AppleZulu

Wesley_Hilliard said:

AppleZulu said:

Wesley_Hilliard said:

macgui said:

winstoner71 said:

Some of you need to stop being such Karens. This is news. Good reporting. 

Some of "you" need to stop being such Dicks, calling people Karens for merely sharing an opinion. It is news in a limited context. Good reporting? Maybe. Besides, I like the idea of a surprise even if it's not that much "new" to unveil.

Stabitha_Christie said:

Wesley_Hilliard said:

Stabitha_Christie said:

I love a good rumor as much as the next person but can we not normalize this kind of behavior? While it isn't illegal to take someone's photo in public is still an invasion of privacy and promoting this kind of thing will only lead to more instances of this kind of thing. 

Sorry to say, but the law is quite clear, when in public, it is fair game. While I can't take a photo of someone and use it commercially, there's nothing stopping anyone from taking photos, recording video, or capturing audio of anyone in public.

Like I said in the piece, it's not something that's going to be a problem because these kinds of design changes are very rare. Nearly every other prototype iPhone has looked identical to its predecessor with the exception of iPhone X, which was prototyped in a literal brick-sized box IIRC.

I wouldn't worry about this becoming a common way to leak iPhone information.

...I clearly stated it wasn’t illegal but legality doesn’t make it right. People should be able to go out in public without someone photographing them. When you use the photos you are ultimately enabling the behavior. Cool that you didn’t break the law but did y’all make the right choice. 

I agree. Enabling bad behavior doesn't help. But that's another genie that will never be put back in the bottle. Paparazzi selling their pics to tabloids because the public believes in "their right to know" proves that. This and every other tech news/rumor site operates on much the same way. I doubt that many sites pay for this kind of "news" not that it matters much. So I agree in a better world this wouldn't have happened. We have to make peace the best we can and pick our battles.

Let's assume this is an actual pic and not AI. Sunglasses knew he'd be the subject of pics if the rumors of his security team are accurate. The whole situation gives me a "staged" feel. Who is he? An Apple employee doesn't seem probably. Why was he photographing the alleged 17 outdoors in what appears to be a public area? Who provided the phone? Is this an Official Apple Leak?

Then there's a question (of me at least) of whether or not as previously mentioned this is an AI generated rendering and not a photo. The third finger of the left hand looks to be obscured by some artifact. Sunglasses' reflection in the 17 looks to me to be at a wrong angle. Sunglasses' sunglasses reflect almost completely different images. That might be explained by a bend in a bridge. That whole situation gives me "fake" feel.

All speculation on my part. You're all free to move about the cabin.

This isn't AI generated. It's not really all that odd, we've discovered prototype devices and they look like this. It's not staged, the guy just got unlucky that some nerd spotted them and took a photo. They were clearly trying to at least be discrete.

Can't test real world devices without being in the real world. Stuff like this is bound to happen. It only doesn't, because again, most new iPhones look like the old ones. This is the exception.

The artifacts and grain suggest the photo was taken from far away. Anomalies were likely further enhanced by the image processing on iPhone, then the processing performed when we enlarged the photo to be usable on the web.

Let's not get into conspiracy territory. It's not that big a deal anyway. It's just a photo of an Apple employee testing an iPhone a few weeks before it is announced. It isn't that hard to believe.

And news sites don't pay for news. News is what happens, whether you like it or not. Paying for information can lead to charges of corporate espionage, and it's also highly unethical and against every form of journalistic integrity.

I really do think that the images are AI-generated. There are two images. As I noted above, the hand holding the "iPhone 17" is pretty weird, with a bizarrely long thumb. As someone else mentioned, the reflections in his sunglasses don't match. They should be virtually the same reflection, perhaps slightly offset. There also should probably be some reflection of the brunette standing right in front of him. Dude's right ear is also odd. I thought maybe that's the stem of a single AirPod Pro, but there's no such device in the other image, taken from over his right shoulder. Even more odd is the ear of the guy behind him in the first image, over his left shoulder. Human ears come with all kinds of weird folds and squiggles, but this one definitely looks like AI error, not human funky-ear. In the second image, the main dude has a strap over his left shoulder, making a notable indent in his puffy coat. There is no evidence of the strap or indentation in the first picture. Each thing taken by itself could probably be explained away as some normal aberration or distortion in the photo, but considered together, it becomes more likely this is an AI-generated image.

