Tech & Biz

AP denies story that Apple has folded on the iPhone name

by ricknight | January 12, 2007 at 06:58 am

6080 views | 0 Recommendations | 11 comments

Associated Press has told NP that a story posted at NewsVine is a spoof. The link below to the original posting goes nowhere.

NewsVine has now removed the story and blocked the member.

I have contacted the technology editor for AP and he claims that this is NOT its story. We will be following this closely.

It appears this story was supposed to have been "embargoed" by Associated Press until 20:00 GMT - that works out to 3pm ET, I believe - but it has been inadvertantly released. - Mark Schneider, Actual News Guy.

In a surprise move on Friday, Apple, Inc. announced that it was renaming its newly released "iPhone" product as the "iTouch Mobile" after a lawsuit was filed by Cisco Systems, Inc. earlier in the week. The announcement came only days after Apple announced its revolutionary iPhone product -- a sleek, $499 gizmo combining the popular iPod product and a mobile phone -- to much fanfare at the Macworld Expo.

Note: The link is no longer available at newsvine.com

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Actual News Geezer

at 07:10 on January 12th, 2007

Rick - I've added a note to the top of your story. Extremely interesting!

ricknight

at 07:19 on January 12th, 2007

Nothing in the industry surprises me anymore :)

Actual News Geezer

at 07:22 on January 12th, 2007

AP is denying the story.

ricknight

at 07:28 on January 12th, 2007

And the asociatedpress.newsvine.com site is not responding anymore... Possible load issues?

ricknight

at 07:33 on January 12th, 2007

And it looks as though the newsvine.com account is recent. all the signs of a hoax.... which is a story in itself.

See: http://digg.com/apple/Apple_Renames_iPhone in the comments section.

A lie can run around the world before the truth gets its boots on....

Mike D.

at 11:07 on January 12th, 2007

All Associated Press stories on Newsvine live at "www.newsvine.com". All user-created accounts live at {user-chosen-subdomain}.newsvine.com. This user-created account has been disabled and deleted.

Victoria Revay

at 11:12 on January 12th, 2007

This amazing Rick...good eye!

ricknight

at 11:30 on January 12th, 2007

Mark caught the fraud... I just got caught... Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.

killfile

at 12:27 on January 12th, 2007

Classic fraud attempt and well executed to boot. Newsvine has taken the story down and I've contacted the staff there to alert them to the more general vulnerability of spoofed and high profile account names.

Actual News Geezer

at 13:10 on January 12th, 2007

Thanks everybody. RickNight - I have nothing but thanks for what you did. It was an interesting story, and as Killfire wrote, well-executed. As an oldtime news guy, the embargo thing was a mite too clever. News agencies rarely will send an embargoed story out that way; it's more the tactic of a PR agency with a press release it's hyping (or sending privately to select media). I appreciate the courtesy of Mike D and killfile, and hope they will return the favour the next time when something bogus gets past us.