thomas fitzgerald.net

It never ceases to amaze me how the mac rumour site “Think Secret” can throw out a random rumour, call it fact and have everyone pick up on it. When they got subpoenaed by Apple last year, they were turned instant martyr and since then everyone has taken their word as gospel. And yet, their journalism, or lack thereof continues to hurt the mac market. Take the Aperture incident earlier this year, where they claimed Aperture’s future was in doubt. Only John Gruber over at Daring Fireball had the intelligence to actually do some research and point out their questionable conclusions. It’s not so much that they were wrong, but the way they jumped to conclusions. Shortly afterward Apple had to release a statement to denounce the rumour because everyone was picking it up without any questions what so ever. We now know that it was mostly nonsense but no one ever took Think Secret to task for it’s questionable journalistic methods with the exception of Mr. Gruber.

So once again yesterday, they published a note saying that the iPod shuffles had been delayed, based on the fact that Amazon had moved their estimated ship date forward. So let’s just assume that they have been delayed, rather than the obvious alternative, that they’re selling so many of them there’s a shortage. Even though they state in the article

“…the online Apple Store still specifies a ship date of October..”

they still open with a flat fact that

“Apple’s tiny new iPod shuffle, introduced during the company’s September 12 media event with a ship date of October, has been pushed back to the second-half of November.”

Not “may have been”, but “has been”

A short while after this was published other web sites began to report that the new Shuffles were shipping. Think secret finally updated their story with

“….suggesting that shipments may not be delayed as much as suggested, but that initial supply may just be tighter than expected.”

Why this wasn’t even considered an option in the original story is beyond me. Perhaps because a story about Apple screwing up is far more interesting than a story about them…well, not.