Snippet: Bloomberg’s ‘The Big Hack’ ☇

John Gruber:

I see no way around it: either Bloomberg’s report is significantly wrong, at least as pertains to Amazon and Apple, or Apple and Amazon have issued blatantly false denials. You can, perhaps, chalk up Apple’s denial to it being written by Apple PR. I don’t think this would happen, but hypothetically this issue could be deemed so sensitive — either within the company or as a national security issue — that the people at Apple with knowledge of the situation lied to Apple PR. But in my experience, Apple PR does not lie. Do they spin the truth in ways that favor the company? Of course. That’s their job. But they don’t lie, because they understand that one of Apple’s key assets is its credibility. They’d say nothing before they’d lie.

I did a lot of thinking after reading the aforementioned report, and it strikes me as a very different tone that Apple (and Amazon) would issue a statement. There have been some other events that have been PR problems for Apple and more often than not, the company is quiet on the issue. In the case of hardware design flaws, the norm seems to be to keep quiet and then offer some sort of repair extension or fix for affected users.

As this would be a different scenario, the closest thing I could think of was the 2014 leak of celebrity photos. While it didn’t appear to be a flaw with Apple’s systems, their statement was very short and had a only-address-what-needed-to-be feel. In comparison, to state that the reporting is incorrect is a very different reaction, and while an individual can deny an accusation, a public company doing that could be opening themselves up to a nightmare by misleading investors.