A RexBlog Guessay: Why I believe Apple will announce an 8 1/2 x 11 inch iPod Touch within the next 45 days
Please note, I gave this post the title “Guessay,” which is a portmanteau of the words “guess” and “essay.” What you'll read in this post is my conjecture based on several years …
Context & Ripple Effects
Rex Hammock is doing something unusual for March 2009 Apple speculation: he puts a date on it. Rather than trading in anonymous 'sources say' leaks, he brands his post a 'Guessay' — a labeled conjecture built on years of watching the iPod ecosystem, and he stakes a public 45-day deadline on it.
The timing is not random. A month earlier, an Apple patent surfaced showing a possible Tablet PC/MID design, giving rumor-watchers hard documentary evidence that a large touchscreen device existed somewhere inside Apple — Hammock's 8.5 x 11 inch iPod Touch prediction reads as a blogger's attempt to convert that patent filing plus iPod line logic into a concrete product call.
First-order effects
- Hammock has made himself publicly accountable: either Apple announces a large-format touch device by early May or the Guessay fails on its own stated terms — a falsifiable claim in a rumor culture usually built to be unfalsifiable.
- Apple itself changes nothing, but its silence now has a clock attached; every event in the next 45 days gets read against whether it fulfills or refutes the prediction.
Second-order effects
- If the Guessay format catches on, rival Apple blogs and outlets face pressure to match dated, testable predictions instead of hedged rumors — turning speculation into a scoreboard sport where accuracy becomes the currency.
- Patent filings like February's Tablet PC/MID design get repositioned as de facto roadmap documents: with no official Apple pre-announcements, filings become the primary source material the rumor economy reasons from.
Third-order effects
- A structural shift toward deductive Apple forecasting: because Apple controls leaks tightly, the analyst ecosystem increasingly works backwards from patents, component orders, and ecosystem economics — meaning Apple's own IP disclosures become an unintended product-announcement channel.
The trend: Apple speculation is moving from leaked-scoop journalism toward falsifiable, patent-driven deduction, as independent analysts try to out-predict a company famous for saying nothing.