New York Times says search engines detecting unannounced Apple device

Appended to an otherwise standard write-up of Apple's recent quarterly earnings call, The New York Times' John Markoff dropped this bombshell:

That would seem to confirm findings that a search engine company shared with me on condition that I not reveal its name: The company spotted Web visits from an unannounced Apple product with a display somewhere between an iPhone and a MacBook. Is it the iPhone 3.0 or the NetMac 1.0?

It's not hard to believe that Apple is at least prototyping a netbook. But combined with Jobs' statement that the iPhone is Apple's netbook, it's more likely to be a higher-def iPhone, following the suit of smartphones like HTC's Touch HD.

Or, more likely, neither. As Gadget Lab's Charlie "Steal My Bike, Please" Sorrel points out, a Hackintosh netbook such as an MSI Wind would report itself as OS X 10.5.5 with a screen resolution of 1024x600... definitely "somewhere between" an iPhone and a MacBook's display.

Read My Lips: Apple is a netbook maker [New York Times via Mac Rumors]

* - A netbook needs to be the form factor of a traditional laptop, but shrunk down to the limits of comfortable usability. The iPhone is no more a netbook than a netbook is a PDA.

[#1 posted by musicalwoods , October 23, 2008 5:30 AM]

I'm curious about the actual resolution. If it is 640x480 or 800x480, I would think it a better iPhone. Otherwise, yeah, probably hackintosh netbooks.

[#2 posted by chroma , October 23, 2008 6:45 AM]

It could just be someone playing with their resolution settings or even running MacOS in a window under VMWare.

[#3 posted by The Lizardman , October 23, 2008 7:29 AM]

I'm going to say I called it with my previous BB comment here:

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/10/22/apple-says-netbooks.html#comment-313195

[#4 posted by Alan , October 23, 2008 9:09 AM]

Look at the home button in the upper right corner; rather small for an iPhone. Also, no ear speaker (or whatever that's called), a must for a phone. I'm not gonna speculate what it is, but it ain't a phone.

[#5 posted by dssstrkl , October 23, 2008 9:10 AM]

FYI, hackintoshes generally report themselves as Mac Pros, so its likely not a Wind that's got everyone excited.

[#6 posted by zuzu , October 23, 2008 9:13 AM]

So it's a tablet with Apple's bluetooth keyboard?

(That should also give you an approximation of its dimensions.)

[#7 posted by dculberson , October 23, 2008 12:16 PM]

Well, wouldn't said unnamed search engine know the IP addresses, and see who they belong to before bothering to pass the information along?

[#8 posted by arkizzle , October 24, 2008 10:52 AM]

People, the picture above is for illustration purposes only.

The only relevant info was gathered from server logs.