A Not-Rant Ahead of Tomorrow’s Apple Event (Premium)

If you were able to join my wife and me during our morning reading---we read the news for about an hour over coffee before heading out for a 40-minute walk---you would likely find our discussions about that news to be quite boring. We're both writers, and voracious readers, and we're both critical of the quality of the writing we see.

Much of what we discuss is based on headlines, as you might imagine. But occasionally, one of us---OK, it's usually me---will find an entire article full of problems. And you do not want to get me started on a rant: a recent story about the "health myths experts wish you ignored" (or whatever) set off a fairly one-sided discussion one morning that lasted through the entire duration of our walk. In my defense, I've been obsessing over this topic in recent months, and my wife does write about it professionally.

But perhaps I have a rant that you will find interesting. Well, not a rant, really. A discussion.

As I'm sure you know---the entire Internet, it seems, is obsessing over this---Apple will announce its iPhone 15 family of smartphones tomorrow, September 12. As is so often the case, there will likely be few if any surprises because of all the leaks. Granted, the contradictory nature of many of those leaks over time doesn't stop anyone from publishing them, no matter how early or poorly sourced. But as we get closer to this event, I feel like we have a handle on what's going to happen, as always.

With one major exception, most of the Apple rumors we're treated to these days come up out of, and are published within, the world of blogs that have “apple” or “mac” in their names. (The one exception is Bloomberg, which hired Mark Gurman, one of the most successful leakers of our era. You can read his spoiler-filled overview of what to expect tomorrow here.) And for the most part, the big mainstream publications, like The New York Times, stay out of the speculation business and report only on what happens as it happens.

It wasn't always this way. In the horrible era of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Apple compromised journalists at the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, leading to misinformation campaigns in which the two acted as a fifth column of sorts to undermine the needs of their readers and promote their favorite company instead. This drove me nuts at the time, and I was happy when each, in turn, was let go or stepped down.

Anyway, I read the Tech section in the Times and Post every day, and in the Journal some days. (I subscribe to all three publications now.) They are not particularly helpful to me personally, for the most part, but I've always felt it was important and instructive to understand how these mainstream publications communicate what's happening in my industry, given their audiences' non-technical nature. And we should all be open to any opportunity to learn, no matter the source. No one knows everything.

Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised.

Today, for...