12 ms·

How we screwed (almost) the whole Apple community

414 points by pohl 14y ago

mpchlets 14y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
mpchlets 14y ago
This reminds me of the Sokal Affair: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair Very similar idea - and all before the Internet.
mpchlets 14y ago
This sounds a whole like like the Sokal Affair - take a look at it on wikipedia if not familiar. And all before the Internet.
smooradian 14y ago
All the more reason why we need to teach kids in elem schools now how to identify real info and research sources. What a mess.
- kwiens 14y ago
  (iFixit here.) We told every reporter we talked to that it was a fake. But we didn't get very many calls.
arn 14y ago
fwiw, they didn't just submit to reddit and wait. They also submitted it to (at least some) sites directly. Doesn't look like any dedicated rumors sites actually published it. Getting fake rumor submissions is a daily occurrence for rumor sites. The actual stories were posted on smaller sites which questioned the authenticity. And Wired actually did an article on custom screws and used the image as a jumping off point: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/if-theres-a-screw-theres-a-way-custom-screws-wont-stop-the-diy-community/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/if-theres-a-screw-the... So you can look at as either a success or failure. (disclaimer: I run MacRumors.com)
- kmlymi 14y ago
  I'm betting, and you could let us know on the real number, that there's rumours like this constantly, and most mac rumour sites (and there are plenty) weed through 90% of the bull. I think this story is getting more press than it really deserves.
  - crag 14y ago
    "I think this story is getting more press than it really deserves." Don't you think that was the whole point of the authors in the first place? I mean, here we are, talking about this again! Even if we all end up flaming the authors, here we are. There is no such thing as bad press. I don't believe for a second it was some "experiment". Please.. it's a press stunt. And it worked.
- masterzora 14y ago
  Actually, this comment here is the one that makes me think. I realised when I ran across it that I and, judging by the comments in this thread, others are taking the article at face value as truth despite that same article having just told us not to do that.
  - thebigshane 14y ago
    That direction of thinking will only drive you crazy. Skepticism is good but don't take it too far. Also there is at least some proof that it was posted 5 days ago: http://imgur.com/fkyQS http://imgur.com/fkyQS and http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/xvnvo/a_friend_took_a_photo_a_while_ago_at_that_fruit/ http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/xvnvo/a_friend_took_a... I suppose we can question that day4.se were really the ones who planted it... but, does it matter who planted it? The conclusion is the same.
    - masterzora 14y ago
      Please, examine the post to which I replied. The point is not a question of whether the facts you laid out are true. You are correct in that they don't matter so much. But consider in the context of the GP post: we have the article appearing to lay things out fairly closely to "look how much everyone believed us" versus the comment saying "well, not everyone". That is to say, the message of the article still holds just fine, but it would still be fair to carry this direction of thinking as far as "is their analysis totally on the level?" Given that this is more or less the message of the article, I was just noting how, even with this very message in front of us, we aren't necessarily heeding it as well as we could.
laconian 14y ago
This is the brave new world of SEO in our media. Once reputable news sources are more than willing to throw all their credibility out the door so that they can be the louder wall of an echo chamber for the sake of impressions.
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  Didn't the article point out that most of the "major" news sources covering this pointed out that this was an unconfirmed rumor?
  - alanh 14y ago
    That doesn’t affect SEO, does it?
Apocryphon 14y ago
This seems awfully irresponsible.
- omh 14y ago
  In what way?
  - Apocryphon 14y ago
    Spreading false rumors, especially a potentially damaging one.
WiseWeasel 14y ago
What's funny is there's no indication from the drawing that the screw would only work in one direction; it just needs a special screwdriver, and you have to spend 10 minutes figuring out its proper orientation. When manufacturers ship non-standard screws, they simply create a market for non-standard screwdrivers. I had to get a three-pronged screwdriver to get into my Wii, and it presented little obstacle. Given the difficulty of actually using this particular design however, a discerning reader, and especially a tech journalist should be able to see that this is completely stupid and impractical. Apple is not in the business of employing technicians to spend half their days orienting screwdrivers.
jonknee 14y ago
The funny thing is Apple does make their own screws. When they replaced my back glass at the Apple Store they also replaced the screws so I would be unable to service it later. http://www.ifixit.com/blog/2011/01/20/apples-diabolical-plan-to-screw-your-iphone/ http://www.ifixit.com/blog/2011/01/20/apples-diabolical-plan...
- runjake 14y ago
  Thanks for the link. I'm a long-time customer of iFixit, but I've been really disappointed in iFixit's attempts to shill their products with FUD (warranted or not) about Apple. It reminds me of the "Chewie's" chewing gum scene in Clerks, where the gum salesman is ranting about the cigarette industry. Every critical post they make is a long diatribe followed by a shilling of their products that does nothing to solve the larger problem. It's all about selling their product. And hey, it's their right, but I find it tacky. What's the point of their $10 "liberation" kit? It includes the pentalobe driver for the screws they're replacing. Why would I really need to replace the screws at this point? I don't. I thought this was a recent iFixit trend, but I see they've been using these tactics for a while.
  - thebigshane 14y ago
    The issue is more philosophical than practical. see: https://freedom-to-tinker.com/ https://freedom-to-tinker.com/ Note that in this case, an iPhone is locked down enough in hardware and software to where it really doesn't matter if you can open the screws or not. Actually I don't own an iPhone, is there something you can gain by opening it up? Replacing battery or SD card or something?
    - runjake 14y ago
      By opening up an iPhone, you can replace the battery, the front and back glass, the digitizer and display assemblies. (The display assemblies may all be fused together anyway, so I might be redundant here.
  - true_religion 14y ago
engtech 14y ago
of course, the real problem is that Apple will read this rumour and then get the idea of implementing these screws to lock consumers out of their devices and achieve the utopia of "no consumer serviceable parts".
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- hahainternet 14y ago
  The big deal is that you didn't read the article.
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  The irony is thick enough to cut with an asymmetrical knife.
lnanek2 14y ago
Reminds me of this book: Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulator/dp/159184553X/ http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulator...
freehunter 14y ago
Maybe a more accurate headline would read "How (almost) the whole Apple community is screwed". On one hand, you have the people who believe this. On the other hand, you have the ones who do not. In the middle is those who don't care. We'll disregard them for this argument. The people who believe the false rumor of a custom Apple screw are, at least to a large extent, the people who wouldn't put it past Apple. There's a point being made there; Apple has done a lot in their short history of mainstream popularity to lock users out of their hardware and software. A custom screw wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary. With this argument, Apple has developed a notorious reputation and when people are believing this without questioning it, it means the Apple community (as opposed to just Apple users) is screwed. The ones who would not believe it, I feel, are split into two camps. Ones who saw no evidence of this being true, and ones who could not reconcile it in their mind that Apple would be doing something like this. The ones who didn't believe it because of a lack of evidence is the community Apple (and every other company) needs on their side. The ones who didn't believe it because they didn't want to believe it do so out of a blind love for Apple, and denial that Apple could betray them. Even if this is a small number of people (you can't deny they exist, though), it's still evidence that the Apple community is screwed. The first group is full of people who either hate Apple for similar-but-opposite reasons to the last group or people who are suspicious of Apple's history (especially after the newest Macbook Pro). There is merit in their mindset, and that's not good for the Apple community. The last group is full of done-no-wrong supporters, who will praise anything Apple creates for better or worse. The lack of critical thinking and constructive feedback and criticism is bad for the Apple community. Who knows if a review of a new product is 10/10 because it's a good product or because it's an Apple product? This is just my analysis, and I am happy to discuss alternative viewpoints. For what it's worth, I'm not upset that these guys made a fake. It gives a great view into the mindset of Apple news publishings and reactions.
- smsm42 14y ago
  It's not Apple community. It's just people. The same rumor can be started about anything popular with the same success. We had chain letters about facebook charging for access and all kinds of other baloney long time ago. snopes.com has loads of it. There's always some percent of people with low critical thinking, and always some percent of irresponsible bloggers/press which think spreading the rumor is always more profitable than fact-checking it (and they are probably right - nobody ever got rich on ad dollars earned by not publishing something).
pavel_lishin 14y ago
I wonder how often companies pull stunts this against their competitors.
- lazugod 14y ago
  Would the Mojave bait-and-switch count? Like this article, it was intended to be publicly revealed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojave_Experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojave_Experiment
shocks 14y ago
I wish web designers would stop putting light grey text on white backgrounds.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
silvestrov 14y ago
The media is hungry: there is simply not enough news to report to fill the pages, and real news is dull and requires a lot of effort to understand and write about. So the media have to grasp every rumor, every speculation, everything which can be made into a scandal. They would never, ever, say "nothing to see here, pass on". That would be loosing sales for them.
chernevik 14y ago
A more interesting question is the drawbacks of taking time to scrutinize, or making more conditional statements, or waiting for confirmation. Meme direction seems to be set pretty early, and hard to move once set. It's a commonplace of politics that you have to react within the news cycle or the story gets away from you, and everyone agrees this is not a good thing. So anyone taking the time to actually think through a bit is surrendering time, at an important moment in the discussion, to less careful people.
bryanlarsen 14y ago
For more information on how the media is manipulated in the 21st century, check out Ryan Holiday's book: http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulator/dp/159184553X http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulator...
Uchikoma 14y ago
Didn't hear about this. Apple user. Guess the "(almost)" is a very large or small almost.
shadowmatter 14y ago
"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." - Mark Twain (attributed)
shasta 14y ago
I see what happened. Apple, attempting to mitigate the damage caused when drawings of their new incompatible screw design leaked, has found a couple of patsies to claim it was a hoax.
kevinalexbrown 14y ago
They might be severely overestimating the stupidity of the masses [1] here by only considering the those who actually responded in comments or twitter. Either they perceived the news as truth, or called it fake, no grey zone in between. The split between the two camps, was quite unequal. An estimate would be that 90% regarded the screw as a fact and based all the further opinion on that, only 10% were critical to accuracy. This smells like massive response bias. I imagine most skeptical and critical readers get tired of responding with the obvious "hmm, how do we know this is true?" response. A more interesting statistic would be how many people saw it and didn't find it interesting enough to warrant further investigation. I believe I saw the headline, rolled my eyes, and went back to work. That's not to say lock-out isn't an important consideration, but it didn't pass the "this can be verified" test, and anyway, it would be obvious enough once the new iPhone came out. [1] Edit: maybe the masses are stupid (I'm not convinced of this), but the vocal rush to judgement of a few is not necessarily a representative sample.
- Arwill 14y ago
  The exact point is that the critics remain silent, while the believers (or those doing it on purpose) carry the false news forward. Then those posts will appear on the search engines. Then those searching about the topic will become convinced based on big number of similar posts.
