Ever wondered what it’d be like to get hold of an early Apple prototype with Apple’s sanction? The hoops you have to jump through are… unusual.
Business Insider reports on an unnamed iPad developer who reckons he was “probably the sixth person to get an iPad”. That’s an impressive claim in itself; after Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Jonathan Ive and (probably) Steve Wozniak, there’s only one other person in the chain ahead of him…
Anyway, the developer had two iPads flown out by Apple, but they were held under rather more stringent security than you might expect. Sure, Apple’s a little bit cautious when it comes to product leaks, but this?
The criteria was that we had to have a room with no windows. They changed the locks on the door.”
Apple needed to be able to drill a hole in the desk and chain the devices to desk. They used those bicycle cables.”
They had these custom frames built around them so we couldn’t even tell what the iPads looked like. We could plug into them so we could code to them and we could touch the screen and play with that, but we couldn’t see the form factor.”
Then they took pictures of the wood grain. If any pictures leaked out, they could trace it back to which desk they came from.”
That’s pretty extreme. Although it will give me pause for thought the next time I see a purported “leaked” Apple product picture. After all, if it’s too good and too well exposed, it’s probably a fake… [Business Insider via MacRumors]