Stop the iPhone 5 Rumor Insanity

The new iPhone will be called the iPhone 5 or the iPhone 4S, and it will come in one, two, or three models, with one being a smaller, cheaper device, or not. It will have NFC, unless it doesn't. It will be slimmer, or not, and have an edge-to-edge screen, unless that's not true. That new phone will come out in August, September, or 2012.

Is this nonsense of any value to anyone?

I'm getting physically sick of the nonstop iPhone rumor mill, which is spewing out contradictory information on a daily basis at this point. Between the end of February and now, we've published 35 iPhone 5 rumor stories, many of which directly contradict each other, almost all of which are based on dead-end, anonymous sources or on very tenuous leaps of logic. My editor even forced me to put an iPhone 5 rumor slideshow in this story!

Toiling in the Rumor Mill
Where are these rumors coming from? They're coming from "well-placed sources in AT&T Mobility," "unnamed people briefed on Apple's plans," "unnamed sources at Apple's suppliers," "people familiar with the situation," "one of Apple's suppliers," "yet another key component supplier," "upstream component makers," "industry sources," or, my favorite, "a reliable source."

These un-sources frequently get laundered through financial analysts from firms with impressive names, so the analysts can get their names in the news and so we reporters can all feel better about attaching a name to a story. But just because we're citing somebody from Morgan Stanley or Piper Jaffray doesn't mean we're not responsible for writing another story based only on "industry checks." What is an "industry check," anyway?

Last week, some idiot sent us a ginned-up fake Web page advertising a Sprint iPhone 4S. We weren't gullible enough to be suckered by his awful Photoshop job, but how do any of us know some less experienced blogger didn't transmute him into one of those "reliable sources," to be repeated credulously all over the Net?

Several times in the past year, I've thought of inventing a fictitious analyst group and posting plausible, totally made-up reports about Apple on their invented Web site to see which blogs pick them up without vetting them. Now I've ruined the idea by telling you, or maybe I've planted the seed of doubt that any of these analysts could be doing this.

Let's add to this mix stories based on "iPhone 5G" items seen on Chinese Web sites, stories based on patent filings without any evidence of an actual product, and stories based on random photos people find on the Internet without knowing who posted them. (I have seen all of these in the past few months.) When I went to the Shenzhen electronics markets , there were plenty of booths with "iPhone 5G accessories." None of them were actually iPhone 5G accessories.

Then there are the rumors based on things that analysts feel should happen, reported as fact. Here we get Deutsche Bank's Chris Whitmore asserting Apple needs to make a cheaper iPhone (just because he thinks so) and Piper Jaffray's Chris Larsen saying the iPhone should come to Sprint and T-Mobile (because he says it's a good idea.) Somehow, when ground through the rumor mill, these suggestions read as predictions.

Suggestions vs. Predictions vs. Rumors
I make suggestions, too (for instance, calling for Nokia to not drop MeeGo for Windows Phone), but at least my suggestions don't appear to be predictions. Or at least they shouldn't. But unlike my jabber-jawing self, stock analysts actually get people to bet money based on their suggestions/predictions, so they have to appear much more confident than I do.

There's a place for stories based on anonymous sources. When I was a baby journalist, my mentors gave me a rule that if I could assemble three anonymous sources for a story, I could run that story. It's better to get the information out there, even if the sources aren't willing to be quoted. My reputation would ride on the result.

But the Internet's link culture has turned this into empty rumormongering. Maybe analyst so-and-so has two good sources for his info. He can run with the story. But everyone else who then links to and cites and digests his story doesn't know who his sources are. We're taking bald assertions on faith, which is exactly what journalists aren't supposed to do. That's not just about our pride: our whole job is to tell people what's true, which we can't do if we can't verify the sources.

Continue Reading: Further evidence of the worthlessness of rumors—and a possible solution.

The iPhone Rumor Multiverse
All of these stories simply can't be true. Apple can't be simultaneously building three phones and not, releasing them in several different months, on carriers and not, unless we're talking about the infinite multiverse of alternate realities.

There's an explanation for many of these stories, but it's unhelpful for consumers. I have an old rule: "Everyone is in talks with everyone about everything." Many experiments don't make it out of the labs. Many ideas don't float to the top of the pool. I've written many columns that I've thrown away when they didn't work. I'm sure Apple is working on multiple iPhone concepts. But reporting everything that Apple is mulling in the bath when it goes home from work as if it was the next retail iPhone dramatically misleads the public.

In a lot of ways, this is just like the useless hysteria over whether cell phones are bad for your health. Every time a report comes out saying they are, it's followed in a month by one that says they aren't, and vice versa. I refuse to speak on the topic, because the sum total of the knowledge is zero. If you look at the trend, you can't simply believe the last report. You have to believe that the positive assertion (that they're bad for your health) is unproven, and that you can't prove a negative.

There are points when this background noise resolves itself into signal. Last October, everyone pretty much agreed a CDMA iPhone was on its way. This June, there was a consensus that the next iPhone wouldn't come out that month. But reporting individual elements of the noise as signal makes it harder for casual readers—not the people who follow every twist and turn—to know where the signal really is.

Backing Up the Rumor Train
I know this all reeks of "get off my lawn." Goldurnit, back in 1995, we had standards! And there's a place for relentless rumor reporting, because a lot of tech fans follow the rumors like sports fans follow news about players. For them, it's all for entertainment value only. And iPhone stories get great traffic. People want to read the rumors.

But our higher goal at PCMag, unlike some pure tech news blogs, is to give people good buying advice, and I don't see how telling them a contradictory thing every three days is good buying advice. Even if we couch these rumors in weasel words, we're still stamping our logo on them and saying they're worth listening to, and we're saying they're the most recent, reliable information on a hot product people want. Our goal is to help people find clear paths through the thicket of information about technology, but I think here we're just leading them down a bunch of thorny dead ends.

I'm calling for a moratorium on iPhone rumors, unless there are three sources for the same idea. Wouldn't that be great? Of course, nobody will listen to me. But how about this: only write up predictions you're willing to vouch for yourself. No pushing off responsibility on third parties. And if you say the iPhone is actually coming out in August and it isn't, well, you better follow up explaining why you were wrong. I did this when I made a mistake about unlocked iPhones being released in the USA. The short explanation: I guessed based on Apple's past behavior, and I guessed wrong.

I don't think anything is going to change here. Some standards are pointless if you try to enforce them against the whole industry. iPhone rumor stories are so popular that if I actually tried to stop them, I'd probably be out of a job. I had to give up trying to post mobile-phone prices before, rather than after mail-in rebates. (I hate how carriers never tell you the up-front price.) Chris Ziegler of ThisIsMyNext and I are fighting a bit of a rear-guard action to prevent AT&T from declaring its HSPA 14.4 network "4G," but many people would argue the term "4G" is already meaningless.

So: My lawn. Get off of it. And the next time you read a story about the iPhone 5, unless it's from an Apple launch event, don't take it too seriously.