By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit

The Cassandra column is in two parts this time as the news on iOS 7 and uncritical jounalism - bad news makes hits - grew to such an extent that I felt separation was the best answer. Cassandra for Wednesday is available as usual.

Apple iOS 7 and Poor Reporting

But then I had a closer look at the point that was being made: that iOS 7 was to be delayed until September. Delayed? What a crock? Too much headline-chasing and not enoough journalism here.

We are aware that, like every year, WWDC is to be in June. And every year (since there has been an iOS) the outline of the update is announced and someone does a run through of the main features. Then . . . well, then the updates to APIs are announced and the developer software is released with all the new stuff. There are workshops for the lucky ones and we all go away happy to wait for the release, which also sees a rush of app updates.

You have the picture? So with last year's WWDC in June as usual, when was iOS 6 released? Not June or even July, but 20 September 2012 (at least that was when I wrote about it) along with an OS X update to 10.8.2 (Mountain Lion was released in July), by which time I had already completed my A-Z of Sytem Preferences and was writing about Terminal. Mountain Lion arrived 25 July here.

With all that in mind, anyone claiming that a September date for the release of iOS 7 is late - or proof of delays and problems - is skating on thin ice for credibility as far as I can see. There were one or two surprises as far as I was concerned (the guilty will remain unnamed). Not in the list of suspects was Neil Hughes on AppleInsider who does mention the Bloomberg report but writes that iOS is expected to ship on time. There are some pressures - a different boss (Ive) would do that, as well as some of his demands regarding the interfacing - but like OS X 10.5, personnel are being moved to the right places and work continues.

Also commenting, in a typically brief fashion, is Jim Dalrymple on The Loop who picks up the article by John Paczkowski on AllThings Digital (that Neil Hughes also used). Some good comment in that item about what simplifications may be made (mercifully).

Shame on the other commentators for focussing only on the possible bad news. That dovetails nicely with a comment by Ernie Varitmos on apparently unfounded speculation by Peter Misek that the iPhone 6 will not be arriving until June 2014. Ernie has a look at Misek's poor predictions regarding Apple and wonders why he does it. I think I am with him this time on the probable motivations.

But he had written something else on analysts that I read earlier in the day and this fits perfectly with my views on the utter rubbish that some of these instant experts on Apple have been dishing out for the last few months. Ernie Varitmos calls these "drive by analysts": the ones who have never got it right. The article has some justifiably harsh criticism of most analysts: criticism which I think is right, as much of the advice some of these have been giving their investors over the last few months concerning Apple has been wrong over and over again as well as filled with unsubstantiated speculation.

Let me put in here that short list of analysts and their wrong comments that I pulled up after only a short spell on the internet looking for them:

Ignore the analysts, they know nothing. It is only guesswork, at best supported by a small amount of data from component suppliers, and that has been found to be false over and over again.

• Brian Topeka - Apple Is Going To Release The iPhone 5S In 'At Least' Two Screen Sizes - Business Insider 9 April;
• Katy Huberty - Morgan Stanley: the iPhone 5S will have a 'killer feature' - iDownloadblog 18 March;
• Gene Munster - Analyst Predicts New iPhone 5S in June, Low-Cost iPhone in September - MacRumours 26 March
• Glen Yeung - iPhone 5S, iPhone 6 Release Date Pushed Back by Production Delays--Citi Analyst - International Business Times 23 April
• Wall Street Journal - "Apple to Begin iPhone Production This Quarter", 2 April;
• Digitimes as reported on 9to5Mac - "Apple is working to release two new iPhones in 2013 with 4-inch displays" 22 January;
• Jessica E. Lessin - A Low-Priced iPhone Awaits - Wall Stret Journal, 9 January.

Not one of those rumours was correct.

One analyst missing from the list is Shaw Wu of Sterne Agee. He is missing perhaps because he is generally favourable towards Apple and usually gets it right; only as Ernie Varitmos reports, he lost his job this week, but no one is saying why.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.