  - betterth 14y ago
    The blog/news/comment cycle is not built to support dissent. You cannot "refute" a blog post from the comments effectively. The "circlejerk cycle" as I like to call it is built to be a self-reinforcing loop where the effect of dissent is minimized. And seeing as those who were skeptical likely did as the OP and "rolled their eyes and moved on", there probably isn't much of an audience for "skeptic" news, as the skeptics tune out and move on. (Plus, said news would be boring: "Just a quick update, we have no real evidence so this is a nonissue, will update again later to tell you that no real evidence has appeared").
  - nirvana 14y ago
    Attempting to correct misinformation, for instance, here on Hacker News, is essentially impossible and pointless. This screw story, like many others ("MBP Retina is unrepairable", etc.) play into an ideology[1]. And no facts, no matter how well sourced, can defeat ideology when the ideologues have the down button and outnumber the critical thinker. For instance, pointing out that Apple licensed the technology they got from Xerox back in the day, a stone cold and indisputable fact, gets down voted into invisibility and claims that it isn't true and that it was stolen, here on Hacker News. The claim that Apple stole from Xerox has been repeated so often and in so many cases that it has become "fact" in their minds. Another example is the idea that Apple didn't invent any new technology with the iPhone. They need this to be true, so they spread all kinds of nonsense (like 2001, a movie, is "prior art", which shows a significant lack of understanding of what patents are)... and they believe it. It isn't simply that people are gullible, its that ideology (and apple hating is a prevalent ideology) is stronger than reality for so many people. [1] Maybe religion is a better word, it feels more accurate, but is more likely to be taken as a pejorative so I'm going with ideology.
incision 14y ago
"When someone presents a bit of loose facts on Twitter, I usually respond with something like ”64% of the facts on the Internet is 48% incorrect according to 52% of respondents”, completely made up numbers out of my head, but it makes people think a little extra." I really hate that particular brand of quip. I find it most often employed by people who want to effortlessly dismiss some statistic that they happen to disagree with. I'm not claiming that's the case here or that Twitter is full of solid, factual information. Rather, that it's a worthless way to respond. At least the original posts in such cases, no matter how loose provide a context for someone inclined to search out of the facts.
blhack 14y ago
Could somebody explain what makes any of this stuff "security"? Go ahead and make some weird top secret screw. We'll 3D print a drive for it.
BenoitEssiambre 14y ago
Does anybody else hate those pale, faded out font colors? It does make the page look better when you are glancing at it not trying to read anything but it sure makes reading textual content (the actual point of blogs and most websites) much more difficult.
- missing_cipher 14y ago
  Check out: http://www.readability.com/bookmarklets/ http://www.readability.com/bookmarklets/ Here's how it looks: http://awesomescreenshot.com/02fd25oe4 http://awesomescreenshot.com/02fd25oe4
  - lmm 14y ago
    Wow, those humongous margins are far worse than the low contrast. Is there a customizable equivalent around?
    - _ikke_ 14y ago
      There is readable [1]. It gives you a bookmarklet with your personal preferences. [1]: http://readable.tastefulwords.com/ http://readable.tastefulwords.com/
- 0xABADC0DA 14y ago
  Bookmarklet to turn on/off style sheets: javascript:(function(){var%20s=document.styleSheets;for(var%20i%20in%20s){s[i].disabled=!!!s[i].disabled;}})(); Makes pretty much any page readable, but combine with noscript/adblock to keep the content from changing.
- RobotCaleb 14y ago
  I'm color blind and frequently turn off colors on webpages. Try this bookmarklet to remove the colors to get a standard black on white page while preserving (most) everything else. javascript:(function(){var newSS, styles='* { background: white ! important; color: black !important } :link, :link * { color: #0000EE !important } :visited, :visited * { color: #551A8B !important }'; if(document.createStyleSheet) { document.createStyleSheet("javascript:'"+styles+"'"); } else { newSS=document.createElement('link'); newSS.rel='stylesheet'; newSS.href='data:text/css,'+escape(styles); document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(newSS); } })();
mmanfrin 14y ago
This isn't limited to Apple, this isn't limited to tech. The small fish eat the lies of the smaller fish, and in turn get eaten by the medium fish, and a rumor turns in to a meal down the road for aggregator-type media sites. This happens with tech, but also with gossip, news, politics, everything. This isn't new, either. This is just a cyclical case of lazy journalism.
ozataman 14y ago
This is absolutely hilarious. Come up with some !@#% that doesn't make any sense and watch the hordes make it the most important news since the invention of agriculture!
benthumb 14y ago
>We must become more critical of what we read and think 'Is this reasonable? ' The problem w/ this prescription is that just b/c something is 'unreasonable' to us doesn't make it untrue.
gawi 14y ago
On the net, everyday is April 1st.
rickmb 14y ago
This whole thing can be reduced to "people who engage in idle gossip are generally speaking not the sharpest pencils in the box". Most people with half a brain just kept their mouth shut, so there's really no way to draw any conclusion about the Apple community as a whole, unless you can produce an accurate number on the people that ignored the whole thing.
dvliman 14y ago
unrelated discussion. did anyone think this site is hard to read? the font size and color...
mladenkovacevic 14y ago
Just listen to the news tonight and count how many times dramatic reports are immediately followed by "...independent sources say".
kawaguchi 14y ago
Even if I doubted the veracity of the news, I would still be unhappy about even the concept of an "unremovable" screw on my Apple hardware and my comments would reflect my dissatisfaction with this idea itself, irrespective of veracity. By assuming that people talking on Google+, facebook, twitter, etc. are buying the idea hook, line and sinker, it ignores the likely possibility that some people may just be reacting to the idea itself and hope that their comments, along with the rest of the masses, would dissuade both Apple (in this hypothetical situation) or any company that would attempt a similar design in the future.
davecap1 14y ago
Hold on. How do we know this article is even true?!
- brendonjohn 14y ago
