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Apple Releases Basic iPod Touch, Possibly Foreshadowing iPhone Strategy
redletterdave writes "While the new 16 GB iPod Touch released Thursday features the same 4-inch Retina display and dual-core A5 processor as its other variants, the newest, cheapest iPod Touch lacks a rear camera and comes in just two colors black and silver. Apple is reportedly pursuing a similar strategy with the iPhone, as reports from the past several months have pointed to development of a 'low-cost iPhone' with basic features to be sold at a lower price point."
The 4th generation 8 GB iPod Touch was also $229, but did have both cameras. They weren't as high-quality as their iPhone counterparts, but still.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
This leaves only the iPhone 4 and 4S as devices Apple sell without the taller screen. If there's any hint at an upcoming product strategy, it would be that they might drop those models to streamline production.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
... lacks a rear camera and comes in just two colors black and silver.
Oh, and way to edit, samzenpus.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Apple's iPod lineup keeps getting stranger year after year.
First the strange design changes for the nano (went from being basically a better mini to a tiny squashed one, back to being tall, then adding a camera, then taking away the camera, and video playback adding a touchscreen and making it squashed, now making it look like a smaller iPod touch) and now the removal of one of the cameras on the touch for the same price-point as one -with- the cameras (smaller storage on the previous generation, but with flash becoming cheaper and cheaper every year that should be expected)
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
That's $160 per share, which trades at $450. They don't have market dominance, and if their strategy is once again to leave the high end of the market and appealing to a cheaper demographic instead of making new products which appeal to a high end market, then all the money in the bank is no replacement for Jobs.
Except that Apple has historically never been one to sacrifice profit/(perceptions of) quality for marketshare.
Aside from the iPod and the iPhone, Apple has never really been the most used. Certainly they have historically been in some niche applications (graphic design and publishing come to mind) but they've never been the "mainstream" computer brand. They've managed to always keep a solid enough marketshare to make sure that they get supported, but aside from the iPhone and iPod, they've historically never been number one, nor seemed to have any interest in total marketshare domination.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The ability to play 24bit/96khz flac recordings.
Don't need video, don't need a fucking camera.
How about a e-ink display that doesn't drink the power from the batteries?
with about 200gb of space.
Try to keep it under $200 please.
Be seeing you...
The new iPod does not come in two colors, it comes in one color: silver back + black face. Also, in addition to not having the camera it also omits the wrist strap attachment.
you mean the 150 Bln in FOREIGN banks (The bulk of which is probably in RMB) which cant be repatriated without paying US taxes on? Nice US corp which proudly puts "designed in California" on their products but does all their sales in Ireland to avoid paying taxes?
This is the same org which is pretty prompt to sue and use the US legal system for patent protection.
It is a false urban legend that Apple is paying no taxes.
They paid taxes in the nations they made the money in. The US gov't wants to tax this money a second time, at the full tax rate, as if the money had never been taxed before, as if it had been made in the US.
This money that foreign taxes have been paid on is transferred to Ireland and invested. The proceeds from these investments are reported to the IRS and US taxes are paid.
Another way to look at this is that Apple has always historically pursued maximum profits and market share but adopted different strategies in light of the practicalities of specific markets. As an underdog in the PC market, quality was a differentiator to attract whatever market share was possible, realizing that being a dominant volume seller was not possible. As the dominant vendor in the smartphone space but with eroding market share, Apple is decreasing quality and cost to maintain market share and profit (although not margins). I think this is the more accurate portrayal of Apple, since I doubt they would be willing to blindly sacrifice profit in the name of quality or aesthetics.
Start giving back some of that money, Apple.
I know it didn't get reported on Slashdot, but still, you're kidding, right? I mean, it was big news and only happened a few weeks ago.
Apple is currently engaging in the largest single share repurchase program in history , which will put $60B USD into their investors' pockets by the end of 2015. And that's on top of the $11B/year they're paying out in dividends already.
All told, they're giving back $100B by the end of 2015, which is over 2/3 of what they have in the bank right now. So, either you were unaware of that, or you think that their doing so is not a big enough step, in which case I have to ask: what would be sufficient?
