Rumor Report Card: Assessing the Accuracy of Leaks After Apple's Event

[mrat93]

I'm not saying he has absolutely 0 sources, but there's no point of leaking if you're going to be wrong most of the time. MacRumors reporting on him only validates his actions. Sooner or later his sources will get burned in which case he could easily fabricate rumors to keep his career going for a while

I get that argument. It’s a sticky situation... We live in a time where a certain amount of lying has become accepted by many people. If only we applied the same standards to our politicians, maybe we’d have better journalistic integrity as well.

But what you said makes sense. If anything, I feel like his sources are mediocre at best.

Like, for example, saying “press release tomorrow” on the day before the event announcement. I feel like that feasibly had some credibility to it — he may know a guy who hears about these things very shortly in advance. His source saw something noteworthy/mysterious happening the next day, tipped JP, and that’s it.

Same with Apple Watch SE. The press releases and product descriptions were already drafted. This information must seep out at some point shortly before the announcement, and JP is one of those people that catches wind.

 

[Rugbydman]

What happened to the guy who was on Reddit. Work at factory I believe. If I remember he was quite accurate?

 

[CarlJ]

It would seem to be easy to also seed some rumors out there, and see who parrots them. They should be able to track where the leaks are coming from that way, possibly.

This is Corporate Security spycraft 101 - you let slip to one department the new color is “Navy Blue”, to another department it’s “Midnight Blue”, and to a third it’s “Cobalt Blue”. Then you see which name appears in the press. When one does, you divide up that department - each section gets a variant on some other minor detail. Rinse/repeat until you narrow it down to the leaker. Takes a while, and requires skill to not mess it up, but can be much more effective than bringing random employees in for torture.

 

[PSeg90]

 

[compwiz1202]

You have to applaud Jon Prosser. He is consistent, consistently wrong.

At least if he is 100% wrong, you know the other thing will happen