Chewy Apps

I don’t have any answers to this. This post is more of a question than anything else. Or maybe a statement of wonderment. Or of confusion.

Right now the latest rumours are of a 7″ iPad. But before that it was all about the tall screen on the next iPhone. And before that it was… oh I don’t remember anymore. I was talking to a guy a couple weeks ago, and he mentioned this prototype iPhone where a keyboard is projected onto a surface, and you could type using it. Yeah, I’d seen the video too. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was total fabrication. Because he thought it was real and Apple was working on it.

So why are there so many rumours? Why do people get so caught up in this stuff? And more importantly, why do some people believe this stuff?

Every day I read a bunch of Apple websites and blogs and scan for the latest news and information. Lots of what I scan are these rumours. I’ll scan the headline, but I rarely read the article. Sometimes I do, if the rumour is particularly interesting or fresh. But these rumours hardly ever come true, and generally I don’t want to waste my time reading them. The more crazy the rumour, the more likely it is to be false. Not news, I know. But then why do so many people fall for this stuff? Or do they not, and it’s all the equivalent of a high tech tabloid?

Gasp!

Do I read a tabloid? I’ve always scoffed at tabloids and their appeal-to-the-baseness-of-humanity mentality. Are rumours about Apple products the high tech equivalent of tabloids? Man, I hope not, because then I won’t be able to look myself in the mirror anymore. I read one of those rumours just last week!