Jon Prosser and Mark Gurman are often in the spotlight regarding rumours are about upcoming iPhones and Macs but they aren’t the only fortune tellers in the Apple predictions business. Who are these leakers and how reliable are they?
Rumours about new Apple products are in high demand and not just with Apple fans. For years, journalist Mark Gurman of Bloomberg and the analyst Ming-Chi Kuo were the best known and most successful “leakers” of Apple’s plans. But there are now many other leakers who have joined their ranks, such as the well-known YouTuber and blogger Jon Prosser.
Prosser is known for his Twitter feeds, the podcast “Recycle Bin” and the YouTube channel “Front Page Tech” – channels through which he announced iPad Pro and MacBook Air on 15 March. He also announced the appearance of the iPhone SE the day before its launch in April and lots more rumors.
In his YouTube videos Prosser may not appear serious with his penchant for toilet jokes, but his predictions are reliable. According to Prosser he takes a lot of time before a rumor is published and tries to have the rumor confirmed by other sources. However there are more accurate leakers than Prosser, according to Website Apple Track, which has provided a source leaderboard.
Want to know who is the most accurate Apple leaker? Currently anonymous leaker CoinX is in the lead with 95.2% accuracy and LOvetodream (also anonymous) is in second place with 90.5% accuracy. CoinX had previously revealed the names of XR, XS and XS Max via Twitter, later the Pro-iPhones. These two anonymous leakers could be Apple employees who spread rumors themselves – probably without any financial intent. Their ‘success’ is probably down to the fact that they have only rarely published rumours and provided little detail.
You’ll find Prosser in third place with 86.7% accuracy. Mark Gurman is in fifth place 84.2 percent reliability – 9to5Mac actually ranks higher than him in fourth place with 85.8% accuracy. Prosser and Gurman rely on internal sources at Apple and their publications are a source of income.
Ming-Chi Kuo is down in 10th position with 76.4% accuracy. Kuo makes a lot of predictions and sometimes he gets them wrong: for example, the analyst was wrong about the release date of the iPhone SE.
In terms of the number of rumours, Mark Gurman deserves first place: the Bloomberg editor has published 279 Apple rumours. Prosser, on the other hand, has only published 15 Apple rumours so far. Gurman’s reach is also greater, as the media is behind Gurman – Bloomberg. Prosser has at least 165,000 Twitter followers and 254,000 subscribers on YouTube.
There is the occasional quarrel between Gurman and Prosser on Twitter, such as when Gurman criticised the publication of an internal Apple document on Twitter. Protecting sources is extremely important, after all, Apple doesn’t take leaks well and the sources are likely to encounter problems if the leaks become extensive. Prosser told Macworld that a source has said they will now only work with Prosser after some overly detailed publications on the future of iOS by another leaker (possibly Gurman) almost cost the source – an Apple employee – his job.
The third best well-known leaker is Ming-Chi Kuo. Kuo seems to have completely different sources at Apple suppliers. Kuo has always been reliable and informed on topics such as hardware and new components, but less knowledgeable on topics such as operating systems, release dates and product names – information to which an Apple supplier has no access.
Our Opinion: Rumours about new Apple products seem to be growing every year. No wonder, since the leakers have professionalised themselves and publish the rumours as a full-time job. As a result Apple is hardly able to present a product without a leak and keynotes and presentations are increasingly lacking in the surprise effect.
This article originally appeared on Macwelt. Translation by Karen Haslam.
Via MACWORLD