
iPads using iOS 6, high-res displays showing up in Ars server logs - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/03/ipads-using-ios-6-high-res-displays-showing-up-in-ars-server-logs.ars
======
ben1040
A few days before the MacBook Air announcement, references to a MacBook Air
appeared in Adium's server logs.

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/01/macworld-ars-
macbo...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/01/macworld-ars-macbook-air-
rumors-explode-in-anticipation-of-keynote.ars)

Given how Apple is so notably obsessed with security around new products, it
certainly seems plausible that if they _wanted_ to hide it, they would figure
out how and make it happen. So I wonder what the probability is of a
controlled leak.

And this info would be the perfect thing to leak, because it doesn't tip their
hand to show anything we don't already know. It's already known that a new
iPad will be announced on Wednesday. 2x resolution LCD panels have surfaced in
China, so we already know that. And of course Apple is working on iOS 6,
because they make iOS.

~~~
pork
I think you might be ascribing too much to the marketing types. Regardless of
the company, a "controlled leak" would probably be someone from PR (credible)
talking to a single (or few) outlets. They almost _certainly_ have no idea of
(a) what a user-agent string is, (b) that it is logged to servers, and (c)
that high-credibility news outlets are monitoring user-agent strings.

I'm putting my money on gaffe.

~~~
swombat
Considering how obsessed with image, marketing, etc, Apple is, I would be
extremely surprised if the Marketing department weren't hugely competent in
this matter, including knowing about user-agent strings, logs, etc.

Ask yourself: would Steve Jobs have known about this? Yes, of course. So, why
wouldn't the person he hired? This is not a clueless marketing department
we're talking about, here... it's probably the most competent marketing
departments of any technology company in the world.

------
zbowling
I just sent ARS a ping with iOS 6.1 at 8192x6144 resolution. Lets see if they
write another article.

~~~
matthavener
from inside the apple corporate IP block?

~~~
rmnoon
Also, I can specify whatever the hell source IP address I want on my packets.

~~~
Erwin
Unless Ars have started serving HTTP via UDP, establishing a TCP/IP connection
over the Internet with a fake IP address will be be near impossible.

~~~
viraptor
Depends if they care about X-Forwarded-For, or not.

------
untog
Hm. Don't Retina iPhones actually report their resolution as the same as non-
Retina ones? When you're designing web sites etc. you can use the exact same
pixel values in CSS, and the iPhone does the rest.

Maybe Google Analytics handles this by multiplying screen dimensions by
window.devicePixelRatio. Or maybe someone is playing with Ars.

~~~
kevinchen
Yes, retina iPhones report their resolution as 320x480. And it's so
ridiculously easy to forge a user agent. I don't understand why this is even
news.

~~~
karlshea
But they specifically reported in the article that those user agents were
coming from Apple's IP block.

~~~
mortenjorck
<https://twitter.com/#!/sriramk/status/175719645737783296>

------
tlb
I was curious how publishing articles naming companies and user agents was
allowed within their privacy policy. Relevant section:

 _We reserve the right to use the information we collect about your computer,
mobile or other device (including its geographic location), which may at times
be able to identify you, for any lawful business purpose_

~~~
ceol
To be honest, I'm comfortable with websites publishing User Agent data. If I
changed my UA to IE 5.5 for Mac and some sysadmin did a double-take and
published it on her site, I wouldn't care as long as she didn't give away any
personally-identifiable information like an IP address.

------
w1ntermute
Given the fact that this has happened repeatedly with the launches of past
Apple products, I find it difficult to believe that Apple would have made this
"mistake" again unless:

a) They _want_ news about the iPad 3 to leak out

or:

b) It's faked, something which, as several posters here have demonstrated, is
trivial to accomplish.

I think b) is the most likely answer.

~~~
ja27
or:

c) Of the few hundred employees with access to iPad 3s, at least one slipped
up and visited public websites with it.

~~~
khafra
> Given the fact that this has happened repeatedly with the launches of past
> Apple products, I find it difficult to believe that Apple would have made
> this "mistake" again

This is the part that excludes (c). If they didn't want to leak, they would've
configured the prototype units to report themselves as normal iPad 2s.

------
djtriptych
Why is this even news? Don't we already have multiple corroborated sources
verifying the existence of the Retina display iPad3? And what's the other
takeaway - that iOS6 will eventually be released?

Wouldn't the opposite of this information be what's newsworthy?

~~~
smackfu
None of the sources is what I would consider reliable. Multiple unreliable
sources doesn't improve the reliability that much unless they are reporting
independently.

~~~
pooriaazimi
The iPad on Apple's invitation to March 7 event[1] _clearly_ sports a retina
display. Compare it to iPad tv ads[2] and you'll see the difference between
the displays...

[1] [http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/02/28/apple-announces-
ipad-e...](http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/02/28/apple-announces-ipad-event-
for-march-7-in-san-francisco/)

[2] <http://www.apple.com/ipad/videos/>

------
micahflee
curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPI OS 7_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/535.8
(KHTML, like Gecko)" [http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/03/ipads-using-
ios-6-...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/03/ipads-using-ios-6-high-
res-displays-showing-up-in-ars-server-logs.ars)

Now Ars has iPad with iOS 7 user-agents in their logs too :)

~~~
mrpollo
thats iOS 7 running Safari 535.8 from iOS 6

~~~
micahflee
Touche.

------
gurkendoktor
The iOS situation is certainly weird enough to make this seem plausible. 5.0.1
was hastily pushed out, but did not fix some folks' battery problems; then 5.1
was announced with Photo Stream deletions and an option to disable 3G on the
iPhone 4S, yet nothing was released, not even the SDK has been updated lately.
5.0.1 is also by no means bug-free on my devices. What's going on there?

