We are all going to die one day. It's important that we remember that one indisputable fact while we delve into the murky pit of tech speculation that we're about to encounter. Your heart will stop beating, your blood will stop delivering oxygen to your brain, your brain will shut down and you will be dead. That will be it. It will happen to you, it will happen to me.
So, apparently Apple has some new stuff in the works. Yeah, this guy Brian says they're making a ring - like, for your finger? - and you'll wear it when you're watching TV and instead of using a remote, or your phone, or your iPad, or voice control or just gesturing inanely at the thing, you'll wave your magic ring at the TV and it'll, like, change channel or whatever.
I have seen my fair share of spurious tech rumours.
We cover them, of course, because we have to - sometimes they're interesting, sometimes they're laughable, sometimes they could well be true. Sometimes they're leaked by the companies themselves, sometimes they're placed by malicious pranksters hoping to catch us all out and prove that we tech journalists are no-hope losers without two brain cells to rub together.
But this iRing rumour. Jeez. This iRing rumour takes the cake.
Oh, and did you hear the one about the mini TV? Yeah, they're going to make a portable TV and you can take it with you into the, I dunno, kitchen maybe? Or the bath? I didn't really read it but you can definitely bet there'll be an iTV mini this time next year.
This is so patently not going to happen. Apple - APPLE - is not going to make a ring.
A host of more elegant gesture solutions already exist. The ring idea is messy, it's uncomfortable, it's not something that seamlessly integrates into your life. Can you imagine an iRing on display in an Apple store? Of course you can't, this is Apple. They do sleek and shiny and neat and tidy, they do not do jewellery with its different sizes and its bits and pieces and mess everywhere.
So where has this rumour come from? A five-year-old concept design dreamt up by someone who does not work for Apple, who has no connection to Apple, who, it is entirely possible, has never even seen an Apple product. But then - then - it was cemented by an analyst.
Dude, I can't wait to get my iWatch. I don't wear a watch - I haven't worn a watch since I was 14 but man, do I need an iWatch. Did you hear? It's going to have fingerprint scanning? Yeah, I don't really know why either but it sounds freakin' amazing.
Analysts, man. We're always wary of these guys. In fact, a few of us are eyeing analyst up as a possible post-TechRadar career option because you seem to just say what you like and then people believe it and, somehow, you get paid for that.
Sometimes analyst findings jive with all the other bits and pieces cobbled together from the far corners of the internet and we think, yeah, this guy has connections. We've heard from him before and he's been right. He's working those upstream component suppliers, he's seen a man about a dog. But we always try to heap the salt on because, come on, an iRing? Really?
I heard Steve Jobs is still involved - yeah apparently they had a seance up at Cupertino and he told them how to make the next two iPhones. Yeah, I know. Freaky right? I'm definitely getting one. That is going to be some supernatural shit. Samsung can't touch that.
And you berate us for this. In the comments. On social networks. In emails to you dad. But you know what? You guys lap this stuff up. If you didn't read it, we wouldn't write it.
You're desperate for the next big thing - and hey, we can relate. We're desperate for it too. We're desperate for the next phone to be more exciting than it's going to be. But we're all so busy wishing and hoping and dreaming of that next "Oh and one more thing... tadaa! iPhone!" moment that we lap up every single ridiculous Digitimes leak, every spurious render, every terrible bit of concept art.
That excitement you crave? The tech rumour cycle has killed it. It's dead. It'll all just seem like iterative upgrades from here on out because you've heard it all before..
But stop for a minute. Forget Apple and Samsung and LG and phones and tablets and pricing information and regional variants and three exciting new colours.
Because technology is still amazing. You have the entire internet in your pocket. You feel like listening to a song, you can be listening to it - any song in the world - in less than three seconds. And that's at the very shallow end of the pool of incredible that technology is swimming in - you want to talk about giving sight to the blind? A voice to the locked-in? Receiving tweets from a man who is literally living in space?
But yeah. The day-to-day reality is that of rumours. They come, they go. We cover them, you read about them. Some are true, some are not. The products will launch regardless. And one day, we'll die. So it goes. And so it goes.
