Earlier today, Engadget posted a story about how Apple was pushing the iPhone release out to November and Leopard, the next version of Mac OS X, out to January 2008. The story came from a trustworthy source, according to Engadget. Unfortunately, the story turned out to be completely false and Apple moved extremely quickly to correct the story. But it did not move fast enough to prevent its stock from dropping over 2 percent (about US$4 billion of market cap) as investors reacted to the story.
Engadget issued a retraction soon afterwards and the Apple stock price corrected soon after. A lot of people are still pretty annoyed (to put it mildly) and there have been calls for an SEC investigation. The way I see it though, Engadget posted a news item about what was no more than just another rumour. They do so almost every day and some pan out and some don’t. Perhaps it should have been clearer that it was unsubstantiated but in the end, caveat emptor!
Apple has issued a statement that both the iPone and Leopard remain on schedule. You may resume your plans to line up to get your iPhone in June.