Of course we can't in any way, shape, or
form vouch for the validity of these shots, but an anonymous tipster mailed in (and also apparently
hit up our pals at TUAW
with the same material) about having a friend who came over to show off his new cellphone (pictured), a one-in-fifty
test unit for trying out
Apple's Mobile Me
service, which is apparently an Apple MVNO slated to run on Cingular and to be launched in February -- hey, that's the
story, we're just passing it on. So apparently this friend heads to the throne and our tipster snaps up the friend's
Samsung SGH-X497, pops off the battery, and grabs the given blurry shots of the Apple-branded SIM, which was apparently
stamped with:
xx/50 Test Unit [digits written in sharpie]
Apple Computer
Internal Test
MM1.3.a
Of course we've talked about an
Apple MVNO
since what seems like the dawn of time, but between the blurry camphone shots and how well we know Apple for sending
out test units into the wild before a Stevenote goes down, well, we'll let you decide whether this thing is the real
deal.
posted January 31st 2006 9:44AM
Hey! Did you hear?! Hot off the Press...
Apple has commissioned the Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and a famous family of Jackalopes to market this product.
Blurry, bullsh*tted sensationalism has never witnessed this kind of star power coming together ever before.
Cheers, Paul-F
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This explains itself..... i think we can setle this one http://wingspeed.0catch.com/apple_sim.jpg
Hey! Did you all just hear?! Hot off the press...
Apple has commissioned Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and a famous family of Jackalopes to promote this new phone!
Blurry, Bullsh*tted Sensationalism has never seen this much star power come together for a cause before.
Cheers, Paul-F
looks just like a samsung phone that i saw at the cingular store...
being a mvno, it doesnt necessarily require Apple to build a phone. and as mentioned before, it is a samsung phone. so what would apple being selling? itunes with no headphone jack, videos with pathetic streaming, long distance over your included long distance. oh wait, they are the new virgin mobile. yeah, apple is just gonna bust right into the phone biz. sure.
second of all, seriously why would a computer manufacturer jump in the phone business. first, you just dont implement technology and jump in. your business model needs to be put in place, your personnel needs to be trained or aquired, you need billing structures, etc. as with the cable companies, it is not a surprise when they start recruiting phone company execs before their product launch.
along these lines, with no sneek peak or analyst before this, no new job postings at apple, i would be very leary. not to mention that some readers here feel very confident that it is gc in the tray. dubious, at least.
The level of control over branding, user interface and device designthat Apple would have over the device is greater than other MVNOs or wireless operators.
Sure if this is fake, it makes perfect sense for such universal brands.ESPN and Virgin tried, but google may conquer and so can Apple!
Why can't apple or jump into this? google wi-fi hotzones, google logo on the motorola handsets, google content, ads, google voice, google buying telco networks, infrastructure and agreements with service providers....isn't all this a part of their MVNO game? Google takes a plunge with a 'zero' telecom background. Billions are left bewitched - including you and me:)
Why would Apple go Analog. GSM is worldwide, one unit for one world.
Just like photos of the sasquatch & flying saucers, it's mysteriously blurry.
a secret tipp:
go to flickr.com and search for the tag "mobileme"
Like the first poster said. It is a iTunes gift card you can get at basically any store. Cut up into the shape of a sim card and shoved into a phone.
Saw 'apple mobile'- looks cool!
i hex dumped the picture in was made in photo shop stoopid liars
Everyone who believes this: you can buy a brand new, unlocked, apple G6 cellphone from me, with 56gb of internal memory and blu-ray memory card slot for only $999!
Send money via paypal (for your own protection!) to applemnvohonest@spindoctor.com
What a load of C_AP! Like apple would actually approve anything where you had to actually remove the battery to insert a gift card. This is a piece of paper cut-out from off their inkjet printer and cut and pasted over the sim card. Then they used the fuzz feature of iPhoto to fuzz it all over the place so it wouldn't be so obvious. What a cool idea though.
All I can say is that back in July of 2002 [Apple Expo Paris? Maybe WWDC but i think that was a little earlier in the year], Steve Jobs announced a partnership between Apple, Cingular and Sony.
I know, because it's the whole reason that I chose Cingular as my service provider back the following month and have been with them ever since.
Obviously, it looks like Sony has been replaced with Moto since then, but what was he talking about with Cingular?
Although these pix look pretty "hokey", I'm inclined to believe that Apple will become an MVNO. There obviously getting into the business of content distribution with music, music videos, television episodes, and more than likely full length feature films.
Why wouldn't they try their hand at being a mobile phone provider as well? They've already started integrating iTunes into Moto's phones through Cingular [which I think is just a guinea pig program for them anyway], so why wouldn't Apple just blow the doors off of the mobile phone/pda industry with it's own full featured Mac Phone [Blackberry/Treo killer - especially know that the Treo 7 series is using a winBlows OS] with a Mac Mobile content delivery system [Verizon VCast killer]?
Take the gloves off Apple! Due for the mobile phone and provider industry what the iPod and iTunes is doing for the digital music player and music industry... TEACH THEM HOW TO DO IT RIGHT!
Comments for #32 and #49... who cares if the JPEG file has a Photoshop identifier (actually I believe the Ducky tag is from ImageReady). It could be as innocent as downsampling or cropping the image. I am not saying that this is a real photo, but you cannot discard it just because it passed through Photoshop.
I feel I must correct the person who said Apple would never go with UMTS because it is so much slower than EV-DO. While it's true that UMTS is slower than EV-DO, it's important to realize that just like GSM/GPRS have EDGE, UMTS has HSDPA, which Cingular operates, bringing the speed equal to or much higher than the speeds attained with EV-DO. Lab tests indicate theoretical speeds of 2Mbps with EV-DO and 16Mbps with HSDPA. In fact, CDMA2000/EV-DO is much slower than UMTS/HSDPA.