"I know how these stories develop, having written more than a few of them myself over the last 20 years. You start with one fact, get the usual suspects to speculate on what that fact could mean, throw those speculations into print, then look for an official denial of the parts that are wrong. Once that denial comes through we rinse and repeat with the goal of eventually converging on something close to the truth. It's not a very elegant way to do journalism, but that's the way it happens in the tech trades, which now include everything from blogs to the New York Times." — tech columnist Robert X. Cringely, on the Apple rumor cycle. [I, Cringely]