Leaked photo shows Apple.com’s ‘Macbook Touch’ splash page? (with photo)

“Allegedly this is a leaked pre-release shot of Apple’s website featuring the new MacBook Touch tablet device,” Touch User Guide reports.

Touch User Guide reports, “Notice the little tab under the video player, could this be the new ‘Cocktail’ feature that everyone is talking about right now?”

Full article, with larger photo, here.

MacDailyNews Note: Real or not, you decide. All we know (beyond the fact that that capital “T” on “Touch” gnaws at us), is that 13 months ago we reported a rumor that Apple’s secret product is ‘MacBook touch’. Said our source — the same one who tipped us to wireless iTunes Store sales direct to iPod and iPhone a week before Apple debuted it — in staccato fashion:

Think MacBook screen, possibly a bit smaller, in glass with iPhone-like, but fuller-featured Multi-Touch. Gesture library. Full Mac OS X. This is why they bought P.A. Semi. Possibly with Immersion’s haptic tech. Slot-loading SuperDrive. Accelerometer. GPS. Pretty expensive to produce initially, but sold at “low” price that will reduce margins. Apple wants to move these babies. And move they will. This is some sick shit. App Store-compatible, able to run Mac apps, too. By October at the latest.

Our source subsequently told us that “the SuperDrive will not be part of the finished devices, ‘It was just in some of the prototypes for various reason(s).'”

Maybe our source was one October ahead?

63 Comments

  1. So I pulled up the bigger image… Hmm… what’s up with the Finder menu bar? It’s blank… and the URL is http://www.apple.com, implying that Apple mistakenly put this page live online as their homepage? I doubt that… And the guided tour and TV ad icons seem misplaced. Usually they’re down below the teaser graphic, no? And the dock on those things is fugly… why not just use the glass dock? A “dashboard” dock seems like an odd move…

    Why would these people take a picture of their computer screen and not command-shift-3 it?

  2. Why would a tablet need a home button? It makes sense on the iPhone & iPod touch as the only run the one application at a time. But on a tablet that’s running multiple apps at the same time, together with a dock application launcher. That’s why I call this a fake.

  3. these fakers almost have it… and then no. There’s no reason why the top bar would be ported straight over from OSX–it’s way too small for touch. also, the dock takes up waaay too much room, and a HOME BUTTON?? what the hell for, if there are multiple windows allowed? where will the home button take the user?

    nice try, morons.

  4. Raymond, the home button is a useful feature that can be programed to do many things. Why not have a button.

    I to you like to see this offered in September for the holiday / end of year sales. The sooner the better. Like the iPhone, add the final features with software upgrades.

  5. I am not sure this is real – Touch is a trademark of HTC, as in HTC Touch™, right? That’s why it’s iPod touch – Apple uses touch with small ‘t’ – just sayin…

  6. I call BS on this. Take a look at the picture. “Macbook Touch”. If the iPod touch (lower case “t”) is labeled as such, why would Apple proceed with inconsistent labeling and capitalize the “t” in “touch” for the Macbook product.

  7. One question, how do you transport it?
    If the size is 10″, screen just like iPhone, it will be susceptible to cracking. Don’t you think device of this size with glass screen should have some sort of protective flap? I don’t see it on this picture.
    I mean, think about it, you put it in your backpack and???

  8. I’m going to have to go with fake on this one.
    The image background is too dark.
    The Device does not have enough of the signature Apple reflection at the bottom of the image.
    The image of the devices in the shot lack that Apple style and finesse (I’d expect one landscape and the other in portrait with the orientation so, that the view gives a good feel for the thinness and what the back is made of).
    Overall it just doesn’t impress me as being an Apple product introduction layout.
    But, hay I hope I’m wrong, Looks like it might be a very cool hybrid product.

  9. people say that there are things onscreen which would be too small for touch, but every single day I’m touching extremely tiny areas on my iphone – and occasionally they really are too small, but I manage. The point is Apple dont seem to mind on the iPhone, so why not on a tablet ?

  10. The design of the MacBook Touch correlates with the MacTablet picture that was published a few days ago on the following page:
    http://www.nowhereelse.fr/enfin-une-authentique-photo-de-la-mactablet-itouch-22919/

    There seem to be differences in the edges of both pictured devices (one is metal, the other plastic) but that could indicate one of the two is a prototype. I am more interested by the same placement of the ‘Home’ button in the same location on both devices.For me that detail gives some more credibility to both pictures.

