We thought that at this point, everyone understands: The blogosphere isn't 100% reliable, especially when it comes to Apple-related news. Some combination of intense fanboy and investor interest, mixed with Apple's secrecy fetish means that the Web is riddled with erroneous (thanks catching that, John!) predictions about Steve Jobs' next move. And that reaches a frenzy in advance of each Apple product presentation.
That's not good enough for Daring Fireball's John Gruber, who makes a point of calling out most of the Web for participating in the mass delusion that Apple would introduce a line of cheapish laptops yesterday. And getting most everything else wrong, as well.
Somehow we escaped his wrath, but perhaps that's because we made a point of noting that John himself got almost everything right in a post he put up a couple hours before Jobs' presentation. The main target for John's derision is former Techcrunch blogger Duncan Riley, who made the initial $800 laptop call. Left unscathed: Non-blogger Gene Munster, the Piper Jaffray analyst who predicted an $899 machine.
So let's see what John does with this Gizmodo post, which predicts that Steve Jobs will leave Apple -- "not tomorrow, but probably very soon." The reasoning? Steve let a lot of his lieutenants get a lot of stage time yesterday -- COO Tim Cook, design guru Jony Ive, etc. -- which is supposed to signal that he does indeed have a succession plan. Maybe. Or maybe Jobs just didn't want to spend much time on stage when Apple didn't have a lot to talk about -- this was a modest product refresh, and not much more.
See Also: Apple Rumor Roundup: $800 Laptop, Blu-ray, Space-Age Factory?
Apple Pundit: Everyone Is Wrong: No Cheap Laptop Coming
