FakePod

Apple PodWatch is a Fake

2006-04-30T11:42:00.000-07:00

3 hours ago, Mobility Today published an article that claims Apple may have a new wristwatch :

This image is a fake by Pentagram Design. Full story here.

New iBooks Coming

2006-04-27T17:01:00.000-07:00

I believe the new iBooks are appearing May 14 or 15 from chatter I'm hearing. I suspect the new video iPod will be released either end of summer, or end of fall. :( It seems that PortalPlayer (who makes parts for iPods) got their contract yanked and given to Samsung this week. There are rumors that the reasoning is that PortalPlayer leaked information (images??) of the new iPod, and in so doing, broke their confidentiality agreement so Apple is punishing them. PortalPlayer's stock dropped almost 50% on the news, which their executives called "a nightmare scenario". I think Apple is up to something.

Otherwise, I have't been seeing any images lately of allegedely new Apple products, but I will debunk them or prove them as soon as I do.

May 15th

2006-04-07T15:32:00.000-07:00

All will be revealed May 15th.

Or so the rumors go...

Steve Jobs is No Fool

2006-04-03T15:06:00.000-07:00

There wasn't any "30th Anniversary Event" on April 1, so there haven't been any fake products to debunk.. for now. Sources say that Steve Jobs is still negotiating with movie studios for a concurrent launch of the iTunes movie store with the 6G iPod. There are also rumors that the Beatles lawsuit is delaying a release of a new iTunes, because of the logo infringement. (Although Apple is way more likely to cash settle with Apple Corps).

More Crappy Fake Photos

2006-03-05T23:42:00.000-08:00

More photos surfaced of the alleged upcoming 6G video iPod. I said before that this is the probably the concept of such an iPod, but unfortunately, this is still not it.

If people can't even photoshop a fake LCD screen, how are they supposed to fake all the cool new products Apple is coming with for this year? Give me a break, people.

The biggest giveaway is the sloppy lasso job around the thumb. If you crank the gamma and apply sharpening, you can see what the edge of the thumb looks like over the dark iPod. (A)

Look at areas in (B), you can see the gray of the ipod beneath the thumb leaking through. Especially note the lifted black density that the arrow on the bottom left is pointing to. If the area of the thumb in (A) shows no transition to black, then why should the areas in (B) show such a clear halo.

This shows the photoshop lasso area. It may seem like a small detail, but this is all it takes. This halo is not exhibited anywhere else in the same photos of foreground objects of similar densities over other objects.

Lets consider some basic points :

1. This kind of fake is the easiest to photoshop. Just double the screen.

2. I doubt Apple would ever allow these kinds of photos leaked.

3. The GUI in the Ice Age 2 photo is very non-Apple, and different than the other fake photos.

There are several other techincal factors, like inconsistant chromatic abberation, a lack of grain, and strange sharpness in some areas.

I will continue to look at the images, but I can say with 90% certainty that these are fake. I've helped win multiple Acadamy Awards for making computer-generated images of things that don't exist. You will have to do a lot better than this to impress me.

Project Origami

2006-03-01T23:49:00.000-08:00

A leaked video from Microsoft has been circulating that shows an iPod-like PDA.

The device is codenamed Project Origami, and rumors are flying about its legitimacy. Microsoft canceled a press conference about it this week, and is instead taking a cue from Steve Jobs and letting rumors build.

That approach would work, except I know the truth. My close friend worked on Origami for one year, and even helped make that video. The video is in fact from an internal pitch to get R&D budget approval. It is a concept video for the executives that is over a year old.

He no longer works on it, but says that its "unlikely that the features shown in the concept video will make it into the first version of the device."

Confirmation

2006-02-26T12:52:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ4wzEEpk1A

And FYI, I spent about 20 minutes creating the first fakepod post. Totally worth it to prove everyone wrong. ;)

6G iPod is FAKE

2006-02-25T17:05:00.000-08:00

Apple is rumored to be releasing a full-screen video ipod. Like most people, I can't wait. But this "leaked" image claims to be the real one. I think the photo itself is a fake, but judge for yourself ...

This is the photo in question. Looks so cool because its got color-bars and a barcode and foreign lettering! And some mysterious scratched out name! NOT.

When i first saw the image with gamma raised, I wondered why the blacks on the LCD are denser than the edges of the plastic screen itself. Even blacks on a laptop screen glow very brightly. Then I realized that the artist tried to blend an image into the screen of a photo of a 5G ipod.

In photography (digital or analog), there is rarely such thing as perfect black. Raising the gamma reveals the image's true blacks vs the painted blacks.

I pixel-sampled the blacks so you can see the difference. The color bar black is denser than the black on the 5G ipod screen. If you want to make your fake convincing, you should pixel-sample the black from the image, and paint with that - not use true black.

I created this example showing how they erased the color-bar pattern to blend with the 5G ipod screen.

Lowering the gamma reveals several things.

First, notice how even a cheap digital camera captures bright values of the real 5G (right), whereas the fake ipod "crushes" down to a gray (left). You can even see the swirl marks of the plastic sticky cover on the real 5G photo.

Next, we see the exact same thing happening - they blended a white bar into a lit 5G ipod screen. That way, the edges of the screen glow correctly at normal gamma. (A) is the neutral white they painted in photoshop. It looks a little uneven because of the jpeg compression. (B) is the glowing, blueish 5G iPod screen from their original photo.

This technique corresponds to the same as what we saw above. They almost had me!

Not all the color bars are from a photo. Some are painted. I have no idea why, but they are.

Going to grayscale, the unsharp mask reveals which bars are solid and painted in photoshop (A), and which bars have morrie and are from a photo of a monitor (B).

Note the sloppy airbrushing to fake the screen glow. (C)

So you guessed it. This is how they made the "6G" ipod. They merged pieces of a bright and dark ipod together, then composited a color bar pattern onto it.

Final thoughts
1. The barcode is apparently from OSX.
2. Unless a 2nd-grader wrote the label, the chinese lettering is clearly not written by someone fluent in chinese. But knowing child labor..hmm.. no, steve is not down with that. ;)