Here is The Thing With Tech Leaks: They are Meaningless
Let’s face it. You don’t get the correct information regarding tech leaks, and it’s a waste of time.
We’ve all seen it, whether on YouTube or on Twitter, where someone at some point showcases the design of the new iPhone or the new look of the Apple Watch (even though the recent Apple Watch leak was a total miss).
That post gets a lot of attention, and from that moment, blog posts started getting released, and videos started getting made. And all of a sudden, we get opinions, predictions, release estimates, etc. about these new products.
But when it comes to it, most of these predictions are worthless and don’t add any value to our life. Sometimes, they even hurt the company working months, if not years, producing the product and doing their best to keep the project a secret.
At least, some of the companies. Others have resigned themselves to the fact that these leaks are just inescapable, and they started leaking parts of the product themselves even before the release date.
But not Apple…
Apple, for example, is one of the companies that does everything in its power to keep the product a secret until the very last moment of the reveal. This concealment can sometimes go out of hand, though.
Like in 2010, when Apple entrusted one of its employees with the brand new iPhone 4, which happens to be the usual course of business. Companies deliberately let their employees use the product daily to iron out any bugs or do some fixes.
But that didn’t get well with this particular employee. He was sitting somewhere and forgot this unreleased iPhone 4.
Long story short, this iPhone 4 ended up in the hands of Gizmodo’s executive, who tore up the iPhone and compared it to its antecedent model, the iPhone 3GS.
As you may have expected, Apple did everything to get that iPhone back. They contacted the executive, Lawyers where sending letters, even Steve Jobs contacted the executive of Gizmodo to get that iPhone back but with no success.
Finally, the police broke into the house of this executive, searched it entirely, and got the iPhone back. Since this iPhone can be considered as stolen property, this break-in was legal.
But this is just one example of how bad it can goes
That’s how far a leak can go. Even the police got involved in getting the iPhone back.
Let’s be real here, that executive should have returned that iPhone the moment Apple asked for it. After all, this iPhone can be considered as stolen property. And when it comes to stolen properties, the owner will always draw the longest straw should things escalated to the court.
But if you think about it, leaks that happen with, let’s say, prototypes or drawings of unreleased models are the exact types of defrauding as the story with the iPhone 4. After all, the leaker claims to have accurate information about the unreleased product, which is coming from inside out. And companies like Apple aren’t happy with these leaks.
It’s even very hard to stop them from happening.
Reason for that is that most of the leaks happen to come from supply chain factories or third parties. So as you can imagine how hard it is to keep these insights safe.
These leaks are not always about hardware, though
But it even goes a step further.
We all are familiar with the traditional hardware leaks. Think of the new design of the iPhone 14. Will Apple finally find a way to get rid of that notch? Do we get the Apple Watch with those square edges this year or next year, etc.?
Nowadays, we even have to deal with alleged trade leaks. In this case, it’s about a former Apple employee accused of leaking information about Project X. He would have — allegedly — stolen this information and sold it to the media.
For all the details, I would like to refer you to this article, made by 9to5mac, where even the court documents are revealed.
But what about you and me?
But what about the end consumer? We, the readers, for who companies do everything in their power to provide such discreet information. Do we really need to be informed about how the new iPhone will look like?
I would say no, because of two reasons. The first one is because this information is not always accurate.
The information is not always accurate
Take, for example, the new color of the iPhone 13 Pro. Up until the day before release, I came across several articles on the web claiming that the iPhone 13 Pro would be released in two new colors, a math finished black, and a bronze color. However, once revealed, both colors where nowhere to be seen.
The second reason is that it’s a waste of time.
You’ve been following every leak months before the reveal. Finally, when the product gets revealed, you’re either very disappointed because all the surprises are ruined, or you were hoping for something to come, but eventually, it didn’t come. Either way, you will be disappointed.
I know that some people like the leaks for entertainment or just because there curious. In that case, I’m no one to advise you against following them. I’m just a regular person who likes to share his thought about this way of distributing information.
