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 1024×600… 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. [musicalwoods]

   I’m curious about the actual resolution. If it is 640×480 or 800×480, I would think it a better iPhone. Otherwise, yeah, probably hackintosh netbooks.

2. [chroma]

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

3. [The Lizardman]

   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. [Alan]

   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. [dssstrkl]

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

6. [zuzu]

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

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

7. [dculberson]

   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. [arkizzle]

   People, the picture above is for illustration purposes only.

   The only relevant info was gathered from server logs.