Buying the Powerbook pushed me over the edge. I have now joined the hordes who contribute logic to Apple's totally illogical and unsound model of advertising - word of byte. The above is the invitation to a special event to be hosted by Apple sent via e-mail to a few select websites, media people and individuals. Result?
People all over the web are wildly speculating, discussing, holding their breath, reading crystal balls - you name it. Oh, and not just the usual Mac and techie websites people. We're talking Reuters, Washington Post, LA Times and BusinessWeek, among others.
All this at the hefty cost of one e-mail. In the incredible time-frame of a few hours. I cannot think of any company announcing any product that excites the media machine this way.
There's not even a product here. We've no idea what the event's for, except that its about "one more thing", which traditionally has meant a new product launch or a serious product upgrade.
Now that we've talked about the reaction of professional media, lets move on to wilder stuff - the fanboys. Yup, people like me. Who have wasted a lot of Thursday and most of Friday checking up on the incredible amount of forum discussion and wild speculation thats revolving around this event faster than the Earth about its axis. People have hedged bets on almost any geeky product you can think of - with the possible exception of No. 10 Staples. The speculation is extremely varied. The sensible and probable category suggests a new video iPod, possibly with a larger drive and/or smaller form factor; dual-core PowerMacs, a video-capable network streaming device (video Airport Express for the fanboys) and upgrades to the iTunes Music Store. The second category suggests stuff that is improbable (not impossible), but very interesting. Included in here is the Powerbook G5 (my personal wish), the first Intel-based Mac (of any sort), a home theater system, a gaming console, an Apple phone (not the ROKR), an Apple tablet computer... the list goes on. Then there's the wild end of the speculative entries. One of them is Apple products with fuel-cell batteries, and the rest are equally insane.
There are discussions of a conspiracy theory that Apple is deliberately feeding different rumors to different websites to hide the real product up their sleeves. And us fanboys get to read and wonder about all of these, and pray, "Dear $DEITY, please let it be $DESIRED_PRODUCT". The stress of it all can really get to you. Don't believe it - well here's what a couple of the fanboys had to say.
