This is the new blogging paradigm. Gizmodo and all other blogger morons are on a warpath because Apple has gone from being the underdog to being the establishment. The last straw was Gizmodo being scorned for taking their tabloid blogging (read: NOT JOURNALISM) too far... limiting opportunities for the rumor mill.
Combine that with Independence Day, slow news week, and Apple surpassing MS market cap (going from underdog to zeitgeist)... and what do you get? Macrumors and all other blogger yahoos out there will now start falling over each other to be the first to report every single perceived flaw, regardless of newsworthiness.
Folks, as a film critic, I can tell you that Harry Knowles and his penchant for jumping on every rumor that got slipped his way... absolutely reduced his credibility to ash. He got caught on more than one occasion reporting false rumors that were deliberately planted by anonymous tipsters just to set him up and expose him as a big fraud. He also further damaged his credibility by lavishing a screenplay with praise, which it happens was written by one of his contributors. He also took a hit for ignoring embargo rules we critics agree upon in order to get access to things the studios are under no obligation to grant us... and he is banned from 20th Century Fox screenings. He went very quickly from being a big powerbroker to a fat twerp whose back was crushed by 1200 pounds of his comic/movie memorabilia (pronounced: "hubris")... and in the interim, others have quickly taken his place.
It's fun to bitch about things, and I know that's the Cause célèbre of the internet generation... but when one resorts to turning every little thing into a very transparent attempt at increasing pageviews at the cost of one's integrity, it doesn't do any better than the Entertainment Weeklys, People Magazines, and other trash rags in terms of the overall dumbing down of society.
That's not a repudiation of legitimate discussion of interesting, substantive speculation... but I do see a trend toward grasping at straws because the stakes have gotten higher. The web is more competitive and ad revenue has been in decline since 2007. Advertisers are getting wise to the meaningless of a LOT of "analytics" data that aren't translating into results. So, the trend has moved toward publishing umpteen "stories" a minute on everything under the sun... just to cast a larger net for pageviews.
So, this generation of people who were going to revolutionize the world... decentralize the information economy... have become servants to the dollar and contributors to the decimation of culture, just like the suits they pretend to abhor.
Hippies didn't vanish from the Earth... they sold out and became silicon valley CEO's.
P.S. I'm not saying there's no issue here... but there is a reason that reputable, major news outlets with real journalists tend to wait and check sources and statistics. The game of being first is a double-edged sword. If you built your business on an image of credibility, it can damage your credibility... and thus cost you your readers. On the other hand, if you have no credibility to begin with... then it's no problem. Teenie boppers and net retards will continue to get you pageviews... If that's all you aspire to, it's not that hard to regurgitate flaky **** you heard on the grapevine.
Journalism takes work, though. Yes, I know... it's tough. But it's rewarding. Maybe not monetarily... but intellectually. It really feels good to actually create something. But in this day and age of the Entitlement Generation's endless rationalization of plagiarism and piracy, I can see how most bloggers might have no frame of reference for that.
