Today, Verizon is having a very special event. Nobody knows what the event is about, not for certain. But supposedly, Verizon is finally getting the iPhone. However, there’s reason to be skeptical, as we’ll detail here in a very special Uproxx News retrospective of raised hopes, dashed dreams, and people insisting that they just put the thing out already.
This isn’t anything new. The Verizon iPhone is like Martin Scorese winning the Oscar; a foregone conclusion that just hasn’t happened yet, which then stubbornly keeps refusing to happen. Not that this keeps people from continually predicting it, even if it doesn’t make sense, and you wish it would happen just so people would stop talking about it. In fact, it nearly happened first: Verizon turned down the iPhone due to Apple being an obsessive control freak. This, of course, did not stop random bloggers like, oh, ZDNet from insisting that we’d see the iPhone on Verizon before Obama got into office. Ever since then, there’s been a steady stream of rumors that this would happen. First it was 2008. Then, wait, wait for it, 2009! Honest! Then, when that didn’t pan out, even CNN was insisting that 2010 was the year of the Verizon iPhone.
But, now, of course, everybody is insisting that they were right all along, just off by…four years. And to be fair, we’ve got a lot of evidence this time around. Skype has been leaking documentation like a sponge. There are apparently CDMA iPhones, six million of them, ready to be shipped. There have been leaks all over, none of which anybody can actually confirm, of course, but enough to make everybody very excited.
And, of course, we know that today, Verizon is making a major announcement. Of course, to create media hype and to give bloggers material to type up, they’re withholding what, precisely, they’re talking about.
So, is this really the iPhone? Opinions are largely leaning towards yes, although a few hardy souls are pointing out that Verizon could have announced it at some minor trade show in Vegas that just wrapped up that might have had an audience. Then again, the pro-iPhone crowd insists that Steve Jobs doesn’t go to CES. The anti-iPhone crowd rebuts by saying Steve Jobs only announces from his lair deep within the bowels of Cupertino. Then the pro-iPhone side tells the anti-iPhone side that their mother is so obese that she literally lays around the house.
And what do we here at Uproxx think? We think that Verizon will finally reveal that the company is owned and run by the great Emperors of the planet Betelguise. We’re just saying.
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- AppleInsider truly wants to believe that four years of waiting are over. (AppleInsider)
- TheDroidGuy on the other hand really wants to believe any carrier would throw this big of an event around a Windows Mobile phone. (TheDroidGuy)
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- And now, for your latest in news that will inevitably lead to awesome photos on the Internet. A member of a Russian circus who lives near the village of Ratzeberg found himself in charge of three adult tigers and a cub. The authorities first heard of this when the man in question took the cub for a walk, and got a few phone calls from concerned residents, possibly about something in the water that was making them see jungle cats. After they clarified what was going on, they agreed to let the man continue, as long as he calls ahead and lets them know first. (Yahoo!)
- And continuing the theme, an anonymous man in Connecticut decided to take a trip down the highway. In his electric wheelchair. The gentleman in question tooled down the breakdown lane and off the exit to Fairfield, and into Internet legend. Troopers apparently wouldn’t have pulled him over, but had no comment on whether they would have taken cell phone photos and posted them to Facebook. (MSNBC)
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- How many iPhones has Apple moved out the door since it was introduced four years ago? Over 41 million. And this is why Apple is beating everyone like a red-head stepchild. (NumberOf)
- And how many apps can those 41 million iPhone users download? Try 140,000. And that’s just the ones Apple didn’t reject. (iSource)
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