Rumor Roundup: Clickbaiters gonna clickbait
Once again, in their rush to be FIRST!, the rumor blogs whiffed it on their interpretation of a leaked schematic. I felt moderately embarrassed for them the first time this happened, but now it's just downright hilarious.
JP Morgan: Any 'iPhone 6' display shortage would have 'no impact' on sales, device launch (AppleInsider)
Some analyst says the recent rumors of supply shortages and "delays" won't affect Apple's bottom line, which is selling a metric megaton of iPhones in the next financial quarter.
Any time an analyst says something that actually makes sense, I start to get extremely anxious in a "dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria" kind of way.
TSMC expected to begin 16nm volume production for Apple's A9 chip in early 2015 (9to5 Mac)
This rumor comes "via Digitimes," which means the odds of it actually coming true are so close to zero that only mathematicians who've earned the Fields Medal can actually distinguish the probability from zero.
HUGE IPHONE 6 LEAK: Here's another major iPhone 6 change you didn't see coming (BGR)
Saved you a click: supposedly the next iPhone's box won't actually have a picture of an iPhone on it. This tumor (I meant to type rumor, but Freudian slip maybe?) is so dumb that I didn't see any of the other usual suspects pick up on it... so congrats, BGR, for having the "courage" to so obviously clickbait your audience.
Purported 'iPhone 6' speaker assembly revealed by Chinese repair firm (AppleInsider)
Another thrilling parts leak. This time, it's the speaker assembly! Ooo, ahhh, et cetera, whee. For its part, BGR calls this another key iPhone 6 component leak, and I'm once again forced to question whether any of their writers speak English as a first language, because the speaker assembly is clearly not a "key component" of the iPhone.
Bloomberg: Apple planning to release 12.9-inch iPad early next year (9to5 Mac)
The fact that my RSS feed exploded with variations on this headline, including from some outlets I actually consider reputable (in other words, not rumor blogs), proves one thing: people have rather inconveniently forgotten just how often and how egregiously incorrect Bloomberg's Apple rumors have been in the past. There has been absolutely no evidence for this so-called larger iPad other than the typical analyst nonsense and stories like this one sourced from "people with knowledge of the matter," who almost certainly have no actual knowledge of the matter.
Thinner MacBook to launch later this year or early 2015, according to report (9to5 Mac)
Now Digitimes is getting in on the act of predicting future MacBook Air launch dates. 9to5 Mac predictably falls on its journalistic face by not only failing to mention Digitimes' incredibly poor accuracy record, but more fundamentally by reblogging their nonsense in the first place.
Saved you a click: some ribbon cables featuring the next-gen iPhone's camera flash leaked. Again. Just like last week, when they actually leaked for the first time.
So, this clickbait headline is wrong on two counts: this is neither one of the iPhone 6's most interesting (rumored) features, nor is it the first time this particular part has leaked. Journalism!
More Evidence of NFC Support for Both iPhone 6 Models (MacRumors)
The word "more" in the headline implies there's been any legitimate evidence thus far that the next iPhone will have NFC. There hasn't been any. And this "more evidence" comes from a MacRumors forum member, which is a pretty loose interpretation of the word "evidence."
Apple Plans to Announce Wearable in September (re/code)
On one hand, John Paczkowski's record for these sorts of rumors is pretty much spot-on. On the other hand, there's been absolutely zero reputable evidence that the so-called "iWatch" even exists despite years of rumors. Going back to the first hand, there wasn't a whole lot of reliable physical evidence for the iPhone or the iPad in the months/weeks before their debuts, either.
The bottom line: at this point, I trust absolutely no one's word with regard to this device. Until or unless an Apple employee announces it on stage, it remains purely speculative.
