(upbeat synthesized music)
- [Marques] The day was March 18th, 2010.
An Apple engineer goes out to the bar on his birthday
with an unreleased iPhone 4 in his pocket
three months before it was supposed to come out.
Now, this isn't actually unusual, you know,
in the final months leading up to a launch.
They've gotta do their testing and finalizing things
in the real world sometimes to iron out any bugs
and find any last second fixes.
So he's probably using it maybe even as a daily,
but it's in a case that actually disguises it
as an iPhone 3GS.
Now, unfortunately, maybe too many drinks,
maybe a bit distracted on his birthday,
He forgets that phone at the bar
and leaves without it.
From there, somebody else picks it up,
realizes it's a top secret unreleased, iPhone 4,
not a 3GS, so that person tries to return it to Apple
who actually refuses it because the customer service rep
doesn't believe that anyone
would have an iPhone 4 to return.
Must be a knockoff or something.
From there, that person realizes what they have.
So they go to sell this unreleased iPhone
to try to get some money for it, and it's bought by Gizmodo.
(ominous music)
At this point, Apple's realized the phone is missing.
They remotely wiped it,
but Gizmodo goes on to publish a hands-on,
which as you can imagine,
went absolutely nuts because not only
is this an unreleased iPhone in the flesh,
but it's also now stolen property.
So Gizmodo details all the new features
and takes tons of pictures, tears it apart,
compares it to old iPhones and basically details everything
Apple's been working on three months
before Apple is planning on showing it themselves.
Now, Apple, meanwhile is trying everything
in their power to get this phone back.
They send letters from lawyers.
Steve Jobs calls the Gizmodo executive editor.
And eventually a few days later,
California police raid Gizmodo editor Jason Chen's home,
and seize four computers, two servers,
three hard drives and other gadgets
while he was out to dinner.
They broke down his front door.
So the iPhone four was eventually unveiled onstage
like three months later in June.
And that was kinda the end of that messy story.
But the point is that was one
of the biggest tech leaks of all time.
It had everything.
It had stolen property, it had tear downs,
it had pre-released top secret hardware,
all that, but the thing that really made it such a big leak,
wasn't just the fact that we got this aesthetic stuff early.
It was really the industry secret.
They tore down the phone.
They showed unreleased parts inside the phone
to the entire world, including Apple's competitors.
And that's the type of leaks that really hurt companies
like Apple the most.
And a lot of the serious leaks we see nowadays
are supply chain related.
There'll be such a big company that there's no way
they can lock down every single little bit
of this supply chain.
And that's where little squeaks of leaks will get out.
Like just a couple of months ago,
we heard about hackers targeting, not Apple,
but one of their suppliers and claiming
to have stolen blueprints of future Apple products
that they would publish
unless they got $50 million of ransom.
But the thing is, leak culture, if you wanna call it that,
has evolved a lot.
Like there's of course, lots of that serious stuff
still going on, and lots of reporting on that serious stuff.
But also leaks have sort of turned into this
version of casual entertainment as well,
to the point where the iPhone 14 was trending on Twitter
last week before we even have seen the iPhone 13.
So yeah, I figured this would be the perfect time
to share my thoughts on leaks and leak culture.
So my personal philosophy,
the way I've seen leaks in tech over the years,
there's kinda two types of leaks:
one, the serious type that we've illustrated
with the first example and those that get reported a lot
with industry secrets and competitive advantage at stake.
And the other is a more casual,
not super important, mostly aesthetic,
and generally for entertainment.
And I pay attention of course, to the first type of leak.
But that second type is usually not always worth
paying a whole lot of attention to,
or at least expending a lot of energy keeping up with.
For example, today on the internet,
there's plenty of places you can go
to just follow leaks for entertainment.
There are YouTube channels you can subscribe to.
There's people you can follow on Twitter
for constant leaks where that's all they do.
There's even sites dedicated to it.
And then also sort of accompanying it,
there's also a whole genre of artists
who will make incredible CG renders of gadgets
based on the leaks to help us visualize
what the future gadgets could look like.
But some of these leaks, like I said,
not really worth paying a whole lot of attention to.
I would say, like an example.
I think there was a John Prosser leak
probably a couple months ago where I think he confirmed,
he leaked the exact date and time
that a product announcement would happen
or that an embargo would drop or something like that.
And then hours later, it was right, it was confirmed,
and you know, shout out to John, much props to him,
funny guy, great channel, but I don't care.
(laughing) I just don't care.
That's the type of stuff that's purely for entertainment
and has almost no effect on people
who aren't following it hardcore.
And I just feel like there's little entertainment leaks
like this all the time,
confirming that a product isn't canceled
or a leak confirming a product's name
or the leak of an announcement date or stuff like that,
leaks that are just confirming the existence
of products being developed.
So of course, you know, naturally,
all those little bits of information that leak out
can and will be turned into content
'cause that's what we do.