  Funny, after reading i thought this too, so did some google'n... how do we know google isn't in on this too? <.<
rhizome 14y ago
The author could have saved a lot of time and effort in coming to the conclusion that distance from the truth is problematic. Jean Baudrillard wrote about it in "Simulacrum and Simulation" 40 years ago, which was adapted into a movie called "Multiplicity," starring Michael Keaton.
conductr 14y ago
What role does truth play? I think most readers understand that apple news is rumor (unless it comes from apple). So the reader doesn't really care if the news is true. They want are stating their opinions as if it were true. They may not explicitly say "i know this is probably fake, but if not, apple can go screw themselves." Similarly, the publishers are purely reporting the existence of this conversation to their readers. Like "hey, this is what folks are talking about, you might be interested".
rco8786 14y ago
Does anyone else have a really hard time reading this? Need a little more contrast on the font color, por favor.
Kilimanjaro 14y ago
So if I post an article about RIM betting the farm in a new phone based on Solaris and the stock tanks because of the domino effect in the news, am I liable? Yep, the poster should be in jail.
eyevariety 14y ago
Make the body font on your blog bigger - its all out of proportion with the rest of the site design.
atruepoint 14y ago
It's really interesting to look at the ways in which media distribution models have changed--especially the level of perceived authenticity in television 40 years ago vs now. As the internet becomes a greater and greater form of information dissemination, new models are going to need to develop in order to provide truth in media.
Hominem 14y ago
Apple is the world’s largest company, so they can take a few knocks. Claims the article, by what measure?
- pohl 14y ago
  It was true for a moment by market cap. That's probably where they got the notion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporations_by_market_capitalization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporations_by_market_...
vacri 14y ago
Another day, another blog with low-contrast text.
jconley 14y ago
Clearly the game of Telephone has never been able to have a higher impact than it does today with the speed and scale of the social internet. But I think there is one question left unanswered: Why are we assuming this story itself is in fact true? Because it's written on a blog? :)
jere 14y ago
They're called _rumors_ a for reason. People expect most rumors to be bullshit anyway.
splicer 14y ago
This reminds me of a Dilbert episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEOOFanQms0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEOOFanQms0
beweinreich 14y ago
I think it'd be hilariously ironic if a story came out next week claiming this story to be a fake.
jamesmcn 14y ago
It's funny because it's a pun.
JamesLeonis 14y ago
My grandfather sends me those political chain emails asking if they have any validity. He's pretty skeptical and deletes the majority of these, but every now and again he wants more information. That's where I come in. Last night I responded to one where the author attacked his opponent's credibility without any cited sources, for or against. I wrote him a long response about the need for sources, as well as the need to check the source's credibility. What this article points out is how the news media is very hungry for new stories, and their need to publish as soon as possible. This means unverified information passes through the journalistic filter. This also points out, like the emails above, that people will generally fall for confirmation bias in many cases. Even HN has bouts of the echo chamber. It's really hard to counter, even when you are actively guarding against it. Manual critical thinking and checking sources all the time is very mentally draining. I would bet that most to all of us have some form of automatic first-pass mental filter that immediately questions "facts" contained in email chain letters, or the latest fad technology if it has too many buzzwords, or Facebook posts. That is a shortcut we've developed so we don't have to manually think about every bit of information that comes across our desks. It goes immediately to the mental round file. Unfortunately, there are people out there that do not have this filter. Maybe they haven't mentally trained to look for these kinds of problems. Maybe they were referred to the story by a trusted source, like a good friend or a prominent publication. Maybe the information fell precisely into their particular confirmation bias that it bypassed their skepticism. Political advertising thrives on this problem. Unscrupulous con men thrive off this problem. But it happens to us all the time. I fall for it all the time, even though I try to find the "real" facts and am generally skeptical of most things. Thus it doesn't surprise me that people fell for the screw hoax, because Apple is traditionally very secretive and has a history of locking out DIYers. That screw fit Apple's MO to a T, and thus likely slipped through many of the internet bullshit filters and went viral. It happens. It will happen again. The best we can do is try our best to root out false information, and accept that we will be fooled from time to time.
isyiwang 14y ago
Please change title to: How we (almost) screwed the whole Apple community kthxbye
printer 14y ago
"Apple is the world’s largest company". Last time I checked Apple was listed somewhere around 30 (20th for most profitable). Maybe Day4 didn't check there facts...
Cl4rity 14y ago
First of all, this problem isn't unique to tech journalism or the Internet. Stuff like this has happened in old media several times in the past--where's the outrage for that? Secondly, the spread of misinformation, when it does happen this quickly, is usually rectified just as quickly. The good thing about most reputable tech blogs is that updates happen quickly and often. Anything you might have accepted as fact one day might be dispelled the next. Aside from Apple's stock tanking several years ago when Ryan Block published a news story on Engadget about delayed iPhone shipments, when was the last time anyone was hurt by this sort of misinformation, anyway?
josteink 14y ago
I think it's fair to say the Apple community got exactly what it wanted here. This sort of "trick" wouldn't be playable on any other community, because its rabid fanboys tend to care about other things than screws. Apple fanboys however... They care about the margins of product-announcement papers and reads the future from them like gipsy-queens reads tea-leaves. It's an impressive performance, but still oh so pointless. Because they miss the important thing: A screw is an implementation detail. What you want is open access to the bits which matters: SIM, battery, storage, platform and bootloaders. Provide me with that and I couldn't care less what screws you use.

