Last Friday a rumor went up on CNN's "Citizen journalism" site saying that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had had a heart attack. Apple stock plunged momentarily, but the posting was debunked within the hour. The suspicion now is that the rumor was planted by a short seller looking to capitalize on the skittish reaction of the market. So that means don't trust crazy internet rumors because the internet is lies! Right? No: The incident caused an uproar, but look at what it really was: one guy with a fake post on an unmediated citizen journalism site. Making any stock selling decisions based on that is approximately as risky as making the same decision based on a Craigslist post. It's an inherent gamble. Jeff Jarvis is sanguine:

Nick dePlume, as the 13-year-old Nicholas Ciarelli dubbed himself in 1998, became more than Internet-famous as the target of an Apple lawsuit. Ciarelli had published leaked details about Apple's Mac Mini two weeks before the hush-hush product's launch. Apple strong-armed him to shut down Think Secret in February. Now, Cirarelli writes on former New Yorker editor Tina Brown's Daily Beast site, Nick's fellow Apple fanbloggers aren't getting legal threats from Apple for leaking the recent iPhone 3G and iPod Nano product updates. Why have Apple's lawyers gone silent? Ciarelli essay boils down to four reasons, bullet-listed here:

"Hong Kong is now the one and only country in the world where you can buy an unlocked contract-free iPhone directly from the online Apple Store," writes John Gruber, aka Daring Fireball. He goes on to answer my plea for an explanation of Apple's motives. You can read his full-length post, or my 100-word edit:

Why did Apple shares crater and then rebound this morning? A false report, posted on CNN, that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had a heart attack. Apple PR chief Katie Cotton has denied it. Why that's not as reassuring as it should be: Cotton shredded her credibility on Jobs's health when she tried to spin a serious illness as a "common bug" earlier this year.

A "citizen journalist" on CNN's iReport site is saying that Apple chief Steve Jobs was rushed to the ER a few hours ago with a heart attack. So far the rumor appears to be unconfirmed by any other major news sites. "I have an insider who tells me that paramedics were called after Steve claimed to be suffering from severe chest pains and shortness of breath," they write. The Unofficial Apple Weblog, meanwhile, says via Twitter (techie!) that Apple PR says Jobs is fine [UPDATE: Untrustworthy Apple flack also reassures Valleywag].We won't believe it till they trot him out for the cameras. Full citizen report below [UPDATE 2: and a statement from CNN Worldwide debunking it as a hoax]:

The Copyright Royalty Board, an obscure agency which has been thrust into the spotlight thanks to its role in arbitrating rates for digital music distribution, has frozen the price online music stores have to pay to artists and labels at a little over nine cents. The music industry had been lobbying for an increase to around fifteen cents, would likely have erased the notoriously slim margins Apple enjoys at the iTunes Music Store. Not that Apple would have cared, since it's all about the iPod business anyway and the company was ostensibly willing to shut down digital download sales if it didn't get its way.

What took so long? Obama '08, the iPhone app, is free. Sort of: There's no charge, but the app will try to put you to work dialing friends in battleground states. CNET non-Democrat Declan McCullagh test-drove it: "The application ranked contacts in Colorado, Michigan, and New Mexico at the top; at the bottom was a friend whose cell phone has a Texas number, though she actually lives in California." The app's controversial feature is that it reports back to Obama Central on the total number of calls you've dialed.

In the past year, Apple earned top scores in both customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. It's a tribute to the power of marketing. And for Apple customers' collective delusion, we credit Greg Joswiak, a top marketing executive who handled Mac hardware before he moved on to pushing iPods and iPhones.While Apple products may be shiny, easy to use and full of whizbang features, going back at least as far as 1999, they've been often unreliable and sometimes dangerous. Five reasons Joswiak deserves a raise, below.

While one can never be sure if francophonic Apple fanboys are high on benzyne fumes, here are more supposed photos of the update to the MacBook Pro line tagged by what seems to be the watermark of a Mac shop in Montreal. The suggested ad doesn't feel right — I don't think the almighty Jobs would approve the gradient font fill or the copy, and if he did, he's slipping. It does resemble earlier mockups of the new iMac, so there's that. Inevitable "bigfoot in the wild" pic after the jump.

To paraphrase iPhone Savior, photos of Steve Jobs's Mercedes — no license plates, parked in a handicapped zone — are becoming a genre. What no one can answer: How does he get away with it? More Jobsmobile after the jump.

