Dan Gillmor sez, "This is a story about a story about a rumor of an invitation to an announcement of a product launch. Needless to say, the company involved is Apple."

  • joeskunk

    the only thing better is another story about all that.

    • Stooge

      If you think that’s convoluted, just wait till you see the turn by turn directions for the venue.

      • digi_owl

        Depends on the app used…

    • Robert

      That’s what Cory wrote: a post about a story about a report that suggests the date of an invitation to a product launch.

  • Joe Buck

    OK, I’ll bite.  Cory Doctorow pointed out a Dan Gillmor comment about a story which is about a story about a rumor of an invitation to an announcement of a product launch. Stack overflow in 3..2..1…

    • oldtaku

       We’re too far down the rabbit hole, maaaaaaaaaan

  • digi_owl

    I swear, that company’s greatest achievement is neither hardware nor software, but marketing…

    • atimoshenko

      Only they don’t do anything particularly special or difficult-to-copy when it comes to marketing. That people treat them differently, in other words, isn’t a result of their own marketing efforts.

      • digi_owl

        Sure, the concept is simple. Yet they manage to get the press, not just tech but ordinary news media, to write about the smallest of rumor about a future product. Tho i sometimes wonder if this is because media outlets seems to run on their products while the rest of the world runs on the competitors…

        • atimoshenko

          Yet they manage to get the press, not just tech but ordinary news media, to write about the smallest of rumor about a future product.

          But, IMHO, they don’t actually DO any marketing to catalyse or inspire such behaviour by the press. Sure, they don’t talk about their products before they are a few weeks away from being ready to ship (at least to developers), but then neither does a, say, toothpaste company or a maker of luxury watches, or whatever else. In any case, I don’t really see how it can be argued that saying little (i.e. not marketing a lot) is great marketing.

          I suppose evolving keynote speeches at conferences/conventions into periodic, standalone, ‘hero product’-focused media events is a marketing mechanism that was popularised (pioneered? – I have no idea…) by Apple, but it is now something that is widely practiced.

          • http://arnereport.net/ Sept

            They do not do a lot of extra marketing any more, but did a while back. Steve Jobs promised a few newspapers and magazines each «exclusive interview» in trade to be on the front page. Also remember the «1984» advertisement? It was aired on the Super Bowl, Jobs paid out of his own pocket, because Apple’s board declined. While they do not do much of this any more, to my knowledge, I think the very big press coverage still comes in parts from then.

            Also of course with the launch of the iPhone, it was plain better than the rest, even though Steve Ballmer joked about it, the press was impressed and many people bought it. A big enough iPhone user base for many media outlets to cover a lot of Apple’s news and rumors.

  • xzzy

    What gets me is how one of the first comments is how such a device “should be a killer xmas gift for kids.”

    I seriously grew up in the wrong household if cutting edge tech gadgets are intended for kids.

    • ookluh

       Me too!

      This lack of tech-centric largesse has been added to the list of ways my parents failed me.

  • JimEJim

    We have to go deeper.

  • KrisKristosterone

    Just had a further look around the Apple Insider site, expecting it to be like Mac Rumors, etc. Boy was I wrong! It appears to be an aggregator of anti-Apple agitprop (alliteration apologies). Not a single positive news item to be found. Dvorakian in its unimaginative single-mindedness. Cue Samsung FUD conspiracy theory…