Mac OS Rumors Is Dying

Ryan Meader sat back in his fold-up chair, rocking gently back and forth with his feet under the front two legs. He ran a finger through his greasy, ratty hair and stroked his equally disgusting auburn goatée. He was deep in thought and hadn't even noticed that his burning session had ended and his new CD full of gay porn movies was ready to pack away with the dozens of others in his CD binder.

For the fifth time this month, Ryan had received a call from a collection agency demanding payment on an overdue credit card bill. This time it was on behalf of Triple XXXstacy, Inc. and his past-due amount of $1,000. A week ago it had been Apple itself demanding to know where its $28 payment was for Ryan's rev. B iMac (the one he served Mac OS Rumors from). Ryan had stopped payments on it long ago, even though he'd taken out a five year loan from Apple to pay for the system.

The Mac rumor industry just wasn't the same anymore. Back before Steve Jobs had retaken Apple, the illicit news and underground chirping was plentiful and knew no bounds. But since some time around June of 1997, everything dried up. Ryan remembered back to his last great rumor, the one about Apple and Oracle merging, and sneered. It had been a huge misinformation troll probably created by Steve himself, and Ryan had bitten. Mac OS Rumors's credibility — what little it had left — had been shot, and ever since then pickings had been slim.

Shifting in his chair to reach for the night's sixth swig of Mad Dog, Ryan wondered how the other rumor-mongers did it. AppleInsider, though now nothing more than a forum for idiotic 15 year olds, had been right or nearly so with almost all of its articles. SpyMac, a newer site, regularly featured new snippets of information that always at least showed some kernel of truth when Apple finally showed its cards. It couldn't be that no one liked Ryan anymore, could it?

Wild Eep sounded from his iMac's speakers and Ryan excitedly command-tabbed over into Mail.app. Would it be a hot tip from Tron, his mole from Cupertino? Or would it be from his hot girlfriend with more news on her liposuction surgery? Or perhaps it was from his long-time friend from Motorola with more news on the PowerPC G6?

When Mail.app finally opened and finished twirling and opening drawers and grabbing updates from the ISP's IMAP server, Ryan's shoulders slumped. It was another email from Trollaxor. Not even bothering to ponder what it would be this time, Ryan immediately opened it.

From: Trollaxor To: Ryan Meader Date: Wednesday, June 26, 2002 22:14

Subject: About Your Last Update

Hi Ryan,

Nice update last week. Thought you'd like to know almost none of it came true. In fact, the only parts of it that were true was the day-old news you included in it and the text ads you stuck in the middle of it. Why don't you just give up?

Even Steve Jobs hates you. He told me so himself.

Trollaxor

Tears welling in his eyes, Ryan hoarsly whispered, "I hate you, Trollaxor," through clenched teeth. He took his glasses off and cleaned them on his Power Computing, Inc. t-shirt and looked at the screen through blurry eyes, muttering to himself about how stupid Trollaxor was. Deep down, however, Ryan knew Trollaxor was exactly right. And that's what hurt the most.

Chugging the rest of his kiwi-strawberry Mad Dog, Ryan lit up a joint and took a deep hit. Marijuana and alcohol were his only comforts anymore as Mac OS Rumors slipped deeper and deeper into the gutter. Ryan didn't know where to turn. He'd dropped out of High School when, at the tender age of 16, Mac OS Rumors had taken off. He'd never even gone back to get his GED or attended college and didn't know a thing about computers except HTML 3.2, which was now more than five years out of date. He even had to call his local Apple repair center for help with Mac OS.

His iMac now slept as Ryan walked slowly over to the mattresses in the corner of his economy apartment. Tomorrow would be another day of dodging creditors and hoping against hope for an honest-to-God hot tip, reading Mac news sites, and receiving further email abuse.

There would be no update on Mac OS Rumors tonight.