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Fake E-Mail Results in Angry Apple Shareholders
drhamad writes "Apple stock dropped 2.2% today in mid-afternoon trading as Engadget published news based on a faked e-mail inside Apple. 'Apparently an internal memo was sent to several Apple employees--and forwarded to Engadget--around 9am CT today saying that Apple issued a press release with the news that the iPhone was now scheduled for October, and Leopard was delayed until January. About an hour and a half after that e-mail went out, a second e-mail was sent--this time officially from Apple--saying the first e-mail was a fake, and that the delivery schedule for the iPhone and Leopard had not changed.'"
Wheeee, fun time trading for somebody today.
Who else thinks they're running behind and wanted to see if they could push back the releases without scaring the sheep?
The Farewell Tour II
...is the fact that this hasn't happened more often.
When something like this happens where a direct financial impact can be measured, do any of the rules change regarding the protections that the reporting website operate under?
If the New York Times reports that Microsoft was filing bankruptcy and the stock plummeted, The NYT would be held to some sort of standard. Sometimes a retraction isn't enough, for instance, to protect from a lawsuit.
Now when it's a website, do any of the protections exist, and what are the implications for these guys in terms of liability?
Looks like they are flushing out folks who forward internal emails. Send to a few people and see if the fake news gets out. Binary search in action!
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Maybe it's time Apple re-thinks their super-secret policies.
Maybe it's time the Apple rumor industry shut down. It's any company's decision to keep any and all information about upcoming products secret.
The fact that Apple has given in to preannouncing some products lately (Leopard, AppleTV, iPhone) shows that they have given ground on their previously super-secret ways.
When you're known as the industry's R&D house, it's likely worth a lot of money to keep new projects and features secret for as long as possible. Asking a company to tell you everything they're working on (or schedules) is nuts because it lets your competitors know where to aim - would you want your employer to do that?
Perhaps, or maybe it's Apple's way of finding out who's been breaking their NDA. Perhaps by first looking at trading activity, then by looking at the wording of the email that was posted on Engadget. After all, if you found this out, you'd want to either short stock or something first, then leak it out... Remember, Apple still has to deal with leaks, and something as wild as this may make it obvious since it'll hit the big sites (one of which is likely to post it verbatim, thus identifying the culprit). And people who react to silly things like "A well-connected Apple employee said..." or "Our insider Apple employee" do deserve to get burned if they make financial decisions based on an unverifiable source. The source could very well be real, but it could also be made up. Speculation on new products is one thing, but actually doing stuff based on news whose validity is as good as the neighbourhood bum...
As for intentional leaks, that's hard to determine. But if you're going to do stuff like sell stock, you might want to wait for official confirmation. Because it's so easy to write "A VP of marketing at Apple has told me that the iPhone will support 3rd party applications, and there is going to be an SDK released June 1. Developer iPhones will be released then as well."
Maybe it's time Apple re-thinks their super-secret policies.
Get serious.
Shortly after I went to work there, a colleague explained to me exactly what that secrecy is worth in monetary terms. Apple got the iMac G4 on the cover of Time magazine. You can't buy Time's cover as an ad placement, but if you could it would probably be worth a tens of millions of dollars.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
They have admitted:
* Inventing on paper a fake Board of Directors Committee meeting that never took place (source)
* Using this fake meeting to backdate options at a total benefit to Jobs of $20 million (contrary to Jobs' false spin) (same source)
{snip}
Those facts are agreed by all parties. In the article that you linked to, an Apple spokesman is quoted as saying: "After an exhaustive independent investigation, the special committee (conducted by outside legal counsel) found no evidence that Steve Jobs, any member of the current board or current management was aware of that irregularity," he said. "The options grant was canceled and Steve Jobs realized no financial benefit from the grant." Sure the weight of that statement is diminished given that it's from an Apple spokesman, however, I didn't see anything in the article that contradicts him. So I'm puzzled as to why you used that article to support your assertion that Steve Jobs has "already admitted doing" this and that the "facts are agreed by all parties". Do you have another source to support your claims?
Everyone is jumping all over Apple for their "secrecy" when it clearly has nothing to do with these kinds of episodes which happen at all kinds of companies, not just the clever secretive ones.
Others are guessing about which Apple employee will get fired, when all reports indicate an outsider as the source, not a real Apple employee. As consumers of news therefore, it seems that the majority of us have failed to even discern the basic facts here.
As producers of news, the kiddies at Engadget are the real culprits here and the creators of the whole mess by means of their thoughtless and incompetent "journalism."
They are the ones that did not bother to simply phone up Apple and ask for a confirmation as any decent journalist would normally do. They are the ones that continued to run the false story on the main page even after they received a correction from Apple itself (they put that *after* the break for about an hour after they found out and did not change their headline). They are the ones that filled up their own comments area, calling the people protesting their move "jerks" and telling them to "shut up." They are the ones that deleted posts on their site that were too critical of their actions.
The problem is simply one of a lack of journalistic standards and a blurring of the line between "I'm a rich kid who likes computers and has a website" and "I am an IT reporter." Incompetence and asshattery plain and simple.
The fact that Apple has given in to preannouncing some products lately (Leopard, AppleTV, iPhone) shows that they have given ground on their previously super-secret ways.
Fact: Leopard is just the next version of a product that everyone already knows about. They've always hyped their OS because that's what software makers do, and how they generate buzz and interest. Plus, you can't keep an OS secret because you have to get people to generate software for the OS. That's why you have beta periods, developer networks, and the like to make sure that as many developers who want their products compatible with the next version are ready the day of the official release. Sun, Microsoft, IBM, all do it/did it. It would hurt Apple too much not to.
Fact: AppleTV had about the same lead time as versions of the iPod and other hardware announcements from Apple. No hardware maker makes their product available right this second after it's announced. They announce it at the best time possible to generate buzz, and then gear up to ship. It helps stir speculation and anticipation. Apple TV was no exception.
Fact: As Jobs said, he had to submit the iPhone to the FCC for approval. Jobs only announced it this early because at this point, he couldn't keep it under wraps any longer. It becomes public record once the phone is submitted to the FCC. Therefore, you announce it to keep the thunder away from everyone else.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
As a former Apple employee, I can tell you without a doubt that they don't distribute this type of information in memos. The grunts like us are not privy to release dates for anything except pretty much our own assigned products. The only people who are at any point aware of big-picture information like this are the suits, and I doubt any of them would leak (especially considering you can count them on two hands).
Like the iPhone, Apple employees rely on the same sources regular joes do to find out about new releases. Nobody besides the iPhone team even knew what an iPhone looked like before it was shown at MacWorld.