The latest Digitimes.com rumor has hit the Mac web again. The claim this time is that Apple is delaying Mac OS X Leopard until October 2007.
For whatever reason, Digitimes seems to draw the attention of the mainstream Mac web as well as other random bloggers. I’m not sure why there seems to be a sense of authority behind their rumors, but Gizmodo even claimed today that they were “usually pretty spot-on about Apple rumors.”
I can tell you right now that this is not the case. At MacRumors.com, we’ve even tried to stop linking to their stories due to their historical inaccuracy, in an attempt to prevent their spread. The problem with this strategy is two-fold.
1) Sites that have larger viewership than ours have started publishing these reports, so any attempt to suppress these rumors is relatively futile.
2) Readers continue to submit the rumor and do want to discuss it in our forums.
As a result, we’ve continued to publish these rumors — mostly on Page 2, with heavy disclaimers about Digitimes’ accuracy.
I thought I’d take some time and recap their rumor history again for those keeping track. Here are Digitimes rumors reported on MacRumors over the past 5 years along with their outcomes:
15″ MacBook in 2nd Quarter 2007 (2007) – Unknown
LED-Lacklit Apple Laptops (2007) – Possible
Apple Notebook with Robson Caching (2006) – Possible
AMD Apple Laptop (2006) – Wrong
Wireless iPods (2006) – Wrong
Apple 17″ Widescreen LCD (2006) – Wrong
2GB and 4GB iPod Shuffles (2005) – Partially True – 2GB and 4GB Nanos
Apple Widescreen iBook (2005) – Wrong
PowerBook G5 and iBook G5 (2005) – Wrong
Intel Mac Mini, iBook, iMac due June 6 2006 (2005) – Wrong
15.4″ Powerbook (2003) – Wrong
Wireless Apple Tablet (2003) – Wrong
Termination of 17″ iMac (2003) – Wrong
19″ iMacs (2002) – Wrong
Here are the stats:
14 rumors total. 1 True. 10 Wrong. 2 Possible. 1 Unknown.
I’ll leave it to the reader to decide how likely it is that this latest rumor will come true.
Normalkid 
Very well put, they seem very useless.
BTW Do you mean 2GB and 4GB Nano’s not shuffles right?
actually, you’re right. They ended up being 2GB and 4GB nanos. If you give them the benefit of the doubt, then it could be considered partially true.
updated the article.
arn
So not one truly true rumor to their name.
MacRumors tries to separate the wheat from the chaff, not that this is always easy, that’s why I like your site. 🙂 Gizmodo’s Travis Hudson should remind the reader that Digitimes is usually unreliable but at least he adopted a conservative tone. He doesn’t seem to believe Digitimes: “Gizmodo, or I, rather, seems to think more toward the Arstechnica side of things. WWDC in June would be the perfect time for a Leopard release.” For a guy not specialized in Mac rumor mongering, that’s not too bad.
Now when it comes to Digitimes and the accuracy of the latest rumor, you should read this.
http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/analysts/gartenberg/archives/2007/03/is_leopard_dela.html
Good to hear that they are useless at the rumour game. I worried for a split-second that I’d have to wait even longer to switch to the mac.
For an outline of why Digitime’s speculation about Leopard is is wrong:
Leopard, Vista and the Boot Camp Delay Myth
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/5209A3EE-03DE-42CA-8A27-55DBF41C6F5D.html
Sounds like a great addition to macrumors… “True or False. On the questionable rumors… have people poll on if they believe the rumor or not.
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It’s great that people are finally starting to call Digitimes out as the story thieves and liars that they really are.
I thought Digitimes was good when I first saw it. It was at the top of my daily read list for 6 months. Then I realized they’re just making shit up half of the time. They have so many stories which don’t check out later, or they don’t even make sense when you read through from the top to the bottom.
Another thing, they rip stuff straight out from blogs all the time and pretend they found it out on their own. The bloggers in China and Taiwan who found the story get no credit.
I don’t mean it’s not OK to make mistakes, and of course it’s OK to link to stories from other sources, but Digitimes steals content, makes a buttload of mistakes which it never corrects, and still pretends to be professional MSM publication.
So prophetic now.
IT’S OCTOBER 2007, AND WHEN IS LEOPARD BEING RELEASE?….OCTOBER 26TH
I GUESS DIGITIMES WAS RIGHT AFTER ALL. I GUESS MACRUMORS.COM DOESN’T GET THE INSIDE SCOOP AFTER ALL AND THEN THEY PUT DOWN THE ONE PUBLICATION THAT GETS ITS RIGHT.
DIGITIMES MAY NOT ALWAYS BE RIGHT, BUT NEITHER IS MACRUMORS.COM
OH AND BTW THE “AMD/ATI/FUSION” POWERED APPLE LAPTOP WILL BE RELEASED IN 2008. I KNOW BECAUSE I KNOW, WANT TO DISCREDIT ME TOO?
If you read the story, it’s never been personal, and I even said later on that Digitimes could be right about this rumor:
http://normalkid.com/2007/03/29/digitimes-could-still-be-right/ (before it turned out they were right.)
And since on MacRumors.com I’ve noted that Digitimes has been quite accurate recently.
It’s all about track record. If anyone posts 10/14 wrong rumors, (and 3/14 of unknown outcome) they don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. Digitimes’ recent record recently is much better and that’s reflected in our recent reports. But fair’s fair and I’ll post an update on their track record.
arn
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You do realize you need to update your wrong/right numbers? Fail.
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