Apple:
When not speculating on possible products, the tech press speculated on the possible problems of Apple CEO Steve Jobs. His early January admission that he was suffering from a "hormonal imbalance" struck some as less-than-forthright. The skeptics were later validated when a dead-of-night June Wall Street Journal article revealed his liver transplant.
Apple's mystery tablet was rumored to be announced at MacWorld, at WWDC, at September's music announcement, and any other time an Apple executive was giving a public presentation. (The latest rumor has it, now rumored to be called the iSlate, being announced January 26th.) This November headline from laconic Taiwan-based publication Digitimes no doubt broke geek hearts when it predicted that the never-official tablet's never-announced launch date would be delayed.
Google's announcement that it was creating a cloud-based operating
system raised eyebrows and confirmed that Silicon Valley's once-scrappy
do-gooder had shifted focus from web search to total device domination.
Chrome was an arrow aimed directly at Microsoft's heart -- its Windows
operating system -- and a flag-planting arrival of Google onto the
desktop.
The September leak of Microsoft's "late prototype" tablet, er, "booklet"
computer made a splash that has had surprisingly few ripples since. The
device, named "Courier" (perhaps after the font you used to pad your
college term papers?), has yet to be announced.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt started 2009 as a member of Apple's Board of
Directors, but the Mountain View company's creeping incursion onto Apple
territory made his departure inevitable.