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Not even worthy of a response from me, and I like to talk.

I agree with zelfort . . . this is a sleazy MDN publicity stunt. Mac 360 may be in on it too.

They should have at least made it more monolithy.

"these damn pics get worse all the time, when are you n00bs gonna learn to actually try to make some good fake shots, and this is for sure a rendered image"

I love it when every dumbass on the planet refers to everyone else as a noob in some vain attempt at feeling superior. And what exactly are they a noob at? noob at industrial espionage? Noob at stealing coroporate secrets? Noob at eating pancakes?

Where's the wires as well? Some people have too much time on their hands.

this looks like something out of a Sega Saturn game circa '94.

notice how the table extends into some sort of pixelated void behind it.

Terrible work - F for failure to the artist.

I zoomed in on the image pretty far, and the Apple logo does have a stem so it's good, you're probably looking in the wrong direction like I was at first. It looks very yellow-greenish near the parts where the light is supposed to be, which implies that it was a light illusion, but I'm not sure.
It's just, the timing of this is ironic with the event coming just a day more than a week from now and we're all hyper and speculating too much for our own good.
I could be wrong, this could be Apple's new media-heavy Mac mini that people have been predicting for next to forever, or it could be a "haha-in-your-face" fluke as I expect.

Found another picture in an online forum. Looks a little different, though, the holes are bigger:

http://img50.imageshack.us/img50/8239/cube0ir.jpg

Yes, it might be a fake...
but I hate it when people start spouting off reasons for it's fakiness and they have no clue what they are talking about.

Just 2 examples:

The Apple logo is intact but smeared (due either to lens parallax or motion blur or because its meant to be as part of the fake).

The desktop material is actually the burled wood that you see in the Apple conference rooms (points for it being real).

Here is the image with the logo zoomed:
http://www.sesdesign.com/images/060222_mystery_apple_cube.png

Also, I din't put it in the image, but the perspective does appear to be correct. Open it in Photoshop and overlay some lines.

Hmm. Somebody just got their first 3D package. And MDN is fishing for hits.

The table appears to be floating in a gray void.

First at bat. You're gonna get a lot of traffic on this one, I suspect. heh

Jim:

That one is fake.

The perspective and the light sources all work - any typical digital camera lens will warp the perspective of a perfect cube exactly - and I mean EXACTLY - as seen in the photo. Look at how perfect the focus is - what is clear and what it blurred.

The object has a "realness" to the surface that even Pixar would be proud to accomplish. That means only one thing: this is far too perfect an image to be a rendered fake.

This much we should all agree on: This is a photo of a real object. I'd testify and prove it with mathematics and samples in a court of law.

It may still be a fake, but that would mean that someone took the time to build it and photograph it with a digital camera. Or it could be the real deal.

The shadows are all over the place in Jim's picture. Totally fake. Why would this be anywhere near antiquated PB12 and iBooks?

Sorry, but someone it trying too hard and not thinking things thru when making fakes.

Here's the real answer:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0123755/


But this time they've captured 7 PC Tech writers. Let the game begin. Mu-ha-ha-haaaaa.

Agree with you Anim8r. Guys like "Marek" claim they're photographers and photoshop wizards, yet only prove they know ding: "the shadows on the front don't portray real lighting, because the light source is coming from the left, yet the object is brighter in the front." For crying out loud, everyone can see the bottom right corner is so bright it's burned, which indicates a strong spotlight hitting the table and reflecting from the front of whatever that is. And there's nothing wrong with the perspective the obvious motion blur can't explain. The pic is real, the object can well be anything but what we're supposed to believe...

What I can't understand is, if indeed this was rendered in P'Shop, why didn't they use either of the background filters "Grassy Knoll" or "Area 51".

I'm quite sure when Apple releases something, it will fit into a standard, AV modular spec, like a DVD player, receiver, tuner, whatever.

MW: KEPT, as in, you should have kept this one in Gansevoort!

Fugazi...

This looks identical to the nice silver cubed boxes they gave out T-shirts in when my local Apple store opened. I think I still have one that I was going to sell on eBay. I bet I could take a photo just like this.

Like the other guy said: if you don't show the buttons and ports, we don't believe you.

ha. that doesn't look fake at all.

a cube isn't exactly the most efficient space for the living room.

Why would Apple shrink the G4 Cube form factor down to Mac mini size, only to make it big again?

Ouch - I'd be worried about those corners. When was the last time we saw corners that sharp on any piece of Apple designed hardware?

I don't think anyone has pointed out the sharp corners. Can you imagine Apple designing anything wiht sharp corners?

dburney:
Don't run with it. You could put an eye out. If Clive Barker had a hand in its development, we could be in for trouble.

Guys,

get real .. the bloody thing is not even a cube ... look at the right edge ... this is a pile of bull.

It's 3D generated. The MIPS mapping is evident as well as the hard shadows and a hard "invisible" light on the bottom right side. Try looking up "Gullible" people...

For those saying "it's not a cube," you're wrong.

It most certainly is a cube:
http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/projects/perspective/multiple.htm

Just put a box on your desk and look at it from above and see how the sides look in perspective.

Doing some quick calculations: this looks like it is a real object in real space.

It's a freaking Apple Design award, you dorks.

http://www.panic.com/extras/designawards/

Bozos.

Yeah, perspective is all wrong. Kinda makes my head hurt looking at it. Has to be fake.