414 points by pohl 14y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

This reminds me of the Sokal Affair: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair Very similar idea - and all before the Internet.

mpchlets 14y ago

This sounds a whole like like the Sokal Affair - take a look at it on wikipedia if not familiar. And all before the Internet.

smooradian 14y ago

All the more reason why we need to teach kids in elem schools now how to identify real info and research sources. What a mess.

kwiens 14y ago
(iFixit here.) We told every reporter we talked to that it was a fake. But we didn't get very many calls.

arn 14y ago

fwiw, they didn't just submit to reddit and wait. They also submitted it to (at least some) sites directly. Doesn't look like any dedicated rumors sites actually published it. Getting fake rumor submissions is a daily occurrence for rumor sites. The actual stories were posted on smaller sites which questioned the authenticity. And Wired actually did an article on custom screws and used the image as a jumping off point: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/if-theres-a-screw-theres-a-way-custom-screws-wont-stop-the-diy-community/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/if-theres-a-screw-the... So you can look at as either a success or failure. (disclaimer: I run MacRumors.com)

kmlymi 14y ago
I'm betting, and you could let us know on the real number, that there's rumours like this constantly, and most mac rumour sites (and there are plenty) weed through 90% of the bull. I think this story is getting more press than it really deserves.
- crag 14y ago
  "I think this story is getting more press than it really deserves." Don't you think that was the whole point of the authors in the first place? I mean, here we are, talking about this again! Even if we all end up flaming the authors, here we are. There is no such thing as bad press. I don't believe for a second it was some "experiment". Please.. it's a press stunt. And it worked.
masterzora 14y ago
Actually, this comment here is the one that makes me think. I realised when I ran across it that I and, judging by the comments in this thread, others are taking the article at face value as truth despite that same article having just told us not to do that.
- thebigshane 14y ago
  That direction of thinking will only drive you crazy. Skepticism is good but don't take it too far. Also there is at least some proof that it was posted 5 days ago: http://imgur.com/fkyQS http://imgur.com/fkyQS and http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/xvnvo/a_friend_took_a_photo_a_while_ago_at_that_fruit/ http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/xvnvo/a_friend_took_a... I suppose we can question that day4.se were really the ones who planted it... but, does it matter who planted it? The conclusion is the same.
  - masterzora 14y ago
    Please, examine the post to which I replied. The point is not a question of whether the facts you laid out are true. You are correct in that they don't matter so much. But consider in the context of the GP post: we have the article appearing to lay things out fairly closely to "look how much everyone believed us" versus the comment saying "well, not everyone". That is to say, the message of the article still holds just fine, but it would still be fair to carry this direction of thinking as far as "is their analysis totally on the level?" Given that this is more or less the message of the article, I was just noting how, even with this very message in front of us, we aren't necessarily heeding it as well as we could.

laconian 14y ago

This is the brave new world of SEO in our media. Once reputable news sources are more than willing to throw all their credibility out the door so that they can be the louder wall of an echo chamber for the sake of impressions.

pavel_lishin 14y ago
Didn't the article point out that most of the "major" news sources covering this pointed out that this was an unconfirmed rumor?
- alanh 14y ago
  That doesn’t affect SEO, does it?

Apocryphon 14y ago

This seems awfully irresponsible.

omh 14y ago
In what way?
- Apocryphon 14y ago
  Spreading false rumors, especially a potentially damaging one.

WiseWeasel 14y ago

What's funny is there's no indication from the drawing that the screw would only work in one direction; it just needs a special screwdriver, and you have to spend 10 minutes figuring out its proper orientation. When manufacturers ship non-standard screws, they simply create a market for non-standard screwdrivers. I had to get a three-pronged screwdriver to get into my Wii, and it presented little obstacle. Given the difficulty of actually using this particular design however, a discerning reader, and especially a tech journalist should be able to see that this is completely stupid and impractical. Apple is not in the business of employing technicians to spend half their days orienting screwdrivers.

jonknee 14y ago

The funny thing is Apple does make their own screws. When they replaced my back glass at the Apple Store they also replaced the screws so I would be unable to service it later. http://www.ifixit.com/blog/2011/01/20/apples-diabolical-plan-to-screw-your-iphone/ http://www.ifixit.com/blog/2011/01/20/apples-diabolical-plan...

runjake 14y ago
Thanks for the link. I'm a long-time customer of iFixit, but I've been really disappointed in iFixit's attempts to shill their products with FUD (warranted or not) about Apple. It reminds me of the "Chewie's" chewing gum scene in Clerks, where the gum salesman is ranting about the cigarette industry. Every critical post they make is a long diatribe followed by a shilling of their products that does nothing to solve the larger problem. It's all about selling their product. And hey, it's their right, but I find it tacky. What's the point of their $10 "liberation" kit? It includes the pentalobe driver for the screws they're replacing. Why would I really need to replace the screws at this point? I don't. I thought this was a recent iFixit trend, but I see they've been using these tactics for a while.
- thebigshane 14y ago
  The issue is more philosophical than practical. see: https://freedom-to-tinker.com/ https://freedom-to-tinker.com/ Note that in this case, an iPhone is locked down enough in hardware and software to where it really doesn't matter if you can open the screws or not. Actually I don't own an iPhone, is there something you can gain by opening it up? Replacing battery or SD card or something?
  - runjake 14y ago
    By opening up an iPhone, you can replace the battery, the front and back glass, the digitizer and display assemblies. (The display assemblies may all be fused together anyway, so I might be redundant here.
- true_religion 14y ago

engtech 14y ago

of course, the real problem is that Apple will read this rumour and then get the idea of implementing these screws to lock consumers out of their devices and achieve the utopia of "no consumer serviceable parts".

