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Wouldn't it be funny...if all these iPhone leaks weren't for real after all?

M

Molecule

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 19, 2010
107
0
Seriously, think about it. I asume you've all seen pictures of the iPhone 4. What if these 'leaks' had in fact been pushed out by Apple to begin with? "Ah, but what about Gizmodo?" you may ask. Well, you get an engineer to leave a fake (in the sense that it will never reach production. Real in the sense that Apple built it.) next-gen iPhone in a bar, and watch everything just fall into place. Predictably, a tech journo ends up buying it from a shady middleman-type character. The journalist then goes and publishes information about the device. Apple *pretends* to be angry. Cupertino then calls the cops (hey, it was technically stolen property), which naturally throws even more attention on the story, and confirms its realness (or so we think...).

Follow this up by paying a nice some to a shifty Vietnamese businessman and he can push out some more pictures and videos shorty afterwards. This further confirms the realness of the device.


So, what use could Apple possibly have for this kind of public deception? To put it simply: to surprise us. By unveiling a newly redesigned iPhone as expected...only it looks nothing like what we thought it would. We are stunned. Shocked. Captivated. We drool.
And hey, it's not like Steve doesn't enjoy putting on a good show :D


So why go to all the trouble?
This is an interesting question, but there's a convincing answer: the danger of actual leaks. Apple's had some real problems with this of late. By tricking the public into thinking it knows what the next iPhone will look like, you can pretty much guarantee that any leaks of the actual next-gen iPhone will be disregarded. Brushed aside, if you will. "Pfft. We already know what the iPhone looks like. This must just be some Chinese Android phone...it is pretty though."


Now, I'm not saying for a moment that this will be the case. This is pure speculation on my part. But I wouldn't rule it out. And Apple is exactly the kind of company that would pull something like that.

Either way, we'll find out in about a week and a half. I can't wait :)



Molecule
:apple:
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

Fail
 
Why the fail? Is there something wrong with speculating that a company which is as secretive as some intelligence agencies (well, almost) - a company which has had a huge number of leaks for such a secretive company of late - may have pushed out a decoy device to the media?
 
I personally hope it is the case that the leaks are fakes. But I doubt it.
 
I doubt it, but it would be hilarious. The speculation has always made the product out to be better than it really is but I'm pretty sure this is for real.
 
grahamnp said:
I doubt it, but it would be hilarious. The speculation has always made the product out to be better than it really is but I'm pretty sure this is for real.
Click to expand...

I'm not suggesting they're fakes churned out by some Chinese knock-off maker - I'm suggesting that they could potentially (with particular emphasis on the could part of that) be fakes made by Apple itself in order to trick people into thinking they know what the next iPhone's going to look like :)
 
Thought of this myself already :) Some people were speculating this all only happened to see what people think of the new design. Well, why not?
 
It costs tens of millions of dollars to design a phone and bring it to the point of refinement we see in these prototypes (not to mention the millions in lost sales of the 3GS due to these leaks). Apple is a publicly held company with a fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders. There is no way that they could justify that kind of expense just so Steve Jobs can have a "gotcha" moment at WWDC.
 
Molecule said:
So, what use could Apple possibly have for this kind of public deception? To put it simply: to surprise us. By unveiling a newly redesigned iPhone as expected...only it looks nothing like what we thought it would. We are stunned. Shocked. Captivated. We drool.
And hey, it's not like Steve doesn't enjoy putting on a good show :D
Click to expand...

As I've posted on every thread of this kind, it would be just stupid idea.

What's the guarantee that people would like the new design at all? or so much more than the current leaked one?

It just does not make any sense and it's a huge, huge gamble.
 
It would only be funny if the final version was superior to the leaks. But yeah, I have thought about it:D
 
As a stockholder, I would be extremely pissed if Apple was throwing away money on stupid **** like you're describing.
 
This might be the dumbest post I ever read.

Apple filing false police report = then in hot water legally. Its the phone, deal with it.

