Reply #11: Rumor Sites

[SkipNewarkDE]

I, too, love the Mac rumor sites. The issue is either that they have determined it is an Apple employee that is providing the information, specifically in violation of NDA. It IS illegal to disclose company trade secrets, and this stuff was coming verbatim from Apple internal stuff. Asking the rumor site to disclose the source is not completely outrageous. This would be along the same lines of a pharma company going ape-shit because results of drug trials were released prior to a drug coming to market. There is the potential for serious impact on the value of the stock, and can result in grave financial repurcussions.

I develop Mac software, and we take the NDA very seriously. While at IBM, we had a person canned because he gave a contract developer a pre-release updater to OS X ( this was back before OS X was released, some 2 years prior, in fact ). And even though the developer was also under NDA, IBM could not risk the exposure.

I understand the outrage some people may feel about this, and it is easy to pass this off as, "oh the rumor sites generate interest in new product." That's all well and good, but at the same time, this can have a serious impact on current product sales, stock prices, etc. It isn't all just "harmless."