the legal request. Responses to that accusation (from random passersby) included:

Because [MacRumors.com] doesn’t bullshit on things like that. They’re fairly conservative with their reporting, actually, have a whole section devoted to sketchy rumors, and note skeptically the history of sites when linking. — lookmark

and

MacRumors is a trusted source. They don’t post fake [Cease and Desists]. — MMissive

These comments in particular made me proud of MacRumors.

With increasing media coverage of everything Apple, as well as the impressive growth of their stock, it seems financial analysts are covering Apple in increasing detail and frequency.

I won’t claim to know the business side of these analyst publications, but they have become a frequent topic in the Mac rumor world since analyst reports frequently predict Apple’s future plans.

However, from a rumor-analysis standpoint, these analyst reports tend to offer very little new information and introduce a fair amount of confusion.

My major problem with analyst reports is that they never cite their sources and intermix speculation into their predictions. It then becomes impossible to determine the original source of the information and its credibility. Frequently it seems they are simply reciting information that has already been reported on the internet. This may not be important to financial customers (admittedly, their target audience) but from a predictive standpoint, makes their information next to useless.

A few examples:

In May, Gene Munster of PiperJaffray reported after Apple’s shareholder meeting that an iTunes video rental would likely be available in 2008:

“Timing of this is difficult to determine, but we would expect [iTunes video rentals] sometime in 2008″

This interpretation and 2008 target date was apparently derived from this rather vague sequence of events:

When a shareholder asked Jobs for high-definition video content on iTunes and asked if his Apple TV could allow him to rent movies, the CEO smiled. “One never knows,” he said cryptically.

In a more recent report, Munster reports that he believes that the MacBook Pro is coming at WWDC and an iMac “possible” as well. These expectations echo reports posted by ThinkSecret (MacBook Pro, iMac) in May.

Is it possible that Munster obtained this information from his own sources? Possible, but without ever citing his sources, it’s difficult to trust information that has likely been recycled from existing reports.

Of interest, our analysis of ThinkSecret’s MacBook Pro report documents a 182 average update length for the MacBook Pro which is tracked in our MacRumors Buyer’s Guide.

In the same report from Gene Munster, he demonstrates that he also uses MacRumors Buyer’s Guide for part of his research:

He notes that on average, the Cupertino-based company has updated its professional notebooks every 182 days, with the most recent generation having launched 209 days ago. Similarly, he said, iMacs have traditionally seen updates every 168 days but the current generation is now a whopping 257 days old.

These numbers correlate exactly to the Buyer’s Guide averages. Some have asked couldn’t he have come up with these numbers on his own? It’s possible, but exceedingly unlikely as he would have had to choose the same releases (2002 PowerBook, 2003 iMac) to start counting in order to achieve the exact same averages.

My intent wasn’t to single out one analyst in particular, but just to show the problems with using their reports to potentially corroborate existing rumors.

We hesitatingly republished this report with some caveats.

As it turns out, the report was wrong, but I don’t necessarily blame Engadget. The circumstances surrounding this rumor were unusual, to say the least. Someone actually managed to spoof an email to Apple staffers through an official Apple email distribution list. As a result, it must have seemed quite legitimate.

Regardless, I think it brings up some interesting issues in blogging circles and in the Apple rumor scene in general.

If anything, as a rumor site, MacRumors is surprisingly conservative in republishing rumors. Apple rumors are a high-interest niche and rumors can generate a lot of traffic. This wasn’t actually always the case. Only a few years ago, before blogs became significant news sources, rumors were actively avoided in the mainstream Mac press. Now, it seems rumors are everywhere… and many wanna-be blogs will post wild unsubstantiated claims just to try to gain a viewership.

Because of this potential abuse, we’ve always avoiding spreading rumors from questionable sources. In part, this was the reasoning behind splitting some stories into a separate Page 2.

This may seem a bit paternalistic, but no matter how many caveats we place on a rumor, there is always a group of people who believe it.

But what happens when the rumor-source is as big or bigger than MacRumors?

With mac/gadget/industry blogs jumping quickly on the craziest of Apple rumors, is there any value in not publishing these stories?

Probably not. Much of the value of MacRumors is the rumor community who loves to comment on the latest news and rumors… so we’ve been a bit more liberal about posting these stories.