9 To 5 Mac Fabricationalism

This is a good question for iPhone 4S users to ask Siri, the phone’s intelligent assistant.

What happened to the iPhone 5?

Siri doesn’t know, of course. Neither does 9 to 5 Mac, which is adding new meaning to techno punditry with the headline:

The inside scoop: what happened to the iPhone?

I call this fabricationalism. It isn’t even subtle. If it’s a scoop, it’s a fact, right? If it’s a statement about the scoop, then why the question mark at the end of the title?

Because the whole article is fabricated nonsense. Fabricationalism. It’s all the rage these days. Everyone is doing it.

We’ve heard from Foxconn managers as well as Apple employees and carrier partners on this and have tried to piece together the full story.

Translation: Whoa. Fiction is much easier and faster than real reporting.

The iPhone 4S as you see it was originally planned to be released at WWDC with iOS 5, like every iPhone before it.

Translation: We don’t have any proof, it’s only imaginative conjecture, but we think Siri caused the four month delay.

Or, maybe it was the iPhone 5 that wasn’t ready.

Foxconn obviously did have prototypes of the iPhone 5 (which eventually landed in the hands of the iPhone case designers and spawned the whole iPhone 5 case fiasco). But it turns out that building the iPhone 5 in necessary yield rates couldn’t be done in time for a holiday 2011 release.

Translation: My bad. It wasn’t Siri that delayed the new iPhone. It was the new iPhone that delayed the new iPhone.

…our Foxconn contact says that iPhone 5 is currently planned for Summer 2012, but as we know, things can change.

Translation: We have months to come up with newly minted conjecture, and this whole topic can be repurposed time and again as more hit whoring content for Apple fanatics that simply can’t get enough of our imaginative drivel.

This is not sensationalism, folks. It’s fabricationalism.