Doesn't this sound a bit like the situation just before Apple announced
Mountain Lion out of nowhere?

But then, why would Apple let it leak via the user agent - because this is not
considered big news? But why not merge it into the March 7th event?

I hope this is a hoax and we can all enjoy a super-mature iOS 5.1 next week.

~~~
jsz0
They're probably adding a few new features to iOS 5.x to launch with the iPad
3. In years past they showed off the next major version in the March/April
time-frame but this was when the iPhone was launching in June/July. With an
iPhone release later in the year they don't really have to show off iOS6 until
WWDC.

------
pkamb
I can't wait to hear from the PC laptop manufacturers after the iPad 3 is
released. How can Apple release a 2048x1536 (10 inch!) iPad when laptop OEMs
have been claiming for years that 4:3 screens are DEAD? And that 768 vertical
pixels is about the max we'll ever get on smaller screens?

ThinkPad: _"Since these manufacturers make more selling TV displays than
laptop displays, the PC vendors have almost zero say in this change. We simply
have to adapt. As much as I would like it to be so, 4:3 is not coming back."_
[http://blog.lenovo.com/perspectives/display-ratio-change-
aga...](http://blog.lenovo.com/perspectives/display-ratio-change-again)

~~~
ugh
They probably do have zero say if they don’t commit to buying ten million or
so per quarter.

I don’t think you quite understand how big that difference is. Lenovo sells
half as many laptops as Apple sells iPads per quarter. That’s not laptops with
one screen size and resolution, that’s six million laptops with wildly varying
screen sizes and resolutions.

Apple has one iPad with one model of screen†. They sell millions per quarter
and consequently need millions of identical screens per quarter. They have
billions of Dollars with which they can pay upfront. Apple can pay LG one
billion Dollars per quarter (that’s about as much as ten million iPad screens
cost) upfront and wouldn’t even notice it all that much. Lenovo has less
revenue, a lot less profit, a lot less cash reserves than Apple.

Lenovo sells many different laptops with many different screen sizes and
resolutions. Many people probably do want 16:10 or 16:9 screens. They could
probably sell substantially less than one million laptops with a 4:3 screen to
a few weird nerds – and they would probably need 4:3 screens in different
sizes and resolutions. That is certainly harder than what Apple has to do.

Apple can because Apple is unique. Their position allows them to do stuff like
that.

—

† After next Wednesday they might have two.

~~~
pkamb
> _"Lenovo sells many different laptops with many different screen sizes and
> resolutions - and they would probably need 4:3 screens in different sizes
> and resolutions._

My original comment was more criticizing OEMs for what you stated in that
quote above, rather than actual outrage that Lenovo wasn't bankrupting
themselves by pursuing 4:3 screens regardless of cost.

Why do they need so many models and screen sizes? Why are all the models
impossible to differentiate and difficult to buy?

If Lenovo went "Apple-like" with ThinkPads, cut down their range to a 15" T
series and a 12" X series, maybe we'd still have 4:3 screens.

[http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2011/09/ultrabook-
intel...](http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2011/09/ultrabook-
intels-300-million-plan-to-beat-apple-at-its-own-game.ars/)

------
th0ma5
Could be a great prank, responding to the JS required to detect the resolution
and sending a fake header are all easy enough, right? :D

~~~
aaronpk
They did say that the iOS 6 requests were coming from Apple-owned IP
addresses.

The screen resolution was not tied to the IP addresses because it showed up in
Google Analytics.

~~~
ceejayoz
Apple employees are capable of pranks.

~~~
Cushman
Hypothetically, say I'm an Apple employee who plays a prank on a tech website
whereby I raise expectations for the product we launch in a week above
reality.

How long should I expect to keep my job for?

~~~
Bud
Depends who told you to do it and who set up your device.

------
jemeshsu
It could be Apple is testing the new shipment of iPad 3 with iOS 6. iOS 6 is
scheduled at WWDC in June, my guess is iOS 6 will be a refinement of iOS 5
just like Mountain Lion is a refinement of Lion. And there will be a few new
things in iOS 6/Mountain Lion not reveal to public yet. Question is will Apple
surprise all by giving us a preview of iOS 6 next week?

My conspiracy theory: Apple is pushing yearly iOS update to put further
pressure on Android. Apple will be glad that Android 5 will launch later this
year, at a time when Android partners are just starting to roll out Android 4
hardware.

------
danso
Perhaps the beta iPad3 users are using it to track iPad3 related news on Ars?

------
RBerenguel
I just checked my Google Analytics. I have (in my personal blog) 1 visit with
this screen resolution, browser Internet Explorer. Then I checked one of my
job's biggest sites (Apple related), 6 visits, Opera and IE. Checked a smaller
site... Added Chrome to the mix.

TL;DR: The screen resolution argument is quite crapish.

~~~
RBerenguel
Btw, checked and found some "Safaries" - 535.8+ with a screen resolution of
1024x600 (operating system version not set, some with Flash support...)

~~~
mappu
My beta-channel Chrome is 535.19 today, so i don't think that's particularly
unusual.

(Assuming Webkit versioning is Major.Minor and not decimal)

------
tylerritchie
>346 visits from a device with a screen resolution of 2048x1536

That's pretty weak, was that same device one that was providing a iOS 6 user
agent? They don't appear to link those two together, so eh. I can see one Ars
user who has an old CRT (like I had 10 years ago) running 2048x1536.

------
Someone
If this is next week's iPad, wouldn't we expect both landscape and portrait
resolutions? If I were in the rumor-making business, in combination with that
iOS 6 version, I would call this a new apple TV running firmware claiming to
be an iPad.

