Normalkid

I feel weird about defending Digitimes immediately after writing how likely it was they are wrong, but…

First, I don’t have anything personal against Digitimes. My entire online-life revolves around evaluating how likely a rumor really is. My previous blog post simply pointed out that based on prior rumor accuracy, Digitimes has been wrong far more than right. (91% wrong based on known information).

Now that Apple has released a version of Boot Camp that supports Vista, many users are crying out that Digitimes was clearly wrong in their “Leopard Delayed due to Boot Camp” rumor.

The problem is this: Apple releasing Boot Camp supporting Vista doesn’t actually disprove Digitimes’ rumor. Digitimes’ claim was very specific:

The sources pointed out that the launch delay is not due to software design problems with Leopard but instead is attributed to Apple’s plan to have its new OS support Windows Vista through an integrated version of Boot Camp.

An “integrated” version of Boot Camp would be something closer to Parallels for Mac OS X. More specifically, something closer to Parellels’ Coherence mode which allows Windows applications to run side-by-side with Mac applications under Mac OS X.

Now, that being said… I’m not saying it’s any more likely to be true — again, based on their prior record they’ve been wrong far more than right. But let’s give them proper credit (or dis-credit) based on what they actually said.

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:

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As the “MacRumors guy”, I take rumors very seriously. One common misconception that appears again and again is the lack of distinction between “Rumor” and “Speculation”.

I find it surprising that I need to spell out this distinction, but it’s a recurrent source of confusion on the Mac web.

In November 2006, I got a call from a reporter writing about the building iPhone hype and was specifically questioned about the rumors that Apple might sell the iPhone as an “unlocked” phone and allow customers to simply use their own SIM cards. Perhaps I was being pedantic, but I responded by saying that this was not actually a rumor. Instead, I said that this was just one person’s opinion on what Apple could do.

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