iPhone on June 20th? Sure, whatever

Last Thursday, CNBC reported a launch date for the iPhone of June 20. This sent Apple stock upwards on Friday, but now our sister blog BloggingStocks points out that there's basically no hard information on the exact launch date, and that the CNBC report was apparently based on the word of a single AT&T phone store employee. The AP did a little legwork, contacting several AT&T stores in New York and getting all kinds of dates from June 11 to 22. Official spokesmen from Apple and AT&T declined to give anything more specific than what we've known all along-"late June." Even the slightly-more-high-end approach of calling headquarters hasn't locked down the date.

So what to make of all this? Well, BloggingStocks is surely right to conclude that AT&T store clerks probably know next to nothing about the actual timetable. Further, there's something kind of crazy about the frenzy that one random AT&T store employee can cause with what was little more than speculation. We'll see the iPhone when we see it, and we'll know more at WWDC. We can hope that Apple does a little better than with the Apple TV release.