What does all the recent breaks in Apple announcements, from Macworld to the model numbers to new laptops indicate about Apple in 2008?

Apple used to pride itself on its secrecy. To this date, they are one of the best examples of companies with excellent control over itself- however over the past year I have noticed more and more breaks in secrecy and more accurate predictions from the rumor mills. Could this be an indicator of the company beginning to get too large?

This leads me to question, what has happened to Apple’s extreme secrecy regarding new products? As Apple is gaining market share and growing as a company, it must be becoming harder to maintain the extremely tight security and structure within the company it once retained. As more rumor sites appear, it only adds fuel to the existing hype always surrounding Apple.

Looking back upon 2007, we saw countless photos of unreleased products that turned out to be the real thing. In context, for Apple, this is almost unheard of! A typical Apple ‘slip-up’ used to be something like an empty reference on their website or a change from within the Apple Store itself (like shipping times). I cannot honestly recall from years past, the last time I witnessed a product spy shot of an Apple product that turned out to be the real thing!

It could just be my memory failing me but the fact is 2007 saw more breaks in Apple secrecy than ever before. To me, this screams that something has changed within Apple. Maybe because it is getting bigger, maybe because the attention surrounding the company is at an all time high but- either way I don’t think it is a good sign. Apple is slipping on something that it used to have a tight grip on.

If it is true, it is clearly demonstrating that something within Apple has changed, and evidently Apple is having a hard time coping with it- because they must notice! This could be very early indications that Apple is growing into an uber large, Microsoft type company. While Apple’s growth is great for Apple users, investors and, the technology world- if Apple’s growth exceeds control, it could end up hurting the company in other more serious ways. Will we see new MacBooks today? Will the iPhone SDK be delayed until March?

–Matt Dodd