Definitely a CGI image that was put through Photoshop to put on some blur. The room the photo was supposedly taken in seems pretty well lit, and with any decent camera phone, there shouldn't be a blur because of this. I've taken quick shots in rooms with good lighting and the photos will either come out perfectly clear or VERY blurred, much more blurry than this image, which was blurred just enough to hide the poor rendering job, but clear enough to make out some details. Also, perspective and lighting do seem a bit off. One interesting thing is the bright light reflecting off the table at the bottom right corner. This indicates an intense light source and part of the table's brown color is reflected on the side of the cube, however, with a light this bright and that close to the cube, that entire side of the cube should be much brighter, unless the light source is very directed and close to the table.

It is not an Apple Design Award. The dimensions do not match. Simple math.

Apple's philosophy, and that of Jonathan Ive is "form follows function, after its made beautiful of course!"

No media slots. Hmmmm... that worries me, but as an OEM build of PC's and media centers, I can tell you that I've built, last year, 29 custom made Media Center PC's that were built into cigar humidors. All took tons of time, all were made with being in the living room, or someplace equally viewablly prominant. And all but 6 had firewire or USB dvd drives. The other 6 had, you guessed it, Panasonic slot loaders, same as the 'Books. I just dont see apple taking that tack. Its wayyyy too far out of the norm for them to do.

No IR port. Well theoretically it could be behind the mesh case, and maybe its just one huge flat reciever screen behind it. Stranger things have happened. Or maybe the front is actually the side with the Apple logo. But that would mean that the side down on the tabe is the ports, and that wouldn't work.

Only possiblility I can come up with is that this is supposed to be a headless iHome media SERVER. Meaning you HAVE to have another mac somewhere in the house on the network to control it. All it is is storage and running software to interface over the network thats controlable over the network via some kind of software or even right in safari. Or maybe its got software you install on your mac, and it runs it straight from there.

Who knows? It could be that, but I dont think that Steve and Co. would introduce something like that. Its not as intuitivly user friendly as anything else they've intro'd for the home. The most adventerous they intro'd was the airport express. Too many customers just couldnt get their head around that concept.

For my money its someone built a box and photo'd it with a cell camera, but its not real.

Hopefully Tera's right and its a tablet Mac.

Bishop

AI_Joe;
If you were in one of my Maya classes I would fail you.

There is no invisible light. There is however bounce light from the table-top. Look at the harsh light in the lower right of the image. Tis is either from a directed spot like a track light or an overhead can. The light then bounces off the table and illumiinates the front of the box (whatever it is) along with some added color from the table. Judging from the reflection I would guess this is actually aluminum.

Also, don't throw out words like mip mapping unless you are ready to define them. The use of mip mapping should generate much clearer textures. In fact if this image were rendered and then blurred intentionally the edges of the perforations would be more obvious (see the fake image Jim linked to).

Look closely at the top edge where the perforate material meets the top of the box. Mapping that is quite a feat. The distortion produced in the material by the bending of the edges is extremely hard to make it look that good.

Again, this may indeed be a fake Apple product, but it is in fact a perforated metal box with an Apple logo on it sitting on a burl wood table.

It's real!

The blurring in the photo is caused by the Reality Distortion Field...

with a bit of Kool-Aid induced haze.

Come on, Tuesday!

I'VE GOT IT!

It's a Mac Discussion Thread Generator. Prove me wrong. I dare you.

the photo is obviously fake--

MDN was had.

This is a horrible fake. Among the other clues given above, the back edge of the surface on which the item rests does not line up properly if you extrapolate from left to right.

The person had 30 seconds, but was able to:

- snap the photo
- put away camera or phone
- open box
- get a look at contents
refer to MacBook opening photos -> most CPUs are wrapped in opaque material
- close box

If the time frame is accurate, and I will grant that they could be off by a minute, I do not believe the story is plausible.

fake

Logic dictates that you can not bend aluminum on three sides to form a corner without seam and distortion. It is a fake!!!!

Sorry guys, I think this one is a fake. So is the one at http://img50.imageshack.us/img50/8239/cube0ir.jpg.

1. Download both pictures. Use Photoshop or any other image editor.
2. Draw lines, each parallel to the lines that make up the vertical corners.
3. The lines should converge to a single point. However these 3 lines intersected each other at 3 different places.

It's Apple's long-anticipated "BOOMBOX". No doubt about it!

Ampar you are totally wrong there is as much chance that anyone would ever contribute to a thread on a creaky old box, spray paint and a bad applied transfer, or at least the photoshop equivalent thereof, as there is of world wide protests over a badly drawn cartoon. Mark my words.

It's a box. Whoohoo. We're do I order one?

The Cenobites just called. They want their toy back. And Pinhead wants his coat back from Keanu.

It's a sphere

Oh weary eyes. This is a third-rate Photoshop hack. The perspective is all wrong. The lower right-hand edge is curiously in focuse while the rest of the image is not. The scale is off (an 8" cube takes up an entire tabletop?) And even the logo is distorted. My blind uncle could do a better job.

Some idiot is making fun of you all

There's two things bugging me terribly about this photo:

1) The logo seems far too small for the product in comparison to Apple's typical logo size to product ratio. Don't see that they would make the logo that small on an 8x8 cube.

2) The hole-size just doesn't jive w/Apple's design standards, IMHO. Submitter says smaller holes, but those are way smaller than current perforations if that thing is 8x8. Way...

It is JUST APPLES DESIGN AWARD.

Christ some of you aren't too bright.

"Some idiot is making fun of you all"

Is that a bad thing? It must be the same idiot that shrieks, "Macintrash!" So easily threatened, so little time.