Normalkid:Arnold Kim

When you have an established site, one of the most tumultuous events that can happen is a major site redesign. No matter what the changes are, no matter what the improvements are, there is always a very vocal group of people who simply hate it.

Now, to be fair to those users, changing the look and feel of a site that they’ve grown accustomed to is certainly a disorienting experience.

Macworld is about to undergo a major site redesign and has already seen a bit of criticism based on the beta site. The other scary part of their move is a change in forum software from UBB.threads to Jive. I suspect the outcry from that move alone could drown out any criticisms of their site design. Hopefully, they’ve spent time to make the forums “feel” the same as it did under UBB.threads. Good luck!

The fear of a site-redesign has what kept MacRumors in its current form for the past 4 years. But lately I’ve decided that its time to look into a site redesign and we’re starting to look for the right designer to do it.

The latest unsubstantiated Apple rumor is making its way through the web. This time in the form of a T-Mobile flyer which claims the iPhone will be released on November 12th with 3G networking and a 16GB option.

The ad was first published by MacBidouille with the lead in that “an anonymous reader sent us this image”.

That’s red flag #1.

We also received this image at MacRumors before it was published. The anonymous submission linked to a rapidshare file sharing link with no backstory. Just a link to an image that purportedly depicts an ad from T-Mobile.

What’s the likelihood that this is legitimate? Almost zero, I’d guess.

I’m not one to try to pick apart the technicalities of the ad - why this word or that word wasn’t translated correctly. Instead, just looking at the scenario points to the fact that anonymous uncorroborated submissions that are sent to a number of sites simultaneously are rarely true. Instead, they typically represent someone trying to get some attention.

Anonymous uncorroborated submissions with links to an image have an even worse track record.

Update: With the release of the UK iPhone with EDGE and 8GB, this rumor has essentially been proven wrong. Apple’s unlikely to release a 16GB/3G iPhone in Germany only.

In July, there was a leak of what was purported to be the upcoming iPod user interface. Today, Apple released the new iPod Nano and iPod Classic with the new user interface that was leaked.

How did people do in analyzing the videos? Well, it just goes to show that despite people claiming to be confident… most people can’t tell.
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VersionTracker and MacFixIt have been acquired by CNET.

I’m really excited about this. It gives VersionTracker—and our sister sites, iPhone Atlas and MacFixIt—more resources to grow and gives us higher visibility than I could have ever imagined for our humble site. It also gives CNET a stronger presence in the Mac market than ever before. I think that says a lot about what we’ve been able to create here at TechTracker.

Interesting. Perhaps the biggest Mac-site acquisition ever.