Apple’s obsession with secrecy is well-established, and there is quite a cottage industry of bloggers and Apple Web sites dedicated to exposing their secrets. One of the more impressive efforts came during the iPhone 3GS launch, where one site was tracking a shipping vessel from China believed to be carrying the phones. The site even had the manifest.
But other times, all you need is a little carelessness. Case in point: the folks who gave away Apple’s upcoming tablet and new MacBooks. In the case of the MacBooks, it was Apple that did it.
The bigger news is the iPad, iTablet, or whatever you want to call it. The rumor mill has Apple releasing this thing early next year. Word is it’s basically a large version of the iPod Touch, but with things like windows and allowing multiple apps to run at once. There might even be two of them with different size screens.
Well, New York Times Executive Editor for news Bill Keller committed what we in the profession call “an oops.” While speaking at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University last week, the Times newsroom boss was discussing all of the issues of print vs. electronic, pay vs. free, and then said this (at the 8:30 mark).
“I’m hoping we can get the newsroom more actively involved in the challenge of delivering our best journalism in the form of Times Reader, iPhone apps, WAP, or the impending Apple slate…”
