What REALLY happened with the G5 Specs

sounds like the most probably situation...

i suppose we will better know on monday

Word-of-mouth for the 21st century

I think it was a marketing ploy.

Word-of-mouth is the most effective form of advertising. I think this is an example of international word-of-mouth advertising in the early 21st century.

I'd bet the 'accidental' post was an attempt to arouse interest in the WWDC and whatever annnouncements may come of it. It would be another example of Apple using free advertising instead of doing conventional ads. After all, what more effectively generates news than controversy?

The plan goes like this:
1. Apple posts the G5 specs on an evening close to the WWDC (when most people are on-line at home)
2. The enthusiastic masses witness the apparent goof and alert the already-busy Apple-related sites
3. Apple pulls the specs off it's site
4. The 'news' reaches 'reputable' sites, spreading the word quickly across the internet
5. Apple does not confirm or deny anything, it just puts it's legal team into action for verisimilitude.

The result: Apple draws even greater attention to itself, just before the WWDC.

If my theory is right— good job Apple. You created a buzz. Let's hope the stats are true or less than what you'll actually deliver.

Re: Word-of-mouth for the 21st century

Originally posted by Phazer80s
I think it was a marketing ploy.

Word-of-mouth is the most effective form of advertising. I think this is an example of international word-of-mouth advertising in the early 21st century.

I'd bet the 'accidental' post was an attempt to arouse interest in the WWDC and whatever annnouncements may come of it. It would be another example of Apple using free advertising instead of doing conventional ads. After all, what more effectively generates news than controversy?

The plan goes like this:
1. Apple posts the G5 specs on an evening close to the WWDC (when most people are on-line at home)
2. The enthusiastic masses witness the apparent goof and alert the already-busy Apple-related sites
3. Apple pulls the specs off it's site
4. The 'news' reaches 'reputable' sites, spreading the word quickly across the internet
5. Apple does not confirm or deny anything, it just puts it's legal team into action for verisimilitude.

The result: Apple draws even greater attention to itself, just before the WWDC.

If my theory is right— good job Apple. You created a buzz. Let's hope the stats are true or less than what you'll actually deliver.

Click to expand...

This was my first impression as well. I can't think of a better way to pump the hype just a few days before the big event.

Guess what? It worked!

Mass delusions...

Brought on by the fumes created by accelerating too many electrons in the quest for information related to this year's WWDC.

Either that or some bad sushi.

apple most certainly did not do this on purpose... if you knew anything about steve jobs, you'd know he's such a control freak... there's no way he's going to spoil the surprise in his keynote. He's probably furious that his little *ooh, ahh* speech is being overshadowed... if people know what he's releasing ahead of time, he couldn't make it nearly as dramatic (and he does have a flair for the dramatic)...

my guess is also that it was uploaded or set online accidently, and it took a little bit for them to realize their error-- probably when the apple store traffic spiked about 1000%, they decided to take a look...

pnw

paulwhannel:

I think you are misusing "most certainly" because nothing about this appears certain.

Note that Apple only made a small "error" that revealed only some key specs. No pictures were leaked, no prices, no shipping dates. I think S.J. is far more interested in surprising people about the case design and actual speeds in new-age bakeoffs than he is in revealing some numbers that really don't mean all that much by themselves.

We all pretty much know that Apple's next machines have some big numbers associated with them. Now S.J. gets to tell us and show us why we want to buy those machines.

Re: Word-of-mouth for the 21st century

Originally posted by Phazer80s
I think it was a marketing ploy.

Word-of-mouth is the most effective form of advertising. I think this is an example of international word-of-mouth advertising in the early 21st century.

I'd bet the 'accidental' post was an attempt to arouse interest in the WWDC and whatever annnouncements may come of it. It would be another example of Apple using free advertising instead of doing conventional ads. After all, what more effectively generates news than controversy?

The plan goes like this:
1. Apple posts the G5 specs on an evening close to the WWDC (when most people are on-line at home)
2. The enthusiastic masses witness the apparent goof and alert the already-busy Apple-related sites
3. Apple pulls the specs off it's site
4. The 'news' reaches 'reputable' sites, spreading the word quickly across the internet
5. Apple does not confirm or deny anything, it just puts it's legal team into action for verisimilitude.

The result: Apple draws even greater attention to itself, just before the WWDC.

If my theory is right? good job Apple. You created a buzz. Let's hope the stats are true or less than what you'll actually deliver.

Click to expand...

And there you go. Exactly what happened.