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

hahainternet 14y ago
The big deal is that you didn't read the article.
pavel_lishin 14y ago
The irony is thick enough to cut with an asymmetrical knife.

lnanek2 14y ago

Reminds me of this book: Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulator/dp/159184553X/ http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulator...

freehunter 14y ago

Maybe a more accurate headline would read "How (almost) the whole Apple community is screwed". On one hand, you have the people who believe this. On the other hand, you have the ones who do not. In the middle is those who don't care. We'll disregard them for this argument. The people who believe the false rumor of a custom Apple screw are, at least to a large extent, the people who wouldn't put it past Apple. There's a point being made there; Apple has done a lot in their short history of mainstream popularity to lock users out of their hardware and software. A custom screw wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary. With this argument, Apple has developed a notorious reputation and when people are believing this without questioning it, it means the Apple community (as opposed to just Apple users) is screwed. The ones who would not believe it, I feel, are split into two camps. Ones who saw no evidence of this being true, and ones who could not reconcile it in their mind that Apple would be doing something like this. The ones who didn't believe it because of a lack of evidence is the community Apple (and every other company) needs on their side. The ones who didn't believe it because they didn't want to believe it do so out of a blind love for Apple, and denial that Apple could betray them. Even if this is a small number of people (you can't deny they exist, though), it's still evidence that the Apple community is screwed. The first group is full of people who either hate Apple for similar-but-opposite reasons to the last group or people who are suspicious of Apple's history (especially after the newest Macbook Pro). There is merit in their mindset, and that's not good for the Apple community. The last group is full of done-no-wrong supporters, who will praise anything Apple creates for better or worse. The lack of critical thinking and constructive feedback and criticism is bad for the Apple community. Who knows if a review of a new product is 10/10 because it's a good product or because it's an Apple product? This is just my analysis, and I am happy to discuss alternative viewpoints. For what it's worth, I'm not upset that these guys made a fake. It gives a great view into the mindset of Apple news publishings and reactions.

smsm42 14y ago
It's not Apple community. It's just people. The same rumor can be started about anything popular with the same success. We had chain letters about facebook charging for access and all kinds of other baloney long time ago. snopes.com has loads of it. There's always some percent of people with low critical thinking, and always some percent of irresponsible bloggers/press which think spreading the rumor is always more profitable than fact-checking it (and they are probably right - nobody ever got rich on ad dollars earned by not publishing something).

pavel_lishin 14y ago

I wonder how often companies pull stunts this against their competitors.

lazugod 14y ago
Would the Mojave bait-and-switch count? Like this article, it was intended to be publicly revealed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojave_Experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojave_Experiment

shocks 14y ago

I wish web designers would stop putting light grey text on white backgrounds.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

silvestrov 14y ago

The media is hungry: there is simply not enough news to report to fill the pages, and real news is dull and requires a lot of effort to understand and write about. So the media have to grasp every rumor, every speculation, everything which can be made into a scandal. They would never, ever, say "nothing to see here, pass on". That would be loosing sales for them.

chernevik 14y ago

A more interesting question is the drawbacks of taking time to scrutinize, or making more conditional statements, or waiting for confirmation. Meme direction seems to be set pretty early, and hard to move once set. It's a commonplace of politics that you have to react within the news cycle or the story gets away from you, and everyone agrees this is not a good thing. So anyone taking the time to actually think through a bit is surrendering time, at an important moment in the discussion, to less careful people.

bryanlarsen 14y ago

For more information on how the media is manipulated in the 21st century, check out Ryan Holiday's book: http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulator/dp/159184553X http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulator...

Uchikoma 14y ago

Didn't hear about this. Apple user. Guess the "(almost)" is a very large or small almost.

shadowmatter 14y ago

"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." - Mark Twain (attributed)

shasta 14y ago

I see what happened. Apple, attempting to mitigate the damage caused when drawings of their new incompatible screw design leaked, has found a couple of patsies to claim it was a hoax.

kevinalexbrown 14y ago

They might be severely overestimating the stupidity of the masses [1] here by only considering the those who actually responded in comments or twitter. Either they perceived the news as truth, or called it fake, no grey zone in between. The split between the two camps, was quite unequal. An estimate would be that 90% regarded the screw as a fact and based all the further opinion on that, only 10% were critical to accuracy. This smells like massive response bias. I imagine most skeptical and critical readers get tired of responding with the obvious "hmm, how do we know this is true?" response. A more interesting statistic would be how many people saw it and didn't find it interesting enough to warrant further investigation. I believe I saw the headline, rolled my eyes, and went back to work. That's not to say lock-out isn't an important consideration, but it didn't pass the "this can be verified" test, and anyway, it would be obvious enough once the new iPhone came out. [1] Edit: maybe the masses are stupid (I'm not convinced of this), but the vocal rush to judgement of a few is not necessarily a representative sample.

