Macenstein

Posted by Dr. Macenstein

It looks like a new “hot chick” has transferred to Mac Rumor High, and is stealing all the other girl’s boyfriends. At least, that is what appears to be happening, according to Apple Recon.

The site launched just before Macworld this month and has rocketed to the top of the Mac-O-Sphere based on their exclusive reports of a February 20th event which they claim will herald the debut of iLife ’07, iWork ’07, new Mac Pros, and OS X 10.5 Leopard. No other rumor sites seem to have picked up on this particular piece of info, and Apple Recon is now claiming the response of those sites is that of jealousy. Specifically, they feel MacShrine and MacSlash in particular have not shown them the proper respect, pointing to Apple Recon‘s unproven track record in an attempt to throw a little cold water on this hot rumor.

While we have no real opinion on the validity of matter, having more or less gotten out of the rumor aspect of the Mac scene after having received countless bogus tips from anonymous source after anonymous source (which as luck would have it, also happens to be the source of Apple Recon’s rumor). However, we here at Macenstein hope that the Apple Recon story proves to be true. Not so much because we need all that new gear before March, but we would love to see another Apple rumor site out there with legitimate sources and juicy details. Currently, AppleInsider seems to be the only real source of consistent good dirt on Apple’s upcoming plans.

In defense of the other, more established sites out there, Apple Recon does have a little proving to do before it earns some street cred. In response to MacShrine‘s claims of “no known accuracy”, Apple Recon says “apparently they didn’t do their homework to see how many of the Macworld announcements we got dead right”. A quick look at those predictions, however, and you see Macworld forecasts of : Full screen iPods…with 120GB drives, xBox Live-like games on the iTV (they did not guess the name change), “iTV” support for Google and YouTube videos, iLife ’07 and iWork ’07, 8 Core Mac Pros, and a MacBook Duo. As for the iPhone, one of the few things Apple did announce, they specifically say it WON’T make an appearance at Macworld. They actually got EVERY SINGLE ONE of their predictions wrong. (However, we did too, more or less, and so did the majority of the Mac sites. This was a very tuff Macworld to predict, with hardly any of the traditional consumer updates).

Now, in defense of Apple Recon, these were just “predictions”, not info claimed to be from anonymous sources in the “know”, as the alleged February 20th event is alleged to be. However for the life of us we can’t see why Apple Recon points to those predictions as proof they have any inside knowledge.

The most important thing for Apple Recon here is getting the date right (Feb 20th). All the things Apple Recon says Apple will announce on February 20th are things everyone KNOWS are coming eventually. Apple said in their conference call that iLife will ship this quarter, we all know Apple will release 8-core Mac Pros soon (Intel shipped 8-core chips to ALL PC manufacturers who wanted them starting January 7th, so Apple will not let another company offer 8-core workstations without one of its own for very long). The only real surprise would be if Apple Recon’s claim of a Leopard release holds true, as no other rumor site has mentioned anything close to a February release date.

Time will tell

So in just under four weeks we shall see if Apple Recon is the real deal or just some drunk frat boys looking for 15 minutes of fame. Perhaps our first hint will come even sooner, as Apple Recon claims that this Monday they will have details of a new bit of Apple software that, again, no other rumor site has picked up on yet. If true, we are very excited to keep reading these exclusive reports that seem to even have AppleInsider beat. If not, Apple Recon will likely find itself grouped with such lovable Mac Vapor-rumor sites as MacOSRumors, a site they bash (and rightly so) for consistently false info with vague timetables.

We here at Macenstein love an underdog, and personally, we can’t wait for Monday!