[douglasputnam]

"word of mouth will kill the phone"

Whenever we hear a prediction about "word of mouth" stunting the sales of an Apple product, we have to take that statement with an iPhone-sized grain of salt. Word of mouth doesn't hurt recent Apple products. The Gizmodo "leaks" were word of mouth about this particular phone and Apple sold 1,000,000 phones today.

If you will think back a few months, "word of mouth" was that the 27-inch iMac had screen problems. That "word of mouth" amounted to thousands of posts on the Apple support site. Apple simply fixed/replaced the machines with problems, improving their reputation as a make-good company. I haven't heard any "word of mouth" about the iMac lately because the customers are satisfied and the FUD has evaporated.

When these iPhone problems are resolved, this entire thread will dry up and blow away in the wind.

[jsz0]

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. There's definitely a growing disconnect between internet people and reality. It's not at all limited to technology news. I don't think it's going to end well.

[mechanical_fish]

a growing disconnect between internet people and reality

The disconnect has always been there. People have always had immersion bias. That's why it goes by many names: Parochialism, regionalism, racism, class bias, tribalism.

It's fun to watch people blame the disconnect between tribal culture and reality on the Internet -- one could have predicted that; new technology tends to get blamed for anything and everything, no matter what the technology is -- but history is replete with examples of clueless, reality-disconnected people who managed to construct their bubbles without the benefit of any kind of networking tech. Lysenko didn't need the net. The pre-Revolutionary French aristocracy didn't need the net.

[jurjenh]

Most likely to immersion bias - they tend to visit sites that align with their beliefs, which in turn reinforces their world view, and without a healthy dose of physical reality, the distortion gets so bad you tend to get these types of comments a lot. It pays to be aware of the subjectiveness of your feelings on things - if I can't put objective figures on it, then I don't trust it - which tends to eliminate popular folklore from a lot of scenarios...