The Rumor-Sharing Raconteur

Arguably the most secretive of all consumer electronics companies, Apple has spawned its own unique information economy—and hype is the currency of the land. “How will existing product lines be updated? What completely new product is coming next?” The curiosity always crescendos on the eve of a big Apple press event, but the websites devoted to intel-gathering have more than enough fodder to operate all year long—which is good news for Arnold Kim, owner/proprietor of MacRumors.com, the biggest player in the Apple-hype game.

“It all feeds upon itself,” Kim says. “The more secretive Apple is, the more information people want to find out.”

According to Quantcast Web traffic scores, MacRumors traffic easily dwarves that of its main competitors: AppleInsider, MacNN, TUAW, and MacLife (all .com domains). Could it be that MacRumors is simply the perfect website name? Well, the name doesn’t hurt. But we also have to give credit to Kim for being right on top of the scuttlebutt as it develops and for cultivating a platform that’s so inviting to people with news, rumors, 
and (juiciest of all) spyshots they want 
to share.

Of course, MacRumors’ entire premise would be kaput if Apple suddenly dropped its nearly totalitarian approach to information-sharing and started offering early-look product demos and conducting press tours, like all the other companies we deal with.
Sure, Apple could do that—but would life be quite as fun? After all, it’s the trade of rumors and endless speculation that makes being an Apple fan so energizing.

“People want to see things that they aren’t supposed to see,” Kim says. “Some people think that Apple leaks things on purpose, but I don’t really subscribe to those theories. Just based on Apple’s history, we know they are very serious about their secrecy. I don’t think they play games with the media or try to use it to their advantage, per se. But I do think in the grand scheme, all the rumors surrounding Apple have a net positive effect.”

So says the most influential rumor-meister of them all.

Apples, Apples Everywhere!

When it comes to the big and little screens, the visual shorthand for “cool person you’re encouraged to like” is a glowing little Apple logo. From Carrie Bradshaw’s trademark PowerBook (so glaringly visible on Sex and the City) to Jim Halper’s iChat AV session with Pam Beasley (his MacBook Pro consumed a full 93 seconds of screen time on a recent episode of The Office), Macs dominate movies and TV in a way that’s, frankly, completely inconsistent with their share of the actual computer market.

The Hollywood Reporter tracked some 250 visual mentions of Apple on prime-time network TV shows in a four-month period in 2006, and noted that Apple, unlike other brands, gets placed on-set for free. “When you have that kind of aura and image,” Ruben Igielko-Herrlich of the product-placement firm Propaganda GEM said in that article, “you don’t pay for [placement].”

But has Apple’s free-ride care of prop designers come to an end? Think about it: Paid product placement is all the rage in this post-TiVO era of fast-forwarding past commercials, and NBC’s lineup seems conspicuously Mac-packed.

Well, we’re inclined to think that promotional consideration is a two-way street.
Set designers wouldn’t choose Apple products if they weren’t guaranteed to establish a character’s cool factor, and Apple—if it is, in fact, paying for placement—wouldn’t stick a Mac behind Hiro Nakamura of Heroes if they didn’t think the li’l time-freezer was someone we loved.

Bottom line: Pixar requested a friggin’ Apple robot in Wall-e, people! And Eve, that robot, was designed, in part, by Jonathan Ive. The Hollywood-Apple branding partnership is stronger than ever, and 2009 Hollywood set designers will continue to be some of the best influencers Apple has.

Next, Kurt Schmucker and Travis Boatman