Dumb.
 
They probably are real, and I'm 99% sure they will be the final production phones, but I do find it quite suspicious that so many have leaked... Seriously, how many of these things have we seen?

With the first gen iPhone, we got nothing. With the 3G, we got a single blurry photo of the back. Now we have iPhone prototypes leaking like they're out of fashion!
 
bbplayer5 said:
This might be the dumbest post I ever read.

Apple filing false police report = then in hot water legally. Its the phone, deal with it.

Dumb.
Click to expand...

It wouldn't be a false police report, the phone that was lost whether the real iphone 4 or just a decoy prototype was Apples property... So the police report was real either way.


As for the original speculation, I highly doubt this to be the case as there are now too many factors involved which point to this being the next iphone. But it's very intriguing nevertheless. I for one am anxiously and eagerly waiting for the keynote just out of pure curiosity.... Stranger and crazier things have happened.
 
Chew said:
Some people were speculating this all only happened to see what people think of the new design. Well, why not?
Click to expand...
Maybe. I still like my idea better though :p
thelatinist said:
It costs tens of millions of dollars to design a phone and bring it to the point of refinement we see in these prototypes (not to mention the millions in lost sales of the 3GS due to these leaks). Apple is a publicly held company with a fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders. There is no way that they could justify that kind of expense just so Steve Jobs can have a "gotcha" moment at WWDC.
Click to expand...
For you and me, tens of millions seems like an awful lot of money. But for a company worth billions, it's just spare change.
Vitruviux said:
What's the guarantee that people would like the new design at all?
Click to expand...
Jon Ive designed it. 'Nuff said.
grantsdale said:
As a stockholder, I would be extremely pissed if Apple was throwing away money on stupid **** like you're describing.
Click to expand...
If I was an Apple shareholder, I'd be more than happy for Jobs to invest in things like this if he thought it would yield a significant return.
bbplayer5 said:
This might be the dumbest post I ever read.

Apple filing false police report = then in hot water legally. Its the phone, deal with it.

Dumb.
Click to expand...
It's not a false police report. It's still stolen property. Duh.

Dumb. :p



____________________________________________________________


I should point out, as I've stated before, I'm not suggesting for a moment that this is the case. I'm just saying it would be foolish to completely rule it out.

And besides, who doesn't love a good conspiracy theory every now and again? :p
 
Molecule said:
It's not a false police report. It's still stolen property. Duh.
Click to expand...

I disagree. If they intentionally set the phone up to be taken, then they are definitely still committing a crime. Thats like saying that Balloon boys parents weren't committing a crime because their son was "missing". They made the kid go missing. The guy is going to jail.

If Apple really was going to run a scheme like this, they would have to be much more confident in their ability to control leaks than they have proved to be in the past.
 
Vitruviux said:
As I've posted on every thread of this kind, it would be just stupid idea.

What's the guarantee that people would like the new design at all? or so much more than the current leaked one?

It just does not make any sense and it's a huge, huge gamble.
Click to expand...

Just to play devil's advocate for a sec, what would guarantee that people would like the new design if no leaks had ever happened? Like if Apple just brought the new phone out from behind the black curtain or whatever and no one (consumer-wise) had had any idea what it would look like until they first saw it June 7, and all they had to compare it to was the previous 3 iterations?

I agree that it's probably not practical or possible that the leaks were fakes, but it's kinda interesting to think about.
 
tuna said:
I disagree. If they intentionally set the phone up to be taken, then they are definitely still committing a crime. Thats like saying that Balloon boys parents weren't committing a crime because their son was "missing". They made the kid go missing. The guy is going to jail.

If Apple really was going to run a scheme like this, they would have to be much more confident in their ability to control leaks than they have proved to be in the past.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't doubt that Apple might drop a false prototype somewhere, but, I find it very unlikely in this case. When you get to the search warrant/confiscating property as evidence stage, it better be real. That is why I think it was dumb of Apple to go in that direction.
 
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