Macworld Proves Blogosphere Rumors Are Rarely Correct So Why Do We Keep Talking?

Prior to any big industry event the technology blogosphere will invariably be full of various rumors related to what we should expect to see at this or that event. And everything that is related to Apple is always anticipated with such impatience that rumors will invariably be numerous. Macworld, the Apple-focused trade show that has just run to its end in San Francisco, is the event where Apple made some huge announcements like iPhone and Macbook Air for the press and general public in the past – so it is no wonder it is anticipated with even more excitement than any other event and there are more rumors than an average user can even consume.

But as it often happens, many of these rumors have never come to reality so many bloggers are now complaining about disappointed Apple fans who expected much more to come and got much less than they wanted at the event. Here are some things that we were almost certain to see but never actually saw.

First of all, everyone seemed to think that an announcement about Mac Mini upgrade was imminent and we would surely see some refreshment to the machine that is known to be the entry point to the Apple world for many users who can’t afford the fancy but way too expensive laptops. But it absolutely never happened and Apple still seems to behave like the company forgot about this much-loved machine pushing the more expensive notebooks and at this show only proving one rumor to be true – the one about upgrading the 17-inch Macbook Pro, a machine the majority of people either can’t afford or would not want to buy for the price that seems higher than it should be.

Another widely rumored thing was a new version of iPhone, a device dubbed iPhone Nano, although I don’t really know why people expect Apple to introduce new iterations of iPhone to the market this frequently. And while Apple did not announce anything to that effect, some manufacturers in the Far East countries have already come up with fake iPhone Nanos featuring Apple logo even. It is a pretty unique situation of a product being cloned even before the real thing is released – and it is entirely due to the rumors of the iPhone Nano that we absolutely should expect at Macworld. But even though nothing like this has actually been released, I am quite certain people will still buy some of such clones – simply because no one follows all the Apple news closely enough to notice no device like this has been announced.

Some of us were even brave enough to make suggestions about Apple moving their applications to the cloud and turning Apple fans into fans of online applications instantly with this move. But nothing like that happened: Apple announced upgrades to its iLife multimedia suite and iWork office suite but both remain safely planted on the desktop without any intentions of moving to the cloud. Sure, iWork.com, the site to be released together with the new versions of the applications, hints at online collaboration but it is still significantly below our expectations. The reasons for Apple to stick to traditional desktop applications are quite obvious: Apple sells their own desktop applications so competing with itself online does not really look to be reasonable – but adding online tools to complement users’ desktop experience sounds totally logical. No wonder this entire announcement is described by Josh Lowensohn as “another small step onto the Web” so why did we actually expect some serious cloud intentions from Apple at all?

So you can see that many of the most spectacular rumors did not come into reality and many of those who followed such rumors discussed in the blogosphere now have the right to be disappointed. But the irony is that Apple users could be much happier if not for the anticipation after reading numerous tech blogs talking about the exciting things they should see and even confirming our own expectations with some facts – like press releases from other companies proving that Mac Mini will be updated.

If fact, given the fact that it was officially announced this year’s Macworld would be the last one for Apple and Steve Jobs would not deliver his traditional keynote, we could have had much lower expectations from the very beginning. After all, the majority of Apple fans think of Steve Jobs as the only person who can deliver revolutionary Apple announcements and can not be replaced for this crucial position. Yet the blogosphere is known to produce numerous rumors striving for the eyeballs and setting expectations too high. And unfortunately the higher the expectations, the deeper disappointment and this Macworld is no exception. So is it fair to our readers to keep distributing rumors again and again, even when they are only based on our wild imagination and ideas of what we believe should actually happen?