The Reporting Around Asus’ ZenWatch 2 Has Been Appalling ⇥ theverge.com

Vlad Savov kicked things off at the Verge by speculating on the use and nature of the appropriated crown on the righthand side of the device:

Like the Apple Watch, the ZenWatch 2 has a metal crown, which gives you “a new way to interact” with the Android Wear interface. Asus hasn’t yet detailed the specifics of how this will work, however, and Android Wear doesn’t have the same software support as Apple has for scrolling with the digital crown in its own Watch. So this seems likely to just be an external button.

Pure speculation — Asus’ press release never claimed that this button could be anything more, but nor did it clarify precisely what it would do. Upon clarification, Savov made a subtle change to that paragraph. See if you can spot it:

Like the Apple Watch, the ZenWatch 2 has a metal crown, which gives you “a new way to interact” with the Android Wear interface. It initially seemed as though this would work like the digital crown on Apple’s watch, however it turns out to simply be a power button with a fancy title.

The speculative text has magically vanished.

But it didn’t vanish fast enough for publications like Fortune, who suck up other sites’ writing like blue whales swallow krill. Reporter Robert Hackett felt so bold that he titled his interpretation of Savov’s article “This Company Just Copied the Apple Watch’s Best Feature”: “this company” being Asus, “copied” not really happening, and this headline format reaching the point of parody back when the Onion launched ClickHole.

Oh, yeah, and the watch is oddly reminiscent of the Apple Watch in a great deal of ways, least of all in the slow-motion product porn shots of the bands that you can buy with it, but let’s leave that aside for now.