Surprise Surprise, Apple’s hiding shipping data

It’s been an interesting week for Apple Inc. All week long pundits, competitors, and partners have been lambasting Apple for their overly pre-cautious practices of hiding information from the public. We’ve gotten word from Reuter’s that suppliers are starting to get a little annoyed with Apple’s veil of secrecy, Cracked put together a hilarious, yet truthful, article titled 5 Reasons You Should Be Scared of Apple, and now we’re getting word that Apple’s blocked access to information on their shipping containers. Many speculate that it’s iPads coming from factories overseas, some are speculating that it could be new iPhones as well, but there’s no real information on what Apple is shipping en masse to the western world. Heck, it could be more Shuffles, fixed 27in iMacs, or those new Macbook Pros that people have been speculating about.

A couple years ago Apple 2.0 spilled the beans on the iPhone 3G before Apple had a chance to make the announcement based on shipping manifests. Apple quickly reshuffled their shipping practices after the Apple 2.0 announcement, and many are wondering if this shipping container debacle could be an attempt by Apple to keep things under wrap this time.

There’s a whole industry that surrounds shipment manifests, companies study the information, track down manufacturing information, and then sell off what they’ve learned piece by piece. So, is it really a surprise that Apple’s trying to hide their assets from the public eye considering what we know about the paranoid antics at Apple?

There’s always going to be leaks, and the propensity of that happening only increases when you’re a multinational company, shipping across multiple borders, through multiple customs. It’s a mini-miracle every time they get shipments from point A to point B without a slip.

Via Fortune