Fabulous Design and Fabricated Truth
Pete Mortensen, on the Cult of Mac section of Wired's blog, wrote a head-shaking post describing how an academic journal was beaten down by the secrecy surrounding Apple's design group and their ultra-esoteric process for creating great products.
Of course, if you have to write about something, but don't have access to anyone who could tell you anything meaningful or true about it, why not just make it up? Can't get to Steve Jobs? Why not pretend to be Steve Jobs? (Thanks to BL Ochman for tipping me off to the Fake Steve Jobs Blog.)
I know, I know - that's unethical and, frankly, fraudulent. But disinformation is, after all, a kind of information. Just consider the recent debacle concerning the fake Apple internal memo. Apple's stock hit a rough patch after the fake memo was released, though it recovered somewhat when the "fakeness" was eventually established.
Mr. Mortensen implies that this may have been an inside job to "flush out leakers." If that's the case, it would mean that the people running Apple are pretty sneaky, if not downright evil.
