I woke up this morning to news from MacRumors that the first digital images taken with an Apple iPhone appear to have appeared on the web.
The legend goes — so far — someone did a Google search on “taken with an Apple iPhone” and that search led them to a public Flickr account with these two images:

I think the image of “Toast Guy” is pretty biting good for a camera phone.

The next image, some feel, is a still taken from a video captured by the iPhone.

As soon as these images were made public, the Flickr images were made private and then removed from the web.
That Flickr account was somehow tied back to an Apple iPhone Product Manager — some feel the “Toast Guy” image was taken at BJ’s Restaurant
next to the Apple campus in Cupertino.

I know the Mac version of the Flickr upload program makes all images
public by default and if you make your images private that setting does
not carry over from session to session.
Or is there a Flickr upload feature built into the Apple iPhone?
Here’s a link to the original 2MP — 1600 x 1200 — image of “Toast Guy”
so you can download it and examine the image with your own naked eye.
This is what “Get Info” returns when I perform a Right-Click on the
original image from my Mac desktop. The file information linking the
image to an Apple iPhone can be faked — but was it?

Are
these real images from an Apple iPhone?
Does it matter?
Is this just a clever ploy by Apple to get some excited free publicity?
Or was this a careless mistake by an Apple employee?
If these images are genuine, and their release was not approved by
Apple — should the person who posted these images on the web be fired
— or celebrated?
Will you be purchasing an iPhone when it is released?

I’m buying two Apple iPhones the nanosecond they are available
for purchase because the iPhone will be the first phone to become a
true multifunction communication and publication device with a glorious
aesthetic provenance that I find delightful and appealing.

Plus, I have my own toast celebration needs to fulfill!

10 Comments

  1. I have a treo 650 and know all the short comings. what I see of the iphone will change the industry and make cell phone co. and carriers take note. I do not understand people having so many bad comments about the iphone when they have not used it or seen it. Only improvent can come of this and were you like the iphone or not company are starting to look at what people want. The N95 was releast a week ago but writers only had good thing to say about it but after it was releat some writers started to write some neg. about it. Writers start with the bad and did not look at the positive. when it is releast we will all see how much this will change the industry. ps I use the touch screen on my treo and my moto a789 more that I do the keyboard and find it much faster especially in the dark.

  2. Welcome to Urban Semiotic, Wayne!
    I agree there is a lot of negative talk about the iPhone and I think there is a fear among carriers and phone manufacturers that this iPhone will take on the popularity of the iPod and they are right to worry.
    The iPhone will not make trends, it will break them. The touch screen will be revolutionary. Your email and music — and the important details for entertainment and business — will finally all be in a single, sleek design.
    I like my BlackBerry 8700c a lot — but it has no phone, its integration with Gmail is ugly and wonky and it’s a thick and heavy phone compared to the iPhone specs.
    The iPhone will create lots of imitators pretending to innovate — but even that’s good because anything to break the current brick-of-a-phone interface will lead us into better work conditions and a quicker understanding of what it really means to work wirelessly.

  3. The photo looks very nice for a camera phone pix, if it is indeed from an iPhone. Most every other camera phone picture seems to be small, grainy, and not very sharp.
    Will the iPhