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The Steve GambitAs predicted.
There are a lot of ways to blow whistles - even inside Cupertino. Even with Apple spies continually checking logs, skimming all outgoing mail. There are plenty of ways.
Someone very clever used one of those ways some six months ago to contact this site, to tell the people working at this site that the apprehension about the way things were going with Steve's walled gardens was spot on and closer to the truth than many believed.
Rixstep were able to verify that the whistleblower was inside Apple Inc. But said whistleblower was but one source. There weren't any documents sent. Said whistleblower merely communicated an 'opinion'.
WikiLeaks might worry little about the authenticity of whistleblowers and concentrate exclusively on the authenticity of documents, but that option wasn't open. And there wasn't a second source, or even a second opinion.
Conundrum. News stories need at least two sources; whistleblowers must not get into trouble; yet it's obviously important information. Or it appears so. What to do?
And then the 'Steve Gambit': publish the article but with a positive slant on the developments, as if everyone thinks they're a good thing, fill out the article with links at the bottom that actually lead nowhere significant at all, then sit back and wait. Flush his Steveness out and force him to deny it all.
Hits went through the roof the next week at this site, every fanboy ever born perspired profusely, a fanboy finally panicked and wrote to Steve. And got the one word reply shown below.
That's all we ever needed. And we've sat on it ever since. Sat on it, waiting for Steve to come out and announce the Mac App Store anyway as we knew he would.
Which he's now gone and done.
And no, there's no 'lock-in' yet. Or that's what they're saying at Apple. So yes, you can party on for the moment.
Just don't forget that Steve Jobs denied it all. He gave you his word. And you trusted him, didn't you?
Thanks for taking the bait, Steve. We really enjoyed that. Hope you did too.
We will never do music. We will never do video iPod. We will never do phone. We will never go Intel.
- '9toX'
For you Apple apologists claiming Apple will never lock down the Mac, step one is in place and you all let it happen.
- Ron Gilbert
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