As for the gravy train being over, by what metric? Their sales certainly aren't growing at the rate that Android's are, but by any measure, they are still massively successful. Their rate of sale has continued to grow incredibly fast, and their profits in PCs and mobile devices represent either a plurality or majority in each of those markets.
The iPhone Classic II
Did you really just say they should release a non-touchscreen version of the iPod touch?
# (/.);;
- : float -> float -> float =
Crap content, crap summary, crap analysis. Jesus, is someone holding a gun to your head and FORCING you to post Apple stories? There's NO APPLE NEWS. Apple has gone quiet, as it does quite regularly, and the tech press is losing it's fucking mind.
Unfortunately, yes. It was an error. I meant to say that a "budget" iPod shouldn't have a touchscreen.
But if you take away all those things - especially the touch screen - it is no longer an iPod touch and simply becomes a bigger iPod Nano. And I would make the argument that if you do remove all those features, you don't need such a big display so you could even make it the same size as the iPod Nano.
Realistically, in 2013, would you not consider a touch screen as a basic feature? It might have been advanced 6-7 years ago but these days you can pick up cheap Android devices for under £50 which all have touch screens.
WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity these days seem to come as part of the SoC which powers these devices. Same with GPS. I think it would actually turn out more expensive to maintain a separate line producing separate chips - particularly as the incremental cost of WiFi & Bluetooth isn't much.
You probably don't need Apple to convince you to buy one of their iProducts. They aren't going to give you drag & drop nor remove the iTunes requirement. I love my iPhone but I really hate iTunes so much that I subscribe to Spotify instead and only use that for music these days.
If you're happy enough with your Zen, why not look for its natural successor instead? You'll probably appreciate it much more than switching to Apple.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
The IRC actually allows you to deduct foreign taxes from the taxes you owe. The thing is, corporate taxes are much lower in other parts of the world, so what you said is practically true even though it's not actually true at all.
It doesn't.
If it's going back to one camera it would be better to keep the one that gets used the most.
With a title description of "Basic" iPod Touch, I was thinking it would be a [...] non-touchscreen [...] version of life [sic] iPod touch
The iPod Touch wouldn't make much sense without a touchscreen, now would it? The product is intended to basically be an iPhone without the phone component. If you don't want all of that, then clearly the device isn't aimed at you, and it sounds like you'd be better served by a different product.
And I don't understand this mentality where people think that $company_x needs to make $product_y in order to win them over. The truth is that no, they don't need to do that at all, since we're not their target demographic most of the time. We're nerds. We have strange needs and wants compared to most of the population and we're willing to put up with a lot more headaches in order to have a few more choices, but good product design involves knowing when to say "no", particularly when it will confuse or inconvenience a typical user.
You want an SD card in your music player, but most people don't even know what an SD card is or what it's used for, nor would they want to deal with the hassle and stress of having to shop for something they don't understand in order to make their music player hold all of their music. They'd rather just go get an iPod Classic that "just works" if they need that much storage. And that average person? They already have iTunes installed, since it's the biggest music store in the world and that iPod they got ages ago used it too, so they don't need to change, move, or relearn anything. To them, it's a feature that they can use the stuff they already have installed to sync, not a drawback.
The basic iPod Touch really is basic...if you understand that it stopped being a music player in anything but name and recognize that it's now just a stripped-down iPhone without the phone app. It's not meant to be just a music player any more, nor is that even the focus. It's meant to be a mobile smart device. But you? You want a music player that's just a music player. Is it really a surprise that it's not what you want, but that it might be exactly what millions of others want?
Ok, at what point in your little fantasy world did Apple have market dominance over anyone other than graphic artists with a chip on their shoulder?
no matter what they do with their money they will keep losing market share if they keep making stupid decisions.
Even if they make good decisions, they'll still lose market share. Their problem isn't that they're getting stupid, it's that everyone else is getting smart.
