Macenstein

The Mac rumor community has gotten so competitive these days that I am not surprised to see 9to5Mac and others have rushed to press with the latest “leaked photos” of the new MacBooks rumored to hit the Apple Store tomorrow. It appears a little thing called “fact checking” is the latest casualty in the race to “get the scoop”. Well, at the risk of adding some actual journalistic integrity to this media frenzy, I actually took 5 seconds and analyzed the latest leaked photo, and sorry to spoil the party fellas, but it’s a fake. Here’s why:

1) The Keyboard appears to be on the underside of the unit. Even Apple will have a hard time convincing consumers to adapt to such radical ergonomics. Not only that, but there are no keys, just holes.

2) There’s no screen. Developing a computer with no screen would entail Apple completely retooling Mac OS X to work without a Graphical User Interface (or GUI, as we computer experts call it). This would mean an audio-only operating system, and there do not appear to be either speakers or a microphone on this alleged laptop (unless Apple is expecting users to fork over additional money for an external mic). Also, Apple’s software engineers likely would not have had time to redesign Mac OS X to work without visual input/output of some kind given the tight deadline of the GUI-based Snow Leopard in January.

3) No battery or discernible power source. I remember an episode of the Simpsons where Ed Begley drove a go cart powered by his own sense of self-satisfaction, and I think a similar power source may work for Mac users at some point in the future, but I think ithe technology is still about 4 years away.

4) All the icons on the ports are upside down, and there’s tape on one. You mean to tell me this new laptop is only days away from being released, and no one at Apple noticed the headphone icon is upside down? And what’s with the tape? How did it get broken so quickly? I thought this thing was supposed to be chiseled by monkeys with lasers from a solid brick of aluminum. Not a very good showing out of the gate for the strength of the laptop, if you ask me.

5) Not only is there no glass trackpad, there’s no trackpad PERIOD. So we’re supposed to believe that Apple has dropped the trackpad entirely in order to create a carrying handle for the laptop? I thought we ditched built in handles with the tangerine iBooks. Thanks but no thanks Apple.

Conclusion

If Steve takes the stage and pulls this flimsy, featureless laptop out of an envelope, I may riot. I realize one of the the most important things in designing a laptop is making sure it can fit inside various envelopes, but I think way too many compromises have been made here. I was very much looking forward to seeing the new MacBooks at tomorrow’s event, but now I am not sure I will even follow the text feeds on MacRumors. In fact, I was originally going to call in sick tomorrow, and now, even though I think I really DO have the flu, I may go to work. Sorry Apple. If this is the new MacBook, you just blew it.