Arwill 14y ago
The exact point is that the critics remain silent, while the believers (or those doing it on purpose) carry the false news forward. Then those posts will appear on the search engines. Then those searching about the topic will become convinced based on big number of similar posts.
- betterth 14y ago
  The blog/news/comment cycle is not built to support dissent. You cannot "refute" a blog post from the comments effectively. The "circlejerk cycle" as I like to call it is built to be a self-reinforcing loop where the effect of dissent is minimized. And seeing as those who were skeptical likely did as the OP and "rolled their eyes and moved on", there probably isn't much of an audience for "skeptic" news, as the skeptics tune out and move on. (Plus, said news would be boring: "Just a quick update, we have no real evidence so this is a nonissue, will update again later to tell you that no real evidence has appeared").
- nirvana 14y ago
  Attempting to correct misinformation, for instance, here on Hacker News, is essentially impossible and pointless. This screw story, like many others ("MBP Retina is unrepairable", etc.) play into an ideology[1]. And no facts, no matter how well sourced, can defeat ideology when the ideologues have the down button and outnumber the critical thinker. For instance, pointing out that Apple licensed the technology they got from Xerox back in the day, a stone cold and indisputable fact, gets down voted into invisibility and claims that it isn't true and that it was stolen, here on Hacker News. The claim that Apple stole from Xerox has been repeated so often and in so many cases that it has become "fact" in their minds. Another example is the idea that Apple didn't invent any new technology with the iPhone. They need this to be true, so they spread all kinds of nonsense (like 2001, a movie, is "prior art", which shows a significant lack of understanding of what patents are)... and they believe it. It isn't simply that people are gullible, its that ideology (and apple hating is a prevalent ideology) is stronger than reality for so many people. [1] Maybe religion is a better word, it feels more accurate, but is more likely to be taken as a pejorative so I'm going with ideology.

incision 14y ago

"When someone presents a bit of loose facts on Twitter, I usually respond with something like ”64% of the facts on the Internet is 48% incorrect according to 52% of respondents”, completely made up numbers out of my head, but it makes people think a little extra." I really hate that particular brand of quip. I find it most often employed by people who want to effortlessly dismiss some statistic that they happen to disagree with. I'm not claiming that's the case here or that Twitter is full of solid, factual information. Rather, that it's a worthless way to respond. At least the original posts in such cases, no matter how loose provide a context for someone inclined to search out of the facts.

blhack 14y ago

Could somebody explain what makes any of this stuff "security"? Go ahead and make some weird top secret screw. We'll 3D print a drive for it.

BenoitEssiambre 14y ago

Does anybody else hate those pale, faded out font colors? It does make the page look better when you are glancing at it not trying to read anything but it sure makes reading textual content (the actual point of blogs and most websites) much more difficult.

missing_cipher 14y ago
Check out: http://www.readability.com/bookmarklets/ http://www.readability.com/bookmarklets/ Here's how it looks: http://awesomescreenshot.com/02fd25oe4 http://awesomescreenshot.com/02fd25oe4
- lmm 14y ago
  Wow, those humongous margins are far worse than the low contrast. Is there a customizable equivalent around?
  - _ikke_ 14y ago
    There is readable [1]. It gives you a bookmarklet with your personal preferences. [1]: http://readable.tastefulwords.com/ http://readable.tastefulwords.com/
0xABADC0DA 14y ago
Bookmarklet to turn on/off style sheets: javascript:(function(){var%20s=document.styleSheets;for(var%20i%20in%20s){s[i].disabled=!!!s[i].disabled;}})(); Makes pretty much any page readable, but combine with noscript/adblock to keep the content from changing.
RobotCaleb 14y ago
I'm color blind and frequently turn off colors on webpages. Try this bookmarklet to remove the colors to get a standard black on white page while preserving (most) everything else. javascript:(function(){var newSS, styles='* { background: white ! important; color: black !important } :link, :link * { color: #0000EE !important } :visited, :visited * { color: #551A8B !important }'; if(document.createStyleSheet) { document.createStyleSheet("javascript:'"+styles+"'"); } else { newSS=document.createElement('link'); newSS.rel='stylesheet'; newSS.href='data:text/css,'+escape(styles); document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(newSS); } })();

mmanfrin 14y ago

This isn't limited to Apple, this isn't limited to tech. The small fish eat the lies of the smaller fish, and in turn get eaten by the medium fish, and a rumor turns in to a meal down the road for aggregator-type media sites. This happens with tech, but also with gossip, news, politics, everything. This isn't new, either. This is just a cyclical case of lazy journalism.

ozataman 14y ago

This is absolutely hilarious. Come up with some !@#% that doesn't make any sense and watch the hordes make it the most important news since the invention of agriculture!

benthumb 14y ago

>We must become more critical of what we read and think 'Is this reasonable? ' The problem w/ this prescription is that just b/c something is 'unreasonable' to us doesn't make it untrue.

gawi 14y ago

On the net, everyday is April 1st.

rickmb 14y ago

This whole thing can be reduced to "people who engage in idle gossip are generally speaking not the sharpest pencils in the box". Most people with half a brain just kept their mouth shut, so there's really no way to draw any conclusion about the Apple community as a whole, unless you can produce an accurate number on the people that ignored the whole thing.

dvliman 14y ago

unrelated discussion. did anyone think this site is hard to read? the font size and color...

mladenkovacevic 14y ago

Just listen to the news tonight and count how many times dramatic reports are immediately followed by "...independent sources say".

kawaguchi 14y ago

Even if I doubted the veracity of the news, I would still be unhappy about even the concept of an "unremovable" screw on my Apple hardware and my comments would reflect my dissatisfaction with this idea itself, irrespective of veracity. By assuming that people talking on Google+, facebook, twitter, etc. are buying the idea hook, line and sinker, it ignores the likely possibility that some people may just be reacting to the idea itself and hope that their comments, along with the rest of the masses, would dissuade both Apple (in this hypothetical situation) or any company that would attempt a similar design in the future.