The best thing about it is you're free to believe it is AI generated if that makes you feel better. It doesn't have any of the hallmarks of AI generated images, but it is filled with odd artifacts created by the incredible noise and crunch caused by taking what was likely a max crop of a photo from far away. As for the strap, the second photo was clearly taken after the first where the person maneuvered across Union Square to get a different angle. The man could have easily picked up a bag in that time span. Also, the woman in the foreground may not actually be anywhere near the man with the iPhones. When zooming, things closer to the camera can appear closer to the background than they are. The glasses may not be perfectly flat either, which would explain why the images reflected are subtly different. Polarization of the glasses also distorts the image.

The best thing about conspiracy theories is they fall down with a little bit of simple logic. What purpose would it serve for this to be AI generated? Who benefits? And even if it were AI generated (it isn't) what does that change? Believe it's AI generated if you must, but I don't understand the need to try and convince others.

I get that we live in a world where we need to be more critical of information than ever. Fooling people with AI is only going to get more prevalent. But this isn't AI. And whatever the case, iPhone 17 Pro Max will have a camera bar and will launch in September. 

I am not a novice photographer, and the condescension is not necessary. The artifacts I noted are not consistent with noise or pixelation from cropping a tiny portion of an image taken from far away. In fact, in the first photo, look at the sharpness of the top edge of dude's puffy jacket on his left shoulder. That is not consistent with a "max crop of a photo from far away."  You actually have to zoom into this image to see the pixelation of that edge. If this were "max cropped" from a much larger photo, the pixels in that original photo would render that smooth edge blocky. In fact, while I'm looking at the pixel level of this image, there's a lot of inconsistency between what's more sharply rendered, and what seems to be blurry and lacking in detail. AI does that, too. 

Now, while you're there at the dude's shoulder, look at the freaky-ass ear of the dude behind the dude. That is not pixellation or noise. The little bump of cartilage that sits right in front of a person's ear canal is called a tragus. It looks like AI has rendered more traguses (tragii?) going all the way around the ear. That is exactly the sort of thing that AI does when it fails to properly render the odd folds and curves of human ears. 

I'm not offering a conspiracy theory here. I have no idea why someone would fake an image of an iPhone 17 "in the wild," other than as a prank to get attention. I am not among those here who would be offended if you had an actual picture of that, because I agree that out in public, it's fair game, both morally and under the law. I also don't think someone wearing a puffy jacket on a summer day in San Francisco is the least bit odd. My "need to convince others" that this is probably an AI generated photo is only about the need in general to call out fakery when I see it. If we're not critical and careful about that when it doesn't matter much, then we just open the doors for more of it when it does.

9secondkox2 said:

8x? Last I checked 25% from 10% is 2.5X. And we don't know the minutiae. So if that sticks, I doubt it's going to be some crazy trouble for apple. The president is pretty good at this stuff. I'll wait for more concrete news to break regarding the details on this before reacting. but from what I have seen so far, including with the UK. Trump is doing great things with these trade deals. We wanted fair balance. And so far, we are getting it and then some. Looking forward to see how India responds. 

There is no evidence to support either of those statements. 

More economic chaos from President TACO. Presumably he wants to distract from ... other things.

The question is how up-front Apple should be about featuring the effect of the tariffs on prices, particularly when the iPhone 17 is released. They would risk angering Trump, but I think they should make clear what the tariff markup is. They could be passive-aggressively subtle about it when they do the dog-and-pony-show announcement: "The iPhone 17 will have all these new features [after having described all the new features] and there will be no price increase from the iPhone 16, except in the United States, where it will increase by 40% [averaging the tariff rate for Chinese and Indian imports]."

Apple wouldn't have to utter the words tariff, or Trump, or TACO. The news media would explain it for them. Nobody at Apple would actually want news coverage and publicity around new product releases to be all about tariffs, but is there any way they could avoid it? Even if Apple decided to eat the tariffs and keep their US prices flat, that's going to be the story. First at the announcement, the story would be "Apple absorbs tariff costs," and again at the next quarterly earnings call, when Apple has to report a significant drop in profit, despite robust sales. The question would then be, how long can Apple afford to continue to do that?

Or, they could pass on the tariff to consumers and then that's the story, repeated again at the quarterly earnings report, when lower sales due to higher prices will be the reason for lower profit. I think this is the least worst option, because it's more transparent and puts the ball back in Trump's court. The reason prices are higher and profits are down is all due to the whims of one man. Unless he wants to continue hurting American consumers and American companies, he'll do the TACO thing and drop the tariffs. If he wants to distract from ... other things, o.k., but he is going to have to own that, too.

Wesley_Hilliard said:

macgui said:

winstoner71 said:

Some of you need to stop being such Karens. This is news. Good reporting. 