  11. fake im afraid, what is it? arm or intel, they would both mean very different things with regards to apps etc and it shows both, and also if it is running normal safari / osx, it might need a menu in the menu bar dont ya think (it is the top application as it has highlighted close butons

  12. There are simply too many things about this image that do not make sense.

    It’s just an iPhone stretched out with screen shots piled on top of each other. It’s not very creative at all.

  13. Fake. This just doesn’t make sense from a usability standpoint. Portability would be no better than a MacBook and lack a keyboard in favor of one that would obliterate half the screen while providing no tactile feedback which is very important to efficient typing. Others are right, there’s no need for a Home button when there’s a dock and the concept opens up a whole bag of worms as far as basic usability is concerned. Who wants a big-ass iPhone???

  14. Fake. The design is just an iPhone made a bit taller and a bit wider. All the design is recycled from existing designs. If it were real there would be something new in it. The web page would require us to believe that this was accidentally thrown up on Apple’s main web site and nobody else noticed. It’s not even a screen shot, it’s a digital camera photo of a screen. It’s rather lame, actually.

  15. Hmmm. 9to5Mac.com had this same thing posted earlier today, but it was removed from the Web site after a few hours.

    This also looks similar to the mock-up of a proposed Mac tablet that one of the Gizmodo guys had created several days ago, and which disappeared suddenly from the Giz site shortly after its appearance.

    So…it will be interesting to see if Leaked photo shows Apple.com’s ‘Macbook Touch’ splash page? (with photo) disappears from MDN later.

    Not saying this image isn’t fake, but could it be close enough to make Apple pick up the phone?

  16. Fake.

    “iPhone Apps & OS X living in perfect harmony”

    Rubbish. The iPhone runs OS X too anyway, and Apple definitely knows that.

    If the fakers hadn’t been as amateurish as they obviously are, they would have known that an explicit “Mac” reference would have been called for, not “OS X” which runs on both Macs and iPhones equally – on the one hand in its iPhone OS X incarnation and on the other as Mac OS X.

    Besides: It is simply not feasible to run both iPhone and Mac apps on the same compact battery-powered device to any satisfactory extent with current or near-term plausible technology.

    One of the worst fakes in recent memory.

  17. I look forward to seeing the sidewalk full of people, walking along with phones the size of cafeteria trays held up to their ears!

    I guess I just don’t get the whole “tablet” thing.

    (ChrissyOne, you made me laugh out loud and I woke the dogs.)

  18. To MDN and others: Apple referred to the iPod touch with a capital T in some trademark and patent filings, so if this is a website built by Apple as a rough idea or prototype that refers to devices in the works they could have referred to this official name – not the marketed name. If the device is to run iPhone apps I see a reason for there to be a home button – you do not use window option buttons on Apps. So there you are.

  19. Apple won’t jam “iPhone Apps and OS X” to live in perfect harmony. Each OS is specific to its device. There would be no benefit to running iPhone apps on a tablet PC. These people need to try harder.

  20. As I was writing this post to say the design seemed fake, but I realized it seems right in some ways.

    The one thing that bothers me is the button at the center of bottom edge. Why? Because you’d have to move your hand to press it. It does not seem like an ideal location in terms of usability.

    Then I thought it was strange that so much of the front surface area would be wasted on the dead space below the screen area (as oriented in the photo). But that might actually make sense. It’s a larger device, so you can’t hold the whole thing in one hand and press along the edge to keep it secure, like with iPhone.

    You might hold it in portrait orientation, like a clipboard with the holding hand below the device, but your fingers would need to wrap over the front surface to hold the device securely. That “wasted” space allows a place for your fingers without blocking the display. Left-handers can hold it in the opposite direction, and the accelerometer would flip the screen image appropriately.

    If you hold it along one edge with your thumb flat and pressing down on the front surface, you need a place to place that thumb without blocking the surface. Again, this design works.

    Plus from an engineering standpoint, if this device is as thin as predicted, you need some internal volume that does not have a screen over it, to place the necessary hardware. That “holding” edge provides that precious internal volume.

    So this design makes sense in many ways.

  21. FAKE! It is the iPhone 3G S page. Look at the corner. It says Click to watch the guided tour. The guy in the video preview is the same guy giving the guided tour for the iPhone 3G S. Man, I’m 13 years-old and I can even tell that’s a fake.

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