Personal Dork Assistant

Rumor Monger

Apple's penchant for secrecy combined with its legions of fans have created a proudly geeky tradition of rumor and speculation on Apple's next move. In the olden days, Apple was more prone to internal leakage, and there were a few consistently interesting sources with inside connections reliably revealing Apple's plans. Sometimes a bit too reliable, as the case may be, drawing the wrath of the Apple Attack Lawyers.

But under El-Jobso's iron fist, the internal leaks became plugged or squished. There are the occasional bit from Digitimes taken from sources in the Taiwanese CMs, but it was hardly reliable. Still, with the growing network of suppliers and it's own retail stores, there are news to be had. And with the power of the Internet there are more (dubious) Apple rumors floating around than ever.

So it's now up to a new generation of Apple rumor-meisters to sort through the Internet noise to find the nuggets of truth pointing the way to the next big thing from Jobs, Ives, and Co. The simply named MacRumors has emerged from the pack, overtaking venerable sites like AppleInsider to become the premier clearinghouse of Apple news past and future.

It had been a hobby — albeit a time-consuming one — while Dr. Kim earned his medical degree. He kept at it as he completed his medical training and began diagnosing patients’ kidney problems. Dr. Kim’s Web site now attracts more than 4.4 million people and 40 million page views a month, according to Quantcast, making it one of the most popular technology Web sites.

Apparently, the rumor biz must be more lucrative than I thought. The site drew in enough revenue tfor the founder to quit a six-figure medical practice to run the site full-time. That must've been a bit awkward to explain to the Asian parents.

Still, he hesitated to make it a full-time job because he enjoyed medicine — and he had invested almost $200,000 in his education. But he finally concluded that “on paper, it was an easy decision.” He also had a practical reason for wanting the ability to work from home. Her name is Penelope, and she is 14 months old.

When he told his father, also a doctor, about the decision, Dr. Kim was pleased that “he was very supportive of it, which was sort of surprising to me.”

If good old Dr. Dad was supportive of quitting medicine, then the blog must be bringing in big bucks. No reason to begrudge him of the money, either. It's not easy to keep a cool head amidst all the heated speculation and MacRumors does a fine job of sifting and analyzing. It'd be nice if they broke more news themselves, though.