Phones like the HTC One are beautifully made and elegantly designed. Jelly Bean is slick, comfortable and easy to use. Other manufacturers are leapfrogging a long way past Apple's current standards, and doing it at a lower cost. Look at Lenovo's latest:
The [Lenovo K900] sports a 5.5-inch display with a 1080 x 1920p resolution with a pixel density of 400ppi. Lenovo K900 is powered by the latest Intel Atom Clover Trail+ processor clocked at 2 GHz, alongside 2 GB of RAM. Furthermore, the device comes with a 13 megapixel Sony Exmor BSI rear camera and a 2 megapixel front-facing shooter.
http://www.gsmarena.com/lenovo_k900_now_available_in_china_priced_at_536-news-6062.php
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Can we please stop pretending that "market share" means "winning?" http://techpinions.com/androids-market-share-is-literally-a-joke/16709
I agree, except I would've used the word 'features' instead of 'quality'. . . . to me quality represents the grade of components used, the robustness of construction, etc. Hopefully they won't be sacrificing that (which really is part of the Apple brand) and just trimming down on features.
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
Incorrect. The money in Ireland is NEVER taxed.
"
What Apple did was transfer rights to its intellectual property to a subsidiary that was incorporated in Ireland — and therefore not subject to immediate United States taxation — but managed in California. Under Irish law, that freed the subsidiary from Irish taxation.
"
You mean except for the Classic, LC (Low Cost), and Centris model lines, right?
The revolution will be mocked
"They paid taxes in the nations they made the money in. "
No.
Apple may have "deliberately or accidentally" misled Australians about how it sets prices here and should "correct the record or provide further detail", a Labor backbencher has demanded.
Backbencher Ed Husic, who has taken a leading role in an Australian parliamentary committee into IT pricing, said shock revelations from a US Senate committee raised concerns "the Australian inquiry has been misled, either deliberately or accidentally".
"I'd call on Apple Australia to either correct the record or provide further detail as to the way it actually prices its products for Australian consumers," Husic told the House of Representatives.
Husic said people may have "raised an eyebrow" at reports that Apple generated $6bn in revenue in Australia but "paid only $40m in tax – apparently because it racked up $5.5bn in costs", but "their eyes would've popped out" at the US revelations Apple had set up an offshore subsidiary that earned $30bn income but had apparently paid no tax to any government for five years.
And the two committee investigations were related, because Apple's complicated international structure has an impact on the prices paid for Apple products for Australians.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/28/australian-companies-forced-disclose-tax
Note that the "$5.5bn in costs" was mostly fees paid by the Australian branch to the offshore subsidiary. Basically a way to inflate prices and pump money out of the region.
Samsung and the other lower end competitors are hurting Apple. The only reason Apple would be selling dumb down versions of their products is that the competition products are hurting their sales to a point where it is better off to have cheaper and less costly products and get that money than see it being spend elsewhere.
I had one of those Zen X-FIs, too. They rocked. They *stored, transferred, and played back music files* quite nicely.
In other words, they acted the way a reasonable media player ought. My sole gripe was that they didn't play all media files and there was no way to add support for those that were lacking.
Smartphone takes care of that now, though. VLC works fine on all 3 of my Android devices, and I've yet to find a format it doesn't play, and thus I've no need for any other media player software on any of the platforms I use (Android, Linux, and occasionally Windows) or, any longer, for dedicated hardware, for that matter.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Crap content, crap summary, crap analysis. Jesus, is someone holding a gun to your head and FORCING you to post Apple stories? There's NO APPLE NEWS. Apple has gone quiet, as it does quite regularly, and the tech press is losing it's fucking mind.
There never was any Apple news; Apple only have 5 products, although some have been measurably very very successful. In reality this is speculation on Apples main (Only) product line, as its currently one phone profits over market share solution is running out of steam (and has been for some time). Right now we are simply gambling on whether we sill see a *larger* or *crippled* iPhone. I personally think the summary is on the money it will be a crippled iPhone.
Hipsters won't like that ordinary folk use the "same" phone. What will they move to?
