I'm sure that many of you heard of Apple's stock taking a nice sized hit to it's trading price when news leaked that the iPhone and Apple's next version of its' operating system OS X, were having both release dates pushed back until October and Janurary respectively. The news leaked to major media outlets via a letter that was sent to tech blog Engadget. Apple later confirmed that the letter was false, stating that their internal email system was somehow hacked and that they were searching for the culprit.

Paul Kedrosky wrote a really good write up on his blog yesterday afternoon which resulted in a new phrase entering my lexicon: Stock Hacking (don't you just love it when money and computers meld together like that?). He deducts that someone malicously sent this information to Engadget with the purpose of trading against the news and making some money. However, in the comments section a couple writers leave ideas that doesn't sound too far fetched to me.

The first comment comes from Worth:

CONSPIRACY THEORY ALERT: I posit that the email really WAS from Apple, leaked purposely to gauge just how big of a hit their stock would take if they released such news, as they are (were) actively contemplating delaying the launch to incorporate some more functionality. Then they conveniently blamed it on the dog and disavowed all knowledge. This is PURELY from my darker recesses and has no basis in fact whatsoever, but it could theoretically have happened this way, right?

The second comment of interest comes from Jiller:

I think it was an internal mole hunt within apple to see who is leaking information. they have always been very sensitive to leaks and the iphone is arguabley the biggest media launch apple has ever undertaken. weed out the leaks early so that come real launch time the media will be utterly surprised when the iphone launches with 3G and 16GB….

The way that I see things, I think it was a combination of both. I love Apple products as much as anyone else, but the fact remains that they are a company run by a Board of Directors and investors that they ultimately have to answer to. The fact that they are sitting on the cusp of two of the most major releases of their entire existence isn't something that they are taking lightly. Since the announcement of the iPhone back in Janurary, Apple's stock has been steadily rising right along with the buzz surrounding the device. If Apple had planned on delaying its' release even for a month to add more functionality to the device, the Board knew that its' stock was going to take a hit. Nothing stirs up a market like news that turns out to be vaporware. So if you're a company in a position like this, what do you do? Leak info to the press to determine how things MIGHT go should you actually HAVE to delay the release of the iPhone.

The second comment from Jiller is what actually makes the first comment start to make more sense in the context of things. Everyone knows that since its inception, Apple has notoriously been tight lipped about product development information leaving Cupertino. News of the iPhone had been a rumor for two years before Steve Jobs made the official announcement. Apple as recently as last year attempted to sue a couple bloggers for releasing information that had supposedly been leaked directly from Apple's corporate headquarters. They are a ver paranoid company and they believe that they have achieved the success that they have do to not always being forthcoming about product roadmaps and development cycles. If there was ever a time to plug a leak, this was it - one month away from release. Let's put things in a better perspective:

How does a company that is as paranoid as Apple get their INTERNAL EMAIL SYSTEM HACKED? If they are using Mac OS X internally, then a hack of their system means that OS X isn't as secure as they would have everyone believe, which isn't a good message to send out a few months away from the most important release of their operating system in the history of the company. In addition to that, it took Apple nearly an hour and a half to respond to the legitamacy of the email.

So. I can only concluded based on this that Apple was responsible itself. Of course, I have no concrete proof…. this is all purely conjecture. But it doesn't sound too far off when you put the pieces of the puzzle into it's proper context. It's going to be interesting to see how things playout in the coming weeks………