-All

The only reason why Apple would do this is to drum up attention for an announcement that is, in fact, greater than what was leaked.

Personally, I think it was a screwup, but hey, I'm hoping that the specs are even greater

lol who cares? i'm buying one

Argh! It wasn't on purpose:

WWDC doesn't *need* any more hype from those who are interested in it outside of the developer community, we've been frothing at mouth for this for weeks, Apple wouldn't need to make us even more exicted.

Steve Jobs loves the surprise, he wants to be the one up there giving us the machines that are *faster* than we thought, he doesn't want to be over shadowed

Apple doesn't play with the rumour sites, I don't know where this idea came from that Apple likes to leak info to us, but they *don't*. Don't go looking for conspiracies where a simple goof will explain what happened.

Originally posted by paulwhannel
apple most certainly did not do this on purpose... if you knew anything about steve jobs, you'd know he's such a control freak... there's no way he's going to spoil the surprise in his keynote. He's probably furious that his little *ooh, ahh* speech is being overshadowed... if people know what he's releasing ahead of time, he couldn't make it nearly as dramatic (and he does have a flair for the dramatic)...

my guess is also that it was uploaded or set online accidently, and it took a little bit for them to realize their error-- probably when the apple store traffic spiked about 1000%, they decided to take a look...

pnw

Click to expand...

if this gaffe is a carefully planned marketting ploy, it's working, and will actually work in Steve's favor, and he is 'controlling' this, isn't he..if this is their doing that is..

besides, we don't have any confirmation whether this is a hack or a mistake so this will only be another rumor, he will still have his Oohs and Aaahs..

that would be a very big mistake to make. i don't think it was an accident... now that i've thought about it a bit i think that it was just to make a heap of hype before Monday.

but if Apple's leaking the G5 specs just for hype... that must mean that something really spectacular will be announced (maybe released?) on Monday. that's what i'm hoping for.

Originally posted by richie
WWDC doesn't *need* any more hype from those who are interested in it outside of the developer community, we've been frothing at mouth for this for weeks, Apple wouldn't need to make us even more exicted.

Click to expand...

Agreed on all points. Can people on this forum stop thinking that they are the center of the Mac universe and all Apple care about is what we think?

-Apple is not in the leak business.

-Apple is not in the conspiracy business.

-Gaffes happen, like the Time Canada iMac premature ejaculation.

-Steve Jobs does NOT like to have his thunder stolen or diffused in any way. Remember the whole ATI leak fiasco a few years back? ATI paid for its simple mistake in a big way.

So how many of you know Steve Jobs?

We're all told what a great manipulator of the media he is - and traditionally he's liked the big 'wow' factor of product introduction - and he's even said this in books about him.

What's to say his statements in books weren't what he liked at the time? The internet is used more and more, and as speeds increase, the streaming gets better and the delivery to the masses is improved - and the opportunity to deliver as much to as many improves.

To achieve this, marketing is changing to suit. Thus it's possible this was one of 3 things:

1) accidental
2) intentional
3) hack

I find the lack of ethernet specs in the list to be odd and the lack of superdrive specs. I think the Superdrive will be in every model, and for that Apple would put that fact in the top spec listing.

The plot thickens - I can't wait until Monday.

Originally posted by gotohamish

1) accidental
2) intentional
3) hack

Click to expand...

please don t let it be a hack....

To me this seems like a royal screw-up.

The loss of professionalism doesn't make up for any gain in hype - they already had all the hype they needed too.

Everyone now has a certain level of expectations, how can Apple surprise us except for the case design?

They should have taken the site off-line for WWDC and brought it back with the new systems. It sounds like to me that there will be a web publisher looking for work shortly.

My 2 yen.

-Wyrm

Originally posted by richie
Argh! It wasn't on purpose:

WWDC doesn't *need* any more hype from those who are interested in it outside of the developer community, we've been frothing at mouth for this for weeks, Apple wouldn't need to make us even more exicted.

Steve Jobs loves the surprise, he wants to be the one up there giving us the machines that are *faster* than we thought, he doesn't want to be over shadowed

Apple doesn't play with the rumour sites, I don't know where this idea came from that Apple likes to leak info to us, but they *don't*. Don't go looking for conspiracies where a simple goof will explain what happened.

Click to expand...

you don't think that wwdc could have used more publicity. ok. why not? is there anything wrong with publicity? is there such thing as too much publicity?


and "Apple doesn't play with the rumor sites".
right
you must not have been around for mwsf 2002
ok
i'll give you that one
thumbs up!!