Hipster might be a market demographic for the iPhone, but in reality its very popular in a few global markets, the UK and US, and those because the phone is bought through higher purchase. In fact one of the problem Apple have is that people are buying the cheaper iPhone 4 through these *contracts*. Apple are happy to rip you off whoever you are.
You are joking right? $49 for a MP3 player without display, and only 2GB storage?
There are millions of new customers born every year. Every year a generation turns 8 or 12 or 15 and their parents decide to buy or are cajoled into buying personal electronics for them.
It's an ever growing market for at least another 30 years.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Personally, I regard the click wheel as the killer feature of the nano. What a pity it doesn't have it any more, so if you want to interact with the device in any slightly complex way you have to look at the screen.
People don't buy an iPod touch to play music. They buy them to play games. It's what you get for your 10 yr old niece/nephew/son/daughter. My 2 yr old has a 2nd gen iPhone w/o a cell card, basically an iPod touch. My 4 and 6 year olds have 3rd gen iPhones the same.
It's been a great investment so far.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
It is a false urban legend that Apple is paying no taxes.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/video/2013/may/29/apples-dirty-little-tax-secret-video Here is a great informative video from where they unusually, actually go to Cork Ireland.
They actually use a Tax loophole that allows them not to pay tax anywhere in the world. Its brilliant, what Apple do is not use a low tax island...they make the island disappear entirely. It woks because the US is concerned with where a company is Incorporated...where the Irish look where a Company is controlled...so Apple tell the US that they are Incorporated in Ireland...and tell the Irish they are controlled in the US, So Pay literally (proper use of word) NOTHING :)
So if by Urban Myth...you actually mean Fact you would have been right. The fact that you were modded informative shows a frightening trend.
Can we please stop pretending that "market share" means "winning?"
No I'm a consumer :) I think better specification/OS at better value/choice with Android is winning...and the fact that that it has greater market share (with a stronger Application Market) reinforces these things.
As for any idea why people here talk about market share over (short) term profits. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22274324 Apples profits are falling
I agree, except I would've used the word 'features' instead of 'quality'. . . . to me quality represents the grade of components used, the robustness of construction, etc. Hopefully they won't be sacrificing that (which really is part of the Apple brand) and just trimming down on features.
I disagree, I would use words like 'overpriced' and 'Stock components' going forward we see their (not your) PC's being increasingly turned into electronic devices using incompatible connectors. No wonder there PC sales dropped 22% and 2% over the past two quarters.
should read "already dead". Damn lack of editing...
Apple is currently engaging in the largest single share repurchase program in history [macrumors.com], which will put $60B USD into their investors' pockets by the end of 2015.
Apple financed the repurchase program by selling 17 billion dollars worth of short, medium and long term bonds. It was widely thought that this method was chosen, rather than repatriating cash held overseas, to avoid depletion of onshore cash reserves while at the same time further delaying the payment of income taxes on profits held overseas. It's interesting question whether or not Apple would be able to pay the bond coupons using that cash held overseas without incurring a tax liability. I presume that they wouldn't be able to, but even if they had to pay the coupons out of current after tax income the fact that a huge amount of cash remains on the balance sheet, albeit overseas and subject to tax if ever repatriated, strengthens Apple's financial situation vis-a-vis financing the share repurchase program entirely with cash.
People don't buy an iPod touch to play music. They buy them to play games.
The the iPod can enjoy its continuing decline into obscurity, Already Android devices are good value (especially for kids) and everywhere, and Google unlike Apple (and I would argue Microsoft) gets games, we are already seeing consoles with Android at half this cost...with bigger screens and real controls.
nobody has ever used the shitty iPod camera for anything meaningful
Hey Anonymous Coward, define 'anything meaningful.' I have tons of great pictures of my kids shot with my iPod Touch. I have beautiful shots taken out of airplane windows as the earth scrolled by below...
There already is a low-cost iPhone, and it's been out for years. It's called Last Year's iPhone, and it's $100 with contract. And the iPhone from two years ago is free with contract.
