Wow, little did we know that a few blurry spy photos allegedly revealing next week's new Power Macs would ignite such a firestorm of international controversy. (Evidently everyone's a little on edge in this final week before the Stevenote. But really, who could blame them?) For those of you just tuning in, yesterday we noted that MacOSX.org had posted what they vociferously insisted were real, honest-to-Steve photographs of the "Titan" G4s that many Apple-watchers are expecting to surface in a week's time. The images were obviously (and admittedly) digitally edited, heavily compressed, and blurry to start with-- making the debate over whether or not the pics are legit the hot topic around the water cooler. We here at AtAT announced our marginal gut feeling that the photos are real-- which, judging by the mail that's been flooding our inbox since yesterday, places us squarely in the minority.

We admit, there are plenty of reasons to be suspicious of the authenticity of those photos. MacOSX.org's claim that the pictures were edited to remove details that could compromise the anonymity of its source could just as easily be a convenient excuse to explain away telltale signs of Photoshop phakery. The design as shown is just a little bit too close to the new front panel described by the Naked Mole Rat a couple of weeks ago. There's no Apple logo on the front. And as for the biggest sticking point for many people out there, unless the Power Mac's enclosure has changed drastically, what's with the transparent side door revealing a mass of wires and junk-- right where the motherboard should be? Hmmm...

Well, at first we were wondering if the transparent door on the wrong side was simply the result of horizontal flipping that may have occurred during editing (a stretch, we know), but after staring at the photo for a while, we've since formed the opinion that the side door isn't transparent at all. What we're seeing, we think, is a reflection of whatever was next to the unit in the glossy surface of the G4's enclosure. That fits with the Rat's statement that the new G4 uses the same enclosure with a new face plate. (We don't buy MacOSX.org's claim that Titan has a "slimmer" enclosure, but who knows?) As for the lack of a logo, we don't have an easy explanation, other than perhaps this is a photo of a prototype with non-final plastics. All we can say is, our gut feeling remains: while we're still skeptical, something about these pictures rings true, and while we wouldn't put money on it, we still think they're probably real photos taken of an actual prototype.

On the other hand, some people are now 100% convinced that the pictures are legit purely because MacOSX.org was ordered to remove them, as pointed out by faithful viewer Axo1ot1. That doesn't necessarily mean anything, however; while the images were pulled allegedly due to Apple Legal's "request for removal of all pictures and links to photos... as of 3:15 PM MST," we know that if we planned to perpetrate a hoax involving faked photos of unreleased Apple products, we'd post them for a few hours and then simply yank them, claiming to have been ordered to do so by Apple. Instant credibility! We suppose the real test will be to see if Apple also goes after other sites that are currently redisplaying the images in some form, among them MacAnonymous.com and macGuardians. And whether the images are legit or not, at least this has been a whole lot of fun...