Normalkid:Arnold Kim

Tiernan Ray of Tech Trader Daily posted a piece the other day about what sounds like a great story: a rumor site confirming one report by using the same report!

Now, this sort of thing has probably happened over the years (though I hope not by MacRumors), and is in part the reason I generally dislike analysts reports. Analyst reports frequently seem to reflect the circulating rumors and when they consolidate and publish their reports, it frequently results in somewhat of an echo-chamber.

The MacRumors story in question cited a PCWorld article this week which described a new analyst report. The report, however, was actually not new and was a re-reporting of one published one week prior.

Without access to the reports, I took PCWorld’s word on it, which I think is a forgivable mistake, though it didn’t really change the meat of the story.

Now, Ray claims the following:

Even more hilarious, in the Macrumors post, the author says that the phantom report from today about updates to the Mac laptops and iPods is “consistent with whispers we’ve heard.” And he cites … ta da! A post from AppleInsider last week commenting on the original August six note. Oy vey.

The problem with this is that it’s clear that he followed the “consistent with whispers” link but didn’t actually read it.

I understand where the confusion might have come, as it does link back to our first reporting of the same analyst report. But that story also included an original source from us, which is what I was referencing:

While rumors have focused on new iPod nanos, we [MacRumors] have heard whispers that an iPod Touch update is also likely in the same timeframe.

So, obviously, this is a rather minor point and I initially just brushed it off, though after seeing it picked up elsewhere, I felt I had to respond.

I know some of you might think that it’s not that big a deal since these are all rumors, but I’ve said before, I take rumors very seriously. And MacRumors, as a rule, takes a particularly skeptical look at most claims.

Last year, I wrote an article about how Digitime’s accuracy with relation to Apple-related rumors had been very poor. It based on their historic results at the time. Things have changed considerably, however, and I try to give credit where credit is due.

Over the past year, Digitime’s accuracy has been remarkably good with respect to Apple related rumors, and I now pay close attention to their reports. All the following reports turned out to be true:

Leopard Delayed
LED Apple Notebooks
Wifi/Flash iPod
13.3″ Screens for upcoming Apple Laptop (ended up being the Air)
September iPods

So, good job Digitimes…

As MacRumors editor, I read a lot of random articles…. and one of the most frustrating things is finding what sounds like a good relevant article… which at first glance seems fine, in the end, doesn’t quite make sense.

Here’s one I found yesterday:

Why Apple’s secretive approach is so effective - some researchers studied the effects of pre-announcing and not pre-announcing products and how that affected consumer spending.

It’s this pre-release hype makes people much more careful about what they buy. If you tell them that something is coming at some point in the future, they will evaluate everything that’s out there very carefully. But if you just drop something into their laps, all they’ll think about is the brand. And if they like that, ker-ching!

To sum up:

Pre-release announcement = more cautious buying habits
Immediate release = impulse buying

The article presumes that Apple takes advantage of this psychological tendency. The problem lies in the exact definition of “immediate release”. The research article isn’t published yet, so we have to rely on a press release.

If you define “immediate release” as actually available in stores (to see and touch), then Apple’s brand new products rarely fall in this category. Apple TV, Apple TV 2.0, iPhone, MacBook Air all had week to month lead times before they were available. The iPhone, itself, was 6 months from release, and no pre-orders were possible.

So how does this help prove the author’s point? I don’t think it does at all.

Now if you redefine “immediate release” to “can preorder immediately”, then an argument can be made for the MacBook Air. Apple announced the Air, and you could impulsively buy it, without doing research. Ok sure…

But what about Apple TV? The original one (codenamed iTV) was pre-announced months in advance, even before it adopted the “Apple TV” name. So, this would argue that Apple suffered (not benefited) from this pre-announce strategy.

What about the iPhone? Apple pre-announced the iPhone on January 9, 2007. No pre-orders were available and it wasn’t available until June 2007.

It was a nice theory, with some actual research to back it up, but in the end Apple’s “secretive approach” seems to have no correlation with this research.

This year, MacRumors’ coverage of the Macworld San Francisco 2008 keynote address knocked it out of the park. Reviews were universally positive, and it makes me really proud of what we’ve accomplished.

What makes this accomplishment even more impressive is that we’re a relatively rag-tag crew pulling it together against better funded sites with far better keynote access. No one at MacRumors is a full timer. At present, we’re still a combination of part-timers and volunteers.

In the end, I was unable to get a “keynote” media pass to Macworld. No big surprise — despite our size, MacRumors doesn’t get much recognition from Apple (or IDG). This, however, means that I had to buy my own ticket (Superpass) into the Keynote, and stand in line to get a good seat. Of course, the night before I became nervous about not getting a good enough seat… which means I ended up on the sidewalk at 1am (and I wasn’t first in the Superpass line) the night before trying to get some sleep. I got maybe an hour of sleep before people starting milling about, and I started getting uncomfortably cold. So, I ended up chatting and moving around (to keep warm) for the next 7 hours while I awaited keynote access.

In the end, it was me and Jeff Longo in the Keynote providing updates from mid-way-back seats. We had a volunteer crew at home handling the server side and processing data. But that was enough to provide the best keynote coverage on the web.

I like to think that due to our limited resources, we’ve had to work smarter and harder in order to keep up. We also aren’t restricted by the ever-important “page view” metric that tends to drive the more commercial sites’ coverage. We employed additional servers and multiple Content Delivery Network (CDN’s) to support keynote traffic, but due to our efficient setup, we are able to run it at a fraction of the cost.

I’m sure competition will increase, especially after our success this year, but we’ll continue to step up our features. This year, we added large (640×480) photos, and an iPhone/iPod touch formated site. There will be more to come.