It would be like the press jabbering at Samsung for a cheaper Galaxy phone, when you could get a newly built model two versions old for that cheaper price. Why reinvent the wheel...
Bean counting people are fine for advice but you NEVER EVER put them in charge of anything. I knew things were going bad (or spoiling? puns intended) when the stock dividends were announced. Sounded like BS to me when they explained why they wanted to pay interest on their capital they had been getting for FREE.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Since you know Steve so well (I won't ask whether you met him before or after he died--or maybe it was you sticking all those pins in that voudoun doll of him that finally did him in), what would he be doing with all that money that's now going to go in dividends to stock-holders?
"Apple is a mobile devices company." That's Apple's description of itself, approved by SJ himself. Apple's problem is that mobile devices are becoming commodities, just like desktop devices before them.
(Google is trying to get a jump ahead by moving from mobile to pontis naribus devices, but I can't see how that will delay commodification for very long. If it takes off at all.)
Apple may yet reinvent itself as a digital personal assistance company. ("Entertain me, inform me, remind me, advise me, maintain my relationships and networks.") But the odds are against it. So...what else can Apple do with its money?
One reason might be that investors feel that Apple can't grow at the same rate as in the past. The ones interested in just the stock price sell Apple and buy other companies, possibly in totally different markets, that have a chance of growing faster. The company they invest on is not important to them, only the growth rate of the stock price is.
Whatever it is, the stock price is an indicator of how people feel about the future of a company.
But why not just have an iPhone, and get the phone functionality? Your business user will want a smartphone anyway, I don't see where an iPod fits in.
The cameras are both useful in business - I've used mine to take snaps of the content of whiteboards, flip charts etc to save copying them down, and the other camera is potentially useful for videoconferencing.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
GP's post is evasive at best, dishonest at worst. He talks about market growth where profits have dropped, ignores the fact that where market growth has occurred it's been at one of the lowest rates in the industry and an order of magnitude lower than it's key competitors then pretends Apple is handing money back out of it's cash pile when it fact it's financing the buyback with debt. To put it kindly, he's cherry picked positive stats whilst ignoring negative stats which only tells half the story. When the full set of stats are taken into account a very different story is told to that the GP is pushing.
Parent clears up all that with the facts.
Oh sorry, nevermind, I forgot. Apple fanboys exist, so the facts don't matter.
If they use the iPod touch camera and are taken out of an airplane window then they can't be that beautiful.
and only 2GB storage?
Yeah, AND no wireless. Lame.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
People and way of running apple has _NOTHING AT ALL_ to do with any history of Apple beyond last 8 years or so.
Going to the lower end of phones is a must if they plan to keep alive - or else they'll be eaten like they were eaten on the desktop - it's a miracle they survived that at all despite going into it with full coffers. Thing is, Apple might not have anyone making decisions who can look that far back though.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
It's a good point about the phone. Obviously iPhones are more attractive for business users than iPods.
But whilst there can be uses for cameras in business, there are a plenty of business and governmental scenarios where you're not allowed a camera. An employee with a camera-phone might be fired, and a visitor with one will have it retained by security.
A camera-less iPhone would certainly have a market.
And televisions have been on sale for at least 80s years, so everyone must have one of those by now. Yet for some strange reason every electrical retailer has a big display of TVs.
+Drag-and-drop music loading
+No need for iTunes
+Buttons so I don't have to stare at the screen to skip a track
+SD card slot
+No need for OS updates and obsolescence
And you have the disease of one-sided feature lists. First of all "drag-and-drop" music loading means manually managing music. Rather than having the computer do it for you. Most people would call that a negative.
Secondly, you miss out all the features that the iPod Touch has that your ageing MP3 player doesn't. Too many to mention, but apps, a touchscreen and real web-browsing to name the top 3.
If by cheapest you mean "cheapest now that they discontinued the model that was $30 cheaper" then, yeah.
Please stop linking to IBITimes until they remove video advertising.
www.clarke.ca
There is room for both. The iPhone without the phone bit is really important to me, because I can give it to my young son to play with, literally, and not have to thing about him having a cell phone. He plays games, takes pictures/videos, watches TV/movies, etc... This new "improved" thing does not fit my criteria, because of the lack of camera, and it doesn't fit your criteria as well.
