14 DAY TRIAL // A post titled “Exclusive: Steve Jobs Holding the New Apple Tablet” on a blog caught our eye this morning, along with purported pictures of the “real” Apple tablet posted elsewhere on the internet. Neither of the two reports / posts surprises Softpedia, but we can’t not share with our readers the latest developments in tablet-rumor-land.
Packed.com writes, “An anonymous reader has sent us this exclusive photograph taken this morning at Steve Jobs’ house while he is preparing for his big presentation on Wednesday.” Evidently fake, the picture portrays a Muppet’s-style Steven P. Jobs (Apple CEO) holding a poorly polished piece of aluminum, bearing a hand-drawn Apple logo, representing what the company is believed to unveil at tomorrow’s event in San Francisco - a tablet computer.
This, and many other sarcastic posts scattered across the Internet attempt to sound the alarm on just how pathetic the Apple fanbase has become in anticipation of this unconfirmed tablet device. You can tell the hype has reached critical levels, with reports speculating on every little part that allegedly makes up the respective product, while Apple is completely mum about the matter. Softpedia, for its part, has tried to keep speculation at safe levels, but was several times forced to hop on the tablet-rumor train, in order to keep track of potentially real aspects surrounding the potentially real device.
Which brings us to our next tablet rumor kicked off by designer Dustin Curtis over at his blog. Under the headline “Photos of the Apple Tablet,” Curtis (whom some may remember for his redesign of the American Airlines’ website) posts these two pictures.
Clearly the most realistic yet, the shots totally depict Apple’s rumored tablet device atop a MacBook Pro computer. Of course, Curtis knows a thing or two about graphics, so we wouldn’t be surprised to discover around the same time tomorrow that these two images had fake written all over them. However, if these were real, why not send them over to Valleywag for the “Apple Tablet Scavenger Hunt” contest? These babies would earn Dustin Curtis $10,000. In fact, according to the contest rules, the image at the top of this article (depicting Steve Jobs holding the tablet) would fetch Packed.com’s anonymous reader a cool 50 grand. By the way, any doubts about the first picture not being real?
Share your own thoughts in the comments.
Update: Curtis claims he has “reason to believe these are real, and that the person who took/released them purposefully manipulated the reflections to add doubt about their authenticity,” according to Digital Beat (via the now redesigned 9to5mac).