But generally, I think it's safe to ignore
or at least pay a passing attention to a lotta that stuff.
But most of the leaks now, that you'll see,
that are actually really entertaining
are completely aesthetic, all visual,
just because the question of how will the product look
turns out to be one of the most important things
that people wonder about an upcoming future product.
Now I could talk for hours about how there are companies
out there who definitely intentionally leak products,
or just intentionally leak little things.
Because if you were a company
who saw all this hype being generated about products,
of course you wanna get in on it,
assert some level of control over the narrative
and jump in and generate even more hype
for your own benefit, so I get that.
You also see the OnePluses of the world
where their literal pre-launch strategy
before dropping a new flagship phone
is once every few days release a new little nugget
of information for the nerds.
You know, hey, this is the processor we're gonna be using,
or this is how fast the phone's gonna charge, confirmed,
or, hey, this is how much RAM the thing will have.
It's kind of annoying,
but it's actually very smart
because people pay attention to that thing.
People care about each one of these things.
So the slow drip of information acts the same way
a leak would in that it generates hype.
It gets people talking about it, the press keeps going.
But really at the end of the day,
what most people wanna see
when the product does finally get to the announcement date,
what they wanna see unveiled is the design,
the features and the price, just to keep it simple.
And since the price is the last thing to get finalized
and probably the hardest thing to leak and get right,
we all focus on the aesthetics.
We just wanna know the design, how it's gonna look,
what the choices were made in that outside.
And so the iPhone 14 trending on Twitter
was mostly from a John Prosser video
on some claimed leaks and some renders of that phone
that's still over a year away, all aesthetic.
They claim the iPhone 14 may look a lot like the iPhone 4,
you know, round volume buttons,
hole punch camera cutout at the top too,
full flat glass and chamfers with the new antenna placement,
flat camera bump on the back,
still a lightning port at the bottom.
This is 100% aesthetics.
This is just speculating on how the thing will look.
And there's almost no actual technical speculation
about features or anything like that,
mostly because there was a whole year
before the thing's supposed to come out.
It's probably not finalized anyway.
And there's a whole year of hype to be generated
before anything can be proven wrong.
So it's entertaining, fun speculation, for sure.
That is definitely entertainment value.
But I think the real question at the end of the day
for you guys would be, do leaks ruin launch events?
Does following the leaks
and the little bit of information
that comes out before the launch event
ruin the fun or the surprise of the actual launch moment?
And my answer might not be exactly what you're expecting.
It might be a little bit cynical,
but I do think that leaks are following them.
It takes a little bit of the air
out of that big surprise moment,
but those announcements are just more of the hype anyway.
Okay, it turns out there are many, many people out there
that don't follow the leaks at all.
They don't read any articles or watch any videos
or think about the new phone at all before the announcement.
And so, that announcement event is a genuinely new thing
and a surprise to them.
And that's almost a sweet level of innocence
that I kind of miss a little bit, to be honest,
but also there's some of those people out there
that are probably buying fresh,
brand new iPhone 12s right now
as the iPhone 13's about to come out.
So maybe if you have a friend like that,
let 'em know, just warn them,
maybe you shouldn't make that purchase right now,
but if you are one of those people, sure,
the announcement event will be way more fun for you
because everything there will be brand new
and surprising and shock and awe sweet.
But just know that that announcement event,
isn't just a speck rollout, that's up presentation.
It's a whole show.
It's a high budget, highly refined and planned presentation
designed to show off and get you to wanna buy
the new product that they've been working on
that they're finally unveiling.
Now, on the other hand, if you do follow every single leak,
like a lot of us do,
then it almost feels like the announcement
is a guaranteed letdown
because now you've been building this hype up
for much, much longer behind the scenes
and then the announcement happens,
and it's either not what the leaks suggested,
which is a bit of a letdown,
or it's exactly what the leaks suggested,
which is a bit of a letdown because there were no surprises.
And so, that's just setting yourself up for disappointment.
So anyway, I think my point is,
it's basically impossible to generate
the correct level of hype.
It's probably going to be over-hyped
no matter how much leak following
or announcement hype that happens.
It's just all a big show and it's fun and it's entertaining.
But I think this leak culture is clearly here to stay.
This entertainment, it's a new dimension
of being able to follow what looks like these companies
duking it out and fighting each other in front of us,
which is sort of a rich new thing
to feel like you're a part of.
People pick teams and they see leaks and they can switch.
And it's just a new, fun little thing.
So yeah, it's entertainment, definitely entertaining.
But I think as long as we all know that these leaks
or this entertainment is just that, it's just entertainment,
these little bits of information,
are just to feel like we have a little bit more information
and it's just kinda fun to follow,
and that it also feeds into the consumerism
that it's all a part of, then that's fine.
Have your fun.
Have our entertainment.
I'll catch you on the other side though,
when the product actually comes out.
That's my side.
Anyway, thanks for watching.
Catch ya in the next one, peace.
(upbeat electronic music)