Oh boy. If Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, is correct, he may soon be facing a lawsuit big enough to cripple a small country. In his podcast, he gets drunk and tells "vague details" of the much rumored iPhone. He starts off by saying, "I have a little bit of inside information on the Apple phone", and then his side-kick, Alex Albrecht, starts asking for details. He then says, "I don't know if I should say this...", in between large swigs of beer.

He isn't sure whether the phone will run OS X. He then goes on to give more "details". The phone will of course use flash memory, coming in a 4 GB model, which will cost $249, and a 8 GB model for $449. Then he says that it'll be as small as s***, it's going to have 2 batteries, one being dedicated to music listening, so that if you drain one battery, you'll still have another battery for regular phone usage. It's also going to have a slide-out keyboard.

It will be carried by the wireless providers GSN, Tdma, and Cdma.

Unfortunately, this is the consequence of a company choosing to be secretive about their upcoming products. Sites like ThinkSecret spread any Apple rumors they hear out and abroad. Although Apple's argument for staying quiet about this kind of stuff may be because "it's their marketing plan," it's likely to hurt them more when stuff gets leaked then if they had just announced it right from the start. Leaking is unavoidable. It's guaranteed that if any substational number of employees are working for a secretive product of any company, it's going to get leaked at some point.

So big companies like Apple should realize this, and give some kind of hint to the public beforehand. That way, there's much less to leak (and sue). It might sound cruel, but that's the reality.

In one sense, I would disagree with it. I personally think that a surprise opening to the public encourages mass-buying.

Take the iPod for example. From what I recall, it wasn't highly advertised when first released. Then, compare it to its initial success.

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