MacRumors Buyers Guide

Rumors in the Mac world are pretty common. Just look at the proliferation of rumors-based websites: there's Yee Old Mac OS Rumors, MacRumors, Think Secret, AppleInsider, … And those are just the ones that I can think of off the top of my head. Personally, I prefer the Crazy Apple Rumors Site, or CARS, since most rumors turn out to be false anyway and I might as well have them made up.

Either due to the greater popularity of Macs lately, or whatever, but in the past few weeks I have had four friends cite rumors of new MacBooks as reasons to hold off in buying them. Obviously, I have no idea which rumors are true, and which are not. But I do know two things.

By the end of the month, Mac OS X 10.5, A.K.A. “Leopard”, will be released. That means Apple will be announcing when people can buy a MacBook and later receive a free upgrade. Other people might rather have it pre-installed, it’s up to them (personally, I find doing using the Backup-and-Install method easy enough).

The other thing I know is MacRumors has a really useful Buyers Guide page. They list not only the recent rumors about any particular product, but also how many days since the last product refresh along with the time period between previous refreshes. To me, this is the most useful, or at least it puts it in much better perspective. Some people make up rumors out of their own fantasies; nobody fantasizes about bar charts. I hope, anyway.

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