Apple Screws With Rumor Sites' Livelihood.


We interrupt our regularly scheduled Help Desk to bring you an irate tirade against Apple!

We know you all love the Help Desk, but this involves an issue vital to the continued survival of this and all rumor sites!

Plus, we hate the Help Desk. It’s a pain in the ass. We all have to crowd into the booth and then we have to do actual research into Mac problems…

Well, not most of the time.

Actually, I can’t remember the last time we solved a Mac problem.

It involved cheese, though, whatever it was.

Anyway, getting back to the Apple and their horrible misdeeds. In an egregious event reminiscent of the week long countdown of insults leading up to Macworld San Francisco 2002

Heh. Hey, remember how that sparked the whole “sexbots” thing? Ha-ha! Ahhh…

Good times. Good times. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a Thursday and I had just finished my fifth Mickey’s Big Mouth…

Wait, that was yesterday.

Hmm. You know, I don’t remember 2002 at all. Still, I deny any accusations about what I might have done that year, completely. I don’t know what you’ve heard but I was nowhere near Cleveland in June when all those nuns were flashed.

Um… where was I?

Oh!

In a move that is clearly aimed at driving rumor sites out of business, much as Dashboard was clearly aimed at driving Konfabulator out of business…

(Is Konfabulator the company or just the product? I’ve never been able to figure that out.)

…Apple has gone so far as to announce that new iMacs are coming in September.

What is that?! What the fricking hell is that?! They just announce when a product is going to ship?!

That’s bullshit!

Put yourself in the shoes of your favorite rumor site (and they’d better be ours, dammit!). What the hell are we going to report on now?! Oh, sure, we can speculate on specs, pass on unsubstantiated emails about colors, shapes and features (and we will… oh, yes…), but most of your rumor reporting these days consists of speculation about when something will be released. It goes a little like this:

  • MONDAY: New iPods Tuesday!
  • TUESDAY: No, no! Wednesday!
  • THURSDAY: OK, they haven’t announced them yet, but we’re dead certain they’re going to be announced next Monday!
  • TWO WEEKS LATER: Uh… OK, look, mistakes were made…

Round up a couple of advertisers and you’ve got yourself a site, baby!

Um.

Well, that doesn’t paint us in a very flattering light. Actually, it’s a lot harder than that. Particularly if you’re hiring immigrants to do your reporting…

Or dogs. Or… neanderthals. You wouldn’t believe the paperwork.

But, to tell the truth, we didn’t really give a rip about this whole Konfabulator to-do when it was just Arlo Rose’s bacon that was getting fried up nice and crispy.

Sizzling hotly in a pool of its own grease… its delicious fragrance wafting throughout the house…

Damn, I could really go for some bacon.

But now it’s our bacon they’re frying! How am we going to attract advertisers like the fine folks at Rogue Amoeba, or the role models for kids of all ages at Loopware, if we can’t write for weeks on end about when new iMacs are coming?!

Or even those weirdos at the Missing Bite?

Don’t get me started on them. I’m still trying to get the smell of Velveeta and bourbon out of the carpet. That is the last time we are throwing an open house for advertisers!

Well, this is getting kind of long, so, to sum up, um, I call on all Apple rumor site readers to… uh… boycott… Apple.

Wait…

That doesn’t make any sense.