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All they can do, is try to prevent employees from leaving prototypes in bars...... keeping a lid on overseas suppliers is an impossible task.
 
It's not just Apple products, but any highly anticipated gadget usually gets leaked at some point on the internet prior to its official launch. I don't really think it hurts sales later on down the line.

The Samsung SIII never got leaked and it was highly anticipated.
 
Steven Jobs had the secret sauce that's missing from :apple: now. Charisma, spark, revolution, magic. It's just a high end boutique brand now, before it was... life changing :D

er, what? iphones begin at $0, and are owned by millions and millions and millions. its nothing like a high-end boutique.
 
How about doubling down on quality control?

Holy crap dude, you had me ROTFLOL. The very first post and its a classic.! I was thinking the same basic thing when I read the article - that apple should quit screwing around with all these pointless attempts at secrecy and just test their products better.

But you said it so succinctly, so perfectly, and so quickly.

Kudos
 
Nothing is technically a secret until Apple begins to do everything in house. The processors are made by Intel, the discrete graphics by nVidia or AMD, etc. and we find out all of this information on various tech sites and the only big secret is how all of the things are going to be put together in one nice little pretty box with a bow on top.

When Haswell is rolled out for example, we'll know what is quad-core, dual-core, etc. and can then speculate what can go where.

When nVidia releases their next line, we can again speculate what goes where.

The only real mystery is the release dates.
 
well it's not working....

having ALL details of the iphone 5 leaked so far in advance of the actual announcement was a real bum out
 
It would be nice to have a little more surprise in apple keynotes. Just doesn't happen like it used to.

Like when? People complain about the lack of a "one more thing" announcement with the iPhone 5 (a la Siri on the iPhone 4S), but I recall even knowing about Siri before the announcement, all thanks to a little poking around on rumor mills like this one.
 
The Samsung SIII never got leaked and it was highly anticipated.


ah, wow, maybe one day for samsung but not even on the same level of interest from apple, not even close! They're cloning of apple products is mind numbing
 
but that's the difference between everyone else and apple... this is what drives apple... I don't even remembering hearing anything about the surface before it was announced...

You don't? Probably because you follow Apple rumors and not MS rumors. Everyone knew what MS was going to announce at their event before it happened. The surprise was the Touch cover. Much like the Smart Cover was a surprise at the iPad 2 event.

People need to stop acting like there aren't "surprises" anymore at Apple events. Just because you saw a blurry picture of the outside hardware design, that means you know EVERY detail about the product I guess.
 
Besides secrecy is very important. Imagine if all these other companies knew about Apple working on the iPad months or years before it came out? It's because of the secrecy is what got Apple to dominate the tablet market.

Not true. It wasn't like other companies didn't know about the concept of tablet computers, the idea had been floated for years. Other companies just didn't think it would be all that successful. So even if they knew apples plans, and perhaps they did, they likely would have dismissed it as a product sure to fail.
 
This article headline is hilarious! Macrumors, a site built on disseminating Apple product rumors, is blaming secrecy holes on the supply chain!! ROFL!! At least Julian Assange takes some responsibility! I'm DYIN' here!!!

You want to be surprised, stop following rumor sites.

+1
I read Macrumors 'cause it's good stuff, but hey, you can't read the last chapter in a book and then complain that you know the ending!

give me a break...this is not national security here. It's a friggin computer. You end up pissing off customers unclear on when the next iMac is coming out. :rolleyes:

And no one will complain when a deadline is missed? And what about undercutting sales of existing products?
 
You want to be surprised, stop following rumor sites.

That's not true. Even on CNN, Time, etc there are news of a possible iPad Mini outcome.

No wonder folks get all bummed out when the keynote happens and they are not surprise by the products.
I wish some of that secrecy and anticipation could come back.
 
Most people aren't paying any attention to whether there'll be an iPad Mini tomorrow - they don't care about reading the rumor mill. I'm quite sure iPad sales have remained fairly steady.

Exactly! Please realize how FEW people in the scheme of things pay any attention to rumor sites! Yes, a vocal and opinionated group...but a relatively tiny group.
 
papparazi!

Leaks are really geeks version of Papparazi, someone somehow is going to leak a photo.

I think Apple's best bet at this point is to start making dummy fakes and leak them. Doubling down on secrecy won't work Tim, that ship has sailed
 
Aside from competition in the industry, I don't really see what the big deal is about leaks. I would say in this day and age, some level of secrecy-breaking product leakage are almost a given, nigh expected, by consumers and investors. It can create hype and expectation, which can ultimately lead to sales.

I've been following Macrumors and other sites for a lot of years now, and I can't think of very many leaks, aside from those which occurred unintentionally by Apple employees (iPhone 4, I'm looking at you), that really dropped the bomb as to what the Real McCoy would be like. Even if we don't have these prototype lost and found scenarios anymore, mock up renderings are becoming so good these days that we can now have a reasonably good idea of what an iPad mini will look like, before the thing is even unveiled.

Supply chain eves dropping is not unique to Apple either, and there is only so much a company like Apple can do to prevent information leaks, particularly when they source from so many parts vendors and sell through so many outlets. To create and sell something like the iPhone on the world stage year after year requires enormous amounts of supply chain coordination. It is only natural that product information will escape Apple's (or any company's) grip somewhere along the line.
 
The only way I could see to work around this leak issue would be to develop a small amount of their latest products in-house in the USA and then announcement it to the public, before they go into mass production. Although this would dramatically increase the time it takes from announcement to the mass market.
 
An Apple computer is not just a computer. Once you learn that, you will understand the secrecy involved with them. The reason why the culture and community exists around Apple products.

For a large part, its a sales tactic- get the hype up.

An Apple computer, is just that, a computer. It doesn't contain anything magical, in fact, it contains a fair amount of the inners that you'd find in any other laptop!
 
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How about doubling down on quality control?

QC seems to be a victim of Apple's focus on security.

From the article:

The (Apple) employee said that only a handful of people were recently allowed to take a new device off campus to use in real life. "That's really disturbing for something you're about to ship millions of," the employee said, adding that such restrictions have some worried whether they can "test things to the level we want to test them before they ship."
 
impossible not to hear about anything apple – all medias are driven by these 'rumors', not only rumor sites.

I keep reading such comments in this thread, but I fail to see it having a correlation to reality: what type of news do you people follow? Most of the news I read, see, or hear pertains to the state of the economy or politics (and of course weather). If I want to hear rumors about Apple products I go to MacRumors. Even then a great deal of the "rumors" are actually just blind speculation based on people's desires for rumors.
 
give me a break...this is not national security here. It's a friggin computer. You end up pissing off customers unclear on when the next iMac is coming out. :rolleyes:

Hit a nerve on the iMac, my wife's just totalled and we don't know whether to just buy another or wait wait wait but she really does need a computer. Hope to heck in a few days we'll get the good news?
 
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