The Liberation of France says an oft-noticed smell emitted by Apple's Mac Pro desktop computers is caused by a combination of toxins, including benzene, which is known to cause leukemia. The questions now have to be: What did Apple know and when did Apple know it? Posts in Apple support forums, full of Mac Pro owners complaining of the smell, indicate Apple was well-aware of how their computers smell. One owner writes, "They guy in the service center said that every Mac Pro he has set up has the smell at first, so it appears to be normal in his experience." There's no mention of benzene in the forum. Some particularly damning posts:

Apple made developers who wanted to write applications for the iPhone sign a non-disclosure agreement that was rigorous it even forbade them from publishing Apple's letters rejecting their app from its iTunes store. More seriously, the NDA also prevented developers from learning from each others mistakes and publishers from writing how-to manuals for would-be application developers. So after loud complaints, Apple today announced it would drop the non-disclosure agreement for released iPhone software. Developers rejoiced. Explaining the need for the NDA in the first place, Apple also landed a few only slightly veiled jabs at an old rival, Microsoft. I couldn't help but be reminded of a scene from Pirates of Silicon Valley, which I've embedded below.

The National Music Publishers Association wants to raise the rate it charges Apple for each song shoppers purchase via iTunes from 9 cents to 15 cents. Apple wants to lower the rate to 4.6 cents and says that if it doesn't get its way, it might just shutter iTunes altogether. In a letter to the Copyright Royalty Board, the deciding body on the issue, iTunes VP Eddy Cue wrote: "Apple has made it clear that it is in this business to make money, and most likely would not continue to operate [the iTunes music store] if it were no longer possible to do so profitably." If the NMPA wins, it'll cost Apple an extra $144 million, but Apple CEO Steve Jobs has always said the whole point of iTunes is to drive hardware sales. Maybe Cue should try holding his breath. (Photo by majorvols)

If your iPhone 3G's American AC adapter doesn't have a green dot on it, Apple wants you to swap it for a new one. The recalled adapter's plugs have been reported to break off in wall sockets — not just an annoyance, but an electrical shock and fire hazard.

A senior Adobe engineer confirmed the obvious at a Flash developer's conference in England that yes, they're building a Flash player especially for the iPhone. Paul Betlem from Adobe balked at saying the app was sure to be built into Apple's Safari browser that ships with the phone, but it seems a certainty. Flash websites and video clips are no longer the "Skip Intro" bane of the Web. Apple went out of its way to enable YouTube on the first iPhone. Enabling the iPhone to work on any Flash-based website seems the obvious next step in removing the functional differences between phone and laptop. (Photoillustration by Jackson West)

Turns out the tech industry is not immune from the Wall Street meltdown. Apple stock dropped 16 percent yesterday. RIM, Google, Nokia and Yahoo share prices also saw double-digit drops. Yahoo shares hit a five-year low, down 10.8 percent to $16.88. Microsoft shares stayed less than five percent below the markets open until Congress failed to pass a bailout plan. The closed at $25.01, down 8.7 percent. The drop seems to have panicked Microsoft a bit, which did the only thing it could do when there was nothing for it to do: issue a statement. "Microsoft strongly urges members of the U.S. House of Representatives to reconsider and to support legislation that will re-instill confidence and stability in the financial markets," said Brad Smith, Microsoft's top lawyer. "This legislation is vitally important to the health and preservation of jobs in all sectors of the economy of Washington State and the nation, and we urge Congress to act swiftly." If it would help, we're certain Mr. Smith is willing to promise a cherry on top.

I waited until today to post this, in hopes someone would explain why Apple now sells unlocked 3G iPhones in Hong Kong. Previously, the phones were locked into a two-year contract with Hutchison. The AP reports that unlocked iPhones were "widely available on the black market," but that's also true on eBay. Anyone? Gruber?

Apple's 3G iPhone commercials, shown here, are a big lie. But at least they're a pleasant falsehood. And they don't display a disregard for proper wordsmithing the way T-Mobile's new G1 "with Google" commercial, below, does in some misguided attempt to be irreverent, hip and Internet-trendy. Dissing the dictionary isn't hip. Ask Yahoo's Jerry Yang. "Smarterer, funnerer, connecteder?" Someone should be fireder.

Apple had planned to build 18 million iPhones in 2008. Pacific Crest Securities, an analyst which closely watches Apple's supply chain, says Apple has cut that number to between 14 million and 15 million. BlackBerry maker RIM announced lower-than-expected quarterly sales last week, so perhaps Apple is seeing a similar softening in demand. Another possibility: Apple plans to quit selling its iPhone with 8GB of storage and sell its 16GB model for $199 instead. The news is not helping Apple shares, which are already down 13 percent on analysts' predictions that strapped consumers will buy fewer Macs.

Time to swap your white plastic armor for some eco-friendly aluminum. Two important analysts, RBC Capital’s Mike Abramsky and Morgan Stanley’s Kathryn Huberty, lowered their ratings on Apple's stock this morning. Huberty: “PC unit growth is decelerating and the remaining source of growth is increasingly the sub-$1,000 market where AAPL does not play.” Abramsky: “a worsening consumer spending environment." Apple shares were down from $128 to $108 as of this post.