Clearing Up a Myth About L'Affaire Apple/Engadget
While I think Engadget is a great site, and Ryan has already stabbed himself enough in apologizing for his misstep in running as news a spoofed internal Apple email, he and others are still missing an important point on this nutty episode.It's this: Sure, many people would run as news any official-sounding information, uncorroborated by Apple, about a delay in iPhone. But that's not the point. The real question is, Is there any way, without calling Apple, anyone could have known that the spoofed "internal" Apple email that started all of this was likely false?
You bet there is. Apple is a public company, and iPhone is a high-profile product. There is no way -- none -- Apple would first announce a dramatic change in iPhone availability via wide internal email. No way.
As a public company with material news Apple has to make broad distribution of this crucial information, and doing it via an internal email is a path to an avalanche of lawsuits. On that basis alone people should have known that the Apple email -- sent, as it was, to all sorts of internal Apple groups -- could not be for real. Apple is lots of things, but it is not a newbie at being a publicly traded company. The "who could have known" excuse just does not stand up.
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