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Last week, a very shaky rumor began to swirl in the tech world. An anonymous poster to a website called “Secret” made an announcement that Apple’s next generation of EarPods would come equipped with heart rate and blood pressure sensors, as well as iBeacon transmitters.
Yesterday, the original author of the rumor came clean with another anonymously created Tumblr blog expressing his apology for letting the rumor get out of hand. It was just a joke that got out of hand. “I made it up. I wrote it 5 minutes after I woke up on the 1st of may. I was blurry eyed, I had a headache, I was using the toilet and worrying about my blood pressure.”
The original rumor was picked up by a number of tech blogs and news sources shortly after being posted on Secret. There was a lively thread on Reddit about the rumor and its author’s possible history with Apple, and even Nike.
The rumor got so out of hand that its original poster decided to end the antics and come clean in order to avoid any problems that might arise in the future. According to his Tumblr post, the author was simply making up an Onion style joke for the people in his circle on Secret. He didn’t intend for the post to make it off of the website and didn’t realize that there were already job postings and patent revelations that added a reasonable amount of legitimacy to his claim.
“The idea of Apple including a free heart pressure monitor, something that would cost >$100-$200, seemed ridiculous to me. I added the iBeacon thing to stretch it further and the audio jack port moving idea as some contrived logic to make it sound believable.”
The heartfelt apology went out to Apple “for making them look like jerks.” He also noted that he implied that he was a former employee of Apple and, when others sent him well wishes, he didn’t admit to his lie, but instead thanked them for their sentiment. “I’m sorry to everybody to believed this to be real and the post to be from someone who needed support.”
As a final note, the rumor faker added that he has learned his lesson and will think twice about what he says online from now on.
“I expect a lot of people to be really pissed at me. But I’m not worth it the effort. I’m really not.”
[Via: CultofMac]
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