Apple rumor du jour: "MacTower" and 24-inch, iSight-ed Cinema Display
With Apple's "Showtime" event just around the corner and new minis and iMacs already on the market, there has been a surprising dearth of rumors surrounding the world-changing products that will inevitably be announced on Tuesday, so we're here to fill that void with a juicy and plausible -- but entirely unlikely -- bit of dirt. The story goes like this: a gentleman calling himself "Jeff Foster" just happened to be working on his brand new blog (red flag #1) when a friend of his who supposedly just got a job as an Apple rep decided to endanger his newly-acquired position by sending Jeff some blurry cameraphone shots from inside the storied halls of Cupertino headquarters (red flag #2). All three images that Jeff "received" depict a previously unmentioned desktop called the "MacTower" (positioned the exact same way in each photo -- red flag #3), with one of the snaps (pictured above) blowing the lid off an all-new 24-inch Cinema Display complete with built-in iSight camera. This MacTower -- which looks almost exactly like the PowerMac G5 of old (red flag #4) -- is presented as a little brother to the recently-released Mac Pro, and reportedly sports a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, up to 4GB of 667MHz DDR2 RAM, hard drive capacity maxing out at 1.5TB, a 16x SuperDrive, and of course, Bluetooth 2.0 and AirPort Extreme radios standard. Despite the many inconsistencies that make Jeff's story sound dubious at best, we decided to pass the info along so you all can have a nice Sunday picking it apart and screaming "Photoshop!" in the comments; oh, and Jeff, you're welcome in advance for sending a little traffic over to your blog's "very first post" (red flag #5).
Update: Red flag #6 (perhaps the biggest of them all): Several astute readers have pointed out that a commenter calling himself Jeff Foster made the following remarks in another rumor post we ran on the first of this month: "I really just want them to release a smaller tower... you know, so they'll have a mac mini, imac, something like a Mac Tower, and mac pro..." Coincidence? We think not. For shame, Jeff, for shame.
Update #2: Red flag #...oh what the heck, when the faker comes right out and openly admits to his scam, all flags get tossed to the wind. From "Jeff Foster," in the comments section of this very post: "It's something i threw together last night a little out of boredom and a little out of, well, no, i guess totally out of boredom. just having a little fun." Upon much deliberation, we've decided not to unlink Jeff's site; however, if you're sick and tired of these frauds gumming up the rumor mill with this purposely deceptive crap, we encourage you to follow the Read link and let Jeff know exactly what you think of his little "boredom project."
[Thanks, Mike C.]