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World of Apple

I secretly enjoyed the matter-of-fact approach to reporting of confidential seed notes. Sill: can you recall, was any other public outlet as leaky?

Oddly, I don't recall ever having heard of World of Apple before you posted it. Something seems vaguely familiar but I just can't recall for sure. During the first half of the previous decade, Apple news sites sprang up almost weekly as Apple and/or Steve Jobs was in the news just about every day. At some point I ceased tracking them down and bookmarking them because they became too numerous. As someone with an historical bent, I still revisit the sites (or memories thereof) from the oldest times, just to remind myself how much things have changed, or not at all.

As to your question, Think Secret was usually the one that I found the most leaks at. However, back in the late 90s the one I went to was Robert Morgan, who at various times ran something called "Apple Recon for Investors" or "RFI". He allegedly was very close to the old Silicon Valley personalities and apparently knew a lot of phone numbers. RFI seemed pretty omniscient during the period around 1996-1998, burning out sometime close to 1999. It resurfaced in "Phoenix mode" a year or two later as "Pelagius/RFI" under the parent holding company Echo 4 Communications. It only lasted a very short while before going to sleep again. If you're skilled at poking around on old text sites you can jump in here and take a look. Its an interesting read, as it consists of extremely skilled dissection and very pointed references to things that actually ended up happening, interspersed with bits of stuff written in "rumor-speak" almost like Ryan Meador was ghost-writing for him. Fans of the old MacOSRumors will know what I'm talking about: "Just a few days away from MacWorld New York, we can finally take the lid (slightly) off the box and say that if reports we're receiving are true, Apple has some major announcements coming. The people involved have been working around the clock to get this ready, and if everything goes well, it will be a game changer. We can't get into specifics without revealing our sources but..."
In other words, we have no idea whats coming but we want to make it seem like we do. Contrast that with the extremely prescient statement from November of 1997:

"If you have read all of RFI's Special Reports over the past several months, or even just the past year, you will realize that the future of computing is the "Mobile & Distributed Computing Environment". Rhapsody is a key to this future as it addresses most of the concerns that a lot of people have about this movement."

And today mobile devices and cloud services have eclipsed the personal computing "movement" that brought us to this point, and "Rhapsody" aka Mac OS X was what drove it for the Apple users.

Rumor has it (and how appropriate its a rumor and not confirmed) that Robert had heart troubles or some other related issues, and that he couldn't keep up with the business. He may or may not be around these days. Somebody is paying the bills on that server, though.
 
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For me, now Macworld is just advertising for certain products instead of news and reviews (if you read some of their reviews many read more like advertising than reviews to me). I also used to read some comments on their forums and I was surprised at the tone of some of the contributors like Jason Snell. From the pieces he had written, he seemed like a decent guy but in the forums some of his comments were rather harsh and didn't seem to be very professional. Now I'm sure that he got and gets lots of crap from people and I'm sure it is tiring but as a professional he should have risen above their level. In fact, I made a post simply stating my opinion and I did so in such a way that wasn't negative nor attacking. He responded with a rather aggressive tone so much so that I felt like he was attacking me. He wasn't the only one, there were also other writers there that I felt didn't display professionalism in their interactions with readers. They often seemed condescending in their posts. I had a certain imagine of the writers based on the stories that they had written but after reading their interactions with readers on the forum I realized that they would be better off simply writing and not interacting with the public. One writer who I taught was good at interacting with readers was Glenn Fleishman. He never seemed combative, angry, or combative in his posts.

It wasn't just you, others had that experience with MacWorld people.

I wish I had my old AOL emails saved, because back in the late 90s I got into a heated email exchange with David Morgenstern. I can't even remember what it was about but he flew off the rails on me. After devoting more time to it than I should I let it go. At least back then you could email authors directly. Now they don't even include their email address in their information. You get to go to their Twitter or their FB pages and thats it.

Jim Dalrymple is one of their good guys, but I don't think he posts there anymore.
[doublepost=1471980906][/doublepost]Jim has a personal project called "loopinsight.com". Talking about Jim reminded me of another rumors site with a similar name - "looprumors.com".

They were ok about 10 years ago, haven't been updated for the past 3, and the banner at the top is suspiciously close to the design of someone who decided to do a "tribute" rumor site based on Robert K Morgan's Apple Recon, which I mentioned earlier.
 
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It wasn't just you, others had that experience with MacWorld people.

Sill,

Thanks for posting your story about MacWorld. I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one who experienced that. While there used to be some rude writers there (I don't know anymore as I don't read their site nor their magazine), there were also some good guys too. While it is sad, it does seem that a negative experience sticks with you more than a positive one, right? I'm happy to hear that Jim Dalrymple was one of the good guys. I will check out his site.

Thanks,
Mecha
[doublepost=1472169313][/doublepost]I just went to the site that you recommended, looprumors.com and I got this warning. It is the first time I have ever seen this warning.
Screen Shot 2016-08-26 at 8.52.55 AM.png
 
Ifo Apple Store, if that counts!

Yes, that was a great site. It was the place to go for those of us living in areas without a nearby Apple Store. I was very sad when Gary Allen, the site's creator, passed away last October.

A post from 2003 referenced a Mac Observer piece in which a Merrill Lynch analyst made some points that are interesting from today's perspective (highlights are mine):
  • Apple is accepting lower short-term profits now in an attempt to grow market share and position its products for when the economy rebounds, according to CFO Fred Anderson.
  • Apple will open 17 additional retail stores between now and the end of the year.
  • Breaking down the company's mix of sales, Tim Cook, head of Apple's sales and operations, told Hillmeyer the unit sales mix is roughly 40% consumer, 30% education, 21% small business, and 9% medium and large corporations.
  • Educational sales are "extremely weak."
  • The professional market also remains very weak.
  • "Apple believes memory prices could tighten through the summer while flash memory is in surplus and likely will remain so.
  • Apple believes its 'Switcher' campaign is gaining momentum, primarily among younger people and women. The reason is centered around Apple's newer retail stores being in shopping malls where 80% of the traffic tends to be either women or people younger than 35 years of age.
  • Hillmeyer believes that roughly 50-75% of the 99 cent price to download music from the company's new online music service will go right back to the record labels.
 
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I just went to the site that you recommended, looprumors.com and I got this warning. It is the first time I have ever seen this warning. View attachment 646666

I recommended loopinsight.com not looprumors.com. I'm sorry about any confusion from my post.

That looked suspiciously like a MacCleaner warning. I didn't get it on my machine, but then I remembered I have "Fraudulent sites" turned off in my browser, because I don't want any information on what I'm browsing sent to Google. Turning it back on produces that warning. I have my doubts about that particular Google service, just like I doubt everything else they do.
 
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Sill,

I agree with you, I'm more than a little suspicious of Google and all of their "free" offerings. Things that are free often come with strings attached. I don't know if Google is evil or not but I'm more than a little leery of trusting them blindly. I don't use Chrome, gmail, or any Google service. I rarely use Google's search Engine too. I use "DuckDuckGo" as they don't track your searches.

I'm not using MacCleaner (and I never would). I never turned the warning on but it appears that the "warn when visiting fraudulent sites" was on by default. To be honest it was the first time I have seen it and from the Preference in Safari (it doesn't say anything about Google) I had no idea it had anything to do with Google until I saw that message. Since that message popped up, I have seen it now a few times when I visited a few different sites. Oddly enough, the only time that the message appears is when I click on something that came up after using Google Search.

Mecha
 
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