It just seems like a big giant miss from Apple, IMHO.
BTW, you can buy the iPod Touch 4 w/32Gigs of RAM from the refurb store for $179. You then turn off wi-fi, remove of group all the apps you can't remove into one bucket, ignore the cameras, and then enjoy your media device for music and photos/videos. It's much easier to ignore something than it is to use something that doesn't exist.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Anytime a new i-device is released, it will be sold millions ... oh wait, that was so 2009.
They haven't been losing market share. Revenue has been getting squeezed but iOS is where it is at if you want the largest market for selling your apps or accessories.
Is that why Microsoft has floundered under Ballmer?
The devil is in the details. Congress and some of the media have characterized Apple's tax policies like they were moving the money around through shell corporations like Enron. Apple simple has not moved money they make overseas into US accounts thus the US cannot tax it. The way Apple has structured their Irish taxes, they pay little or no taxes on them. Apple does pay a fair amount for their US revenue (which is under reported). But that is not Congress' responsibility; it's Ireland's
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The old iPod Touch Gen4 probably wasn't beefy enough to run iOS7, which is slated to come out this year. So, Apple wanted a cheap Touch for the lower end of the range, and the old Gen4 wasn't good enough, so out came the cheapo Gen5.
WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity these days seem to come as part of the SoC which powers these devices. Same with GPS. I think it would actually turn out more expensive to maintain a separate line producing separate chips - particularly as the incremental cost of WiFi & Bluetooth isn't much.
For the iPod Touch and the few others in the same class, they are portable computers. Their main chip is the CPU/GPU. As Apple designed the A4/A5/A6 chips this was done by design. See Apple uses these same chips to power their iPhones/iPads/Apple TVs/whatever. Not all of these devices require all the functionality. Also the chips need to be computers and there isn't room on the die to add these in with the dual core CPU , dual core GPU, memory controller, etc. It would not be cheaper for Apple to make highly different SoCs.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I'm sold! You had me at extras and sour cream.
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
The device also has to be usable, and so far Android's reputation on this area is pretty bad
Maybe if you keep repeating this over and over again reality might bend to your delusional view of it.
Have you even seen the specs on the S4 mini, or do you just blindly go "S4 Mini - must be good"?!
Jesus, what a fanboy.
Stop trying to apply logic to perception management.
What Apple did: they discontinued their $199 unit, introduced a new unit with more features at $30 more and called it 'Basic'. This should have been your first clue.
What we'll probably see soon is sales efforts to sell a $299 version with a better feature set, and people will reason, "well, it's only $60 more than the Basic version," and that model will sell well. They might have an even better model for $329 that grabs some of those people up another notch.
And the dregs of the population who cannot afford $299 but also cannot figure out to buy an $89 Android device with similar specs, can be left buying the 'Basic'.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
How in the world is this Flamebait? Because I said the Apple product is silly if it's the "budget" version at $229?
. No wonder there PC sales dropped 22% and 2% over the past two quarters.
No wonder they are one of very few companies with climbing PC market share, because the fucking PC market is being destroyed by tablets. By which I mean iPads.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Have you looked around lately? I'd say it's more like 5 or 6 these days.
And I routinely see toddlers playing games on mom's smart-phone to keep them quiet, which tells me that age is probably dropping pretty steadily.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Well, w/ an iPod Touch, you can give it to a small kid, and not worry about him/her calling somebody. That way, s/he can have all the software toys that iPhone owners have, except the ability to call people, while you don't have to pay more to Verizon or AT&T for another connection.
Cults don't work without a cult leader...
Apple is over with.
Thanks for proving that Apple is not a cult then.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
No one young enough to know how to work a smartphone has any idea who Al Jolson is.
But they can look it up on Wikipedia.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
You are joking right? $49 for a MP3 player without display, and only 2GB storage?
Yeah, and it also can't find those damn moving goalposts.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.