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Short of the whole iPhone 4 fiasco, Apple’s pretty good at keeping things under wraps. It apparently chains prototypes to desks and locks them in military-like secure bunkers, but it seems at least one has escaped. A prototype first generation iPad equipped with two dock connector ports was just sold on eBay for £6,500.
It seems Apple was musing shoving two dock connector ports in the iPad for both landscape and portrait hook-ups. While it’d be nice to occasionally slot it into a fancy speaker dock in landscape for TV watching, I’m glad Apple just went for one in the end. Unfortunately Apple disabled the thing before it chucked it out, but the seller apparently has worked wonders re-activating it and getting as much working as possible — it still seems a bit like a rather expensive paper weight though.
The winning bidder paid some £6,500 for the privilege of owning a bit of unreleased Apple history. Sure, I’m a geek and would love to have it just to say I own it, but I can think of so many better uses for the best part of seven-grand — you could buy a car for that. [eBay via TUAW]
I wonder what the pixellation is hiding/censoring in those images?
Not much apparently, according to the ebay description…
“This iPad is model A1219, as are all first gen wifi iPads. The iPad contains many identifying numbers on it which disclose which particular prototype it is, and in the interest of safety I have blurred out all possible identifying numbers. Rest assured, once you purchase the device the numbers will be there in their full glory.”
Yeah, seemed a bit weird to do that. Perhaps the bloke was worried Apple would come-a-knocking. Probably pretty valid, although with just the listing up I’m pretty sure Apple’s heavies would be put on standby.
What OS is that running up there?
From the ebay description:
“…THIS iPad, is a functional representation of this design.
This iPad is not only unique in it’s hardware, but it’s running Apple’s software testing suite, called “SwitchBoard” which is used to test the devices functionality….”
I wonder why they decided to go with the dock connector on the shorter edge rather than the longer one?
Possibly to match the iPhone. I tend to hold my iPad portrait rather than landscape most of the time. If it was on the longer edge it’d get in the way.
I bet this is just the tip of the iceberg with iPad prototypes.
what the hell is a “skank phone”??