Some of "you" need to stop being such Dicks, calling people Karens for merely sharing an opinion. It is news in a limited context. Good reporting? Maybe. Besides, I like the idea of a surprise even if it's not that much "new" to unveil.

Stabitha_Christie said:

Wesley_Hilliard said:

Stabitha_Christie said:

I love a good rumor as much as the next person but can we not normalize this kind of behavior? While it isn't illegal to take someone's photo in public is still an invasion of privacy and promoting this kind of thing will only lead to more instances of this kind of thing. 

Sorry to say, but the law is quite clear, when in public, it is fair game. While I can't take a photo of someone and use it commercially, there's nothing stopping anyone from taking photos, recording video, or capturing audio of anyone in public.

Like I said in the piece, it's not something that's going to be a problem because these kinds of design changes are very rare. Nearly every other prototype iPhone has looked identical to its predecessor with the exception of iPhone X, which was prototyped in a literal brick-sized box IIRC.

I wouldn't worry about this becoming a common way to leak iPhone information.

...I clearly stated it wasn’t illegal but legality doesn’t make it right. People should be able to go out in public without someone photographing them. When you use the photos you are ultimately enabling the behavior. Cool that you didn’t break the law but did y’all make the right choice. 

I agree. Enabling bad behavior doesn't help. But that's another genie that will never be put back in the bottle. Paparazzi selling their pics to tabloids because the public believes in "their right to know" proves that. This and every other tech news/rumor site operates on much the same way. I doubt that many sites pay for this kind of "news" not that it matters much. So I agree in a better world this wouldn't have happened. We have to make peace the best we can and pick our battles.

Let's assume this is an actual pic and not AI. Sunglasses knew he'd be the subject of pics if the rumors of his security team are accurate. The whole situation gives me a "staged" feel. Who is he? An Apple employee doesn't seem probably. Why was he photographing the alleged 17 outdoors in what appears to be a public area? Who provided the phone? Is this an Official Apple Leak?

Then there's a question (of me at least) of whether or not as previously mentioned this is an AI generated rendering and not a photo. The third finger of the left hand looks to be obscured by some artifact. Sunglasses' reflection in the 17 looks to me to be at a wrong angle. Sunglasses' sunglasses reflect almost completely different images. That might be explained by a bend in a bridge. That whole situation gives me "fake" feel.

All speculation on my part. You're all free to move about the cabin.

This isn't AI generated. It's not really all that odd, we've discovered prototype devices and they look like this. It's not staged, the guy just got unlucky that some nerd spotted them and took a photo. They were clearly trying to at least be discrete.

Can't test real world devices without being in the real world. Stuff like this is bound to happen. It only doesn't, because again, most new iPhones look like the old ones. This is the exception.

The artifacts and grain suggest the photo was taken from far away. Anomalies were likely further enhanced by the image processing on iPhone, then the processing performed when we enlarged the photo to be usable on the web.

Let's not get into conspiracy territory. It's not that big a deal anyway. It's just a photo of an Apple employee testing an iPhone a few weeks before it is announced. It isn't that hard to believe.

And news sites don't pay for news. News is what happens, whether you like it or not. Paying for information can lead to charges of corporate espionage, and it's also highly unethical and against every form of journalistic integrity.

I really do think that the images are AI-generated. There are two images. As I noted above, the hand holding the "iPhone 17" is pretty weird, with a bizarrely long thumb. As someone else mentioned, the reflections in his sunglasses don't match. They should be virtually the same reflection, perhaps slightly offset. There also should probably be some reflection of the brunette standing right in front of him. Dude's right ear is also odd. I thought maybe that's the stem of a single AirPod Pro, but there's no such device in the other image, taken from over his right shoulder. Even more odd is the ear of the guy behind him in the first image, over his left shoulder. Human ears come with all kinds of weird folds and squiggles, but this one definitely looks like AI error, not human funky-ear. In the second image, the main dude has a strap over his left shoulder, making a notable indent in his puffy coat. There is no evidence of the strap or indentation in the first picture. Each thing taken by itself could probably be explained away as some normal aberration or distortion in the photo, but considered together, it becomes more likely this is an AI-generated image.

M68000 said:

There is something just not right with the picture of the guy with the sunglasses.  If you zoom in and look at reflection in the sunglasses,  you would think the lady with the black hair would be there.  In addition, in one side of the sunglasses shows a face at the bottom, it kind of resembles somebody that we’ve seen?    Is this a staged pic?

Also look at the hand holding the “iPhone 17.” Those are either some odd-looking fingers, or this is an AI-generated image.