davecap1 14y ago

Hold on. How do we know this article is even true?!

brendonjohn 14y ago
Funny, after reading i thought this too, so did some google'n... how do we know google isn't in on this too? <.<

rhizome 14y ago

The author could have saved a lot of time and effort in coming to the conclusion that distance from the truth is problematic. Jean Baudrillard wrote about it in "Simulacrum and Simulation" 40 years ago, which was adapted into a movie called "Multiplicity," starring Michael Keaton.

conductr 14y ago

What role does truth play? I think most readers understand that apple news is rumor (unless it comes from apple). So the reader doesn't really care if the news is true. They want are stating their opinions as if it were true. They may not explicitly say "i know this is probably fake, but if not, apple can go screw themselves." Similarly, the publishers are purely reporting the existence of this conversation to their readers. Like "hey, this is what folks are talking about, you might be interested".

rco8786 14y ago

Does anyone else have a really hard time reading this? Need a little more contrast on the font color, por favor.

Kilimanjaro 14y ago

So if I post an article about RIM betting the farm in a new phone based on Solaris and the stock tanks because of the domino effect in the news, am I liable? Yep, the poster should be in jail.

eyevariety 14y ago

Make the body font on your blog bigger - its all out of proportion with the rest of the site design.

atruepoint 14y ago

It's really interesting to look at the ways in which media distribution models have changed--especially the level of perceived authenticity in television 40 years ago vs now. As the internet becomes a greater and greater form of information dissemination, new models are going to need to develop in order to provide truth in media.

Hominem 14y ago

Apple is the world’s largest company, so they can take a few knocks. Claims the article, by what measure?

pohl 14y ago
It was true for a moment by market cap. That's probably where they got the notion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporations_by_market_capitalization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporations_by_market_...

vacri 14y ago

Another day, another blog with low-contrast text.

jconley 14y ago

Clearly the game of Telephone has never been able to have a higher impact than it does today with the speed and scale of the social internet. But I think there is one question left unanswered: Why are we assuming this story itself is in fact true? Because it's written on a blog? :)

jere 14y ago

They're called _rumors_ a for reason. People expect most rumors to be bullshit anyway.

splicer 14y ago

This reminds me of a Dilbert episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEOOFanQms0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEOOFanQms0

beweinreich 14y ago

I think it'd be hilariously ironic if a story came out next week claiming this story to be a fake.

jamesmcn 14y ago

It's funny because it's a pun.

JamesLeonis 14y ago

My grandfather sends me those political chain emails asking if they have any validity. He's pretty skeptical and deletes the majority of these, but every now and again he wants more information. That's where I come in. Last night I responded to one where the author attacked his opponent's credibility without any cited sources, for or against. I wrote him a long response about the need for sources, as well as the need to check the source's credibility. What this article points out is how the news media is very hungry for new stories, and their need to publish as soon as possible. This means unverified information passes through the journalistic filter. This also points out, like the emails above, that people will generally fall for confirmation bias in many cases. Even HN has bouts of the echo chamber. It's really hard to counter, even when you are actively guarding against it. Manual critical thinking and checking sources all the time is very mentally draining. I would bet that most to all of us have some form of automatic first-pass mental filter that immediately questions "facts" contained in email chain letters, or the latest fad technology if it has too many buzzwords, or Facebook posts. That is a shortcut we've developed so we don't have to manually think about every bit of information that comes across our desks. It goes immediately to the mental round file. Unfortunately, there are people out there that do not have this filter. Maybe they haven't mentally trained to look for these kinds of problems. Maybe they were referred to the story by a trusted source, like a good friend or a prominent publication. Maybe the information fell precisely into their particular confirmation bias that it bypassed their skepticism. Political advertising thrives on this problem. Unscrupulous con men thrive off this problem. But it happens to us all the time. I fall for it all the time, even though I try to find the "real" facts and am generally skeptical of most things. Thus it doesn't surprise me that people fell for the screw hoax, because Apple is traditionally very secretive and has a history of locking out DIYers. That screw fit Apple's MO to a T, and thus likely slipped through many of the internet bullshit filters and went viral. It happens. It will happen again. The best we can do is try our best to root out false information, and accept that we will be fooled from time to time.

isyiwang 14y ago

Please change title to: How we (almost) screwed the whole Apple community kthxbye

printer 14y ago

"Apple is the world’s largest company". Last time I checked Apple was listed somewhere around 30 (20th for most profitable). Maybe Day4 didn't check there facts...

Cl4rity 14y ago

First of all, this problem isn't unique to tech journalism or the Internet. Stuff like this has happened in old media several times in the past--where's the outrage for that? Secondly, the spread of misinformation, when it does happen this quickly, is usually rectified just as quickly. The good thing about most reputable tech blogs is that updates happen quickly and often. Anything you might have accepted as fact one day might be dispelled the next. Aside from Apple's stock tanking several years ago when Ryan Block published a news story on Engadget about delayed iPhone shipments, when was the last time anyone was hurt by this sort of misinformation, anyway?

josteink 14y ago

I think it's fair to say the Apple community got exactly what it wanted here. This sort of "trick" wouldn't be playable on any other community, because its rabid fanboys tend to care about other things than screws. Apple fanboys however... They care about the margins of product-announcement papers and reads the future from them like gipsy-queens reads tea-leaves. It's an impressive performance, but still oh so pointless. Because they miss the important thing: A screw is an implementation detail. What you want is open access to the bits which matters: SIM, battery, storage, platform and bootloaders. Provide me with that and I couldn't care less what screws you use.