Write 500 Words About Nothing, Use the Words "Apple" and "iPhone," Get One Million Views

A recent article by CNN Tech blogger John Sutter makes the claim that, despite Apple’s recent release of a white iPhone 4 (and kudos to Apple, by the way, for making whites the minority for once), real Apple nerds are actually more interested in the upcoming release of, you guessed it, the iPhone 6.

Or, as Sutter puts it:

Even rumors about the yet-to-be-announced-and-possibly-non-existent iPhone 5 are growing passé._

The new topic du second: the “iPhone 6.”

He goes on to demonstrate his mock outrage by declaring,

Seriously, people? A new version of the iPhone 4 just came out. People have been talking about the iPhone 5 for — well, pretty much since right after the iPhone 4 debuted in June 2010. And now, even before the release of the iPhone 5, which is rumored to come out in September, the techies are fixated on the next-next version._

Now, I debated calling Sutter out on the fact that he doesn’t link to or a cite a single instance of this so-called iPhone 6 fixation anywhere in his post, but perhaps he assumed that it was either common knowledge or a simple Google search away. I don’t know about the former assumption, since this was news to my finely tuned tech-tenna, but the latter definitely held true.

However, by not directing readers anywhere in particular on the subject, Sutter ignores the risk of getting pwned by other writers covering the same non-story — like, say, Jared Newman at PCWorld, who has written essentially the same article, but in a sharper, funnier, and more self-aware way. Not only that, but Sutter doesn’t actually link to anything in his post, which is a decided no-no in the time-sucking, hyper-threaded blogosphere we’ve come to know and dread, whose cardinal dictum is that you have failed as a blogger if a reader is capable of dead-ending at your particular post, rather than being sucked further down the rabbit hole after drinking from one of a myriad of linking elixirs.

But forget the lack of links. Maybe some readers will appreciate the built-in assistance it offers in ending their self-imposed-but-still-not-entirely-voluntary ethernet exile. What they shouldn’t appreciate, however, is Sutter’s decision to write an article that could basically be reproduced every month for the next ten years and say nothing righter or wronger than what it says right now — a criticism that holds true even if the piece had been written every month for the last ten years. Which it has, since it essentially boils down to nothing more than the following five “insights” (and boy do I use that word loosely) surrounding the upcoming-once-removed iPhone 6:

• The name: We don’t know
• The release date: Next year
• The screen: New
• Thinner and lighter: Yes
• Professional opinion: Random tech jargon emphasizing all and none of the above

And that’s it. Five hundred words to say what has been true about the impending upgrade of every smartphone in the universe since they were first introduced in the mid-90s and spurring, in turn, another 500 words criticizing said inanity.

Well done, Mr. Sutter. The blogosophere is now 1,000 words poorer than it was last week. May Jobs have mercy on our souls.

- Trevor Macomber / Brutish&Short