A new Apple rumor, and the reason we're writing about it
Executives must dream of the free publicity Apple's Steve Jobs enjoys when his fandom is anticipating a new product.
Gizmodo is reporting Tuesday that someone "very, very close" to the 3G iPhone launch has confirmed that Apple will unveil the new iPhone during the June 9 keynote address at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference at San Francisco's Moscone Center. The phone should be available right after the keynote, Gizmodo reports. This is pretty much what an analyst report released last week from from Piper Jaffray said was going to happen.
Have you read anything about this gizmo?
As you can tell by this page on Google News, the 3G iPhone is easily the most hotly anticipated way to spend disposable income on a gadget since the original iPhone was released last summer.
Reporters, of course, love to grouse about product rumors, even as we dutifully write about them. (Far be it for us to deny the public the rumor du jour!) But we do it for a reason beyond the obvious page view benefits of intense Apple coverage: It's interesting.
In an era of me-too Web applications and shelves full of PCs and cell phones barely distinguishable from one another, Apple still manages to do something different. Love them or hate them, they're innovators.
As my colleague Tom Krazit wrote last summer on the morning of the iPhone launch: "There's an intense interest in anything related to Apple among the technology community. Whether people come to praise it or damn it, Apple evokes a passion rarely found in other sectors of the business world...Apple had to be taken seriously because of how the iPod changed the way people listened to music. The company earned that sort of credibility the old-fashioned way; it wasn't bestowed on them by a fawning press or rabid fanboys (for the most part)."
A year later, what Tom wrote is more true than ever. Yes, Apple gets lots of free publicity. In fact, Harvard Business School professor David Yoffie estimated last year that the iPhone generated $400 million in free publicity for Apple. A little embarrassing for those of us in the news business? Sure. But as reporters covering the technology industry, we're as curious as you about what Jobs has up his sleeve.
So we'll stop writing about it when you stop reading about it and Apple stops producing interesting stuff--none of which anyone expects to happen anytime soon.
Jim Kerstetter has been writing about the high-tech industry for more than 13 years, as a senior editor at PC Week, a Silicon Valley correspondent at BusinessWeek, and now an executive editor at CNET News. He moved back to Boston because he missed the Red Sox. E-mail Jim. 
I bet what most slowed down the 2G to 3G move in the US is the need for new licenses for the UMTS technology -- that and the general perception that building out the network isn't going to get people to buy more data service.
The article (and all the buzz) is talking about 3G as it pertains to the Generation of wireless technology. iPhone Ver 1.0 = 2.5G (GSM/EDGE), Ver 2.0 = 3G (UMTS/HSPA).
Personally, I'm ready for the day when a company can make a phone that's just.... a phone.
Anyway, until email is searchable, I can't use the iPhone productively.
And the blogger leaves out the iMac and iBook, which busted back into the consumer and education realms with a vengeance. The progression went iMac, iBook, iPod, iPhone in order of hardware products that brought Apple back from nothing to meaning something again in the mainstream. In terms of software, the products were Final Cut Pro, OSX, and iTunes, none of which were based on Apple software? ;)
So... a piece of software has to be built from the ground-up in-house in order for the company to get respect for it?
FCP, OSX, and iTunes are great pieces of software on the Mac platform now because of what Apple did after they purchased them. Of course, suggesting that OSX is nothing more than a rebranded NeXT OS is disingenuous at best, but just take iTunes for example. iTunes became the great software it now is, not because it's a great MP3 juke box (although it is, and so was its predecessor) but because of the integration that was formed between it, the iPod, and iTunes Music Store, which was completely of Apple/Jobs doing.
I'll stick with my Black Berry...and when it wears out, I'll buy another Black Berry.
Apple makes some neat looking products - and I own two 30 gig ipods and a 4 gig nano...but that's where it ends.
Much as the original Macintosh bundled personal computer + GUI . That left Bill Gates playing catchup for a decade.
Is it true? Unknown
Is it newsworthy? No, because it's not known if it is true.
Will People read about it? Yes
Publish story? Yes
Let's apply this standard to this one now:
Steve Jobs routinely had employees tortured for fun.
Is it true? Unknown
Is it newsworthy? No, because it's not known if it is true.
Will People read about it? Yes
Publish story? Yes
Hmm. Notice how both stories would be published by news.com because it would pass the same stringent news standard.
Wonder if they'll ever get Apple TV or its replacement to generate the same level of interest?
If what you write were true, and if what you describe is as simple as you appear to suggest, then why is it so difficult for Apple's competitors to cash in by doing the same thing?
Sounds like just more sour grapes to me...
I don't want Rolls Royce, but I also don't feel the need to complain about the fact that others might want to or that such a thing as a RR exists. Save your energy for all those futuristic phone calls you're looking forward/back to.
- by socalfinest23 May 22, 2008 11:11 AM PDT
- moron - 3G not 3rd Generation.....it's 3G technology vs. the EDGE - so ur internet is faster for u to download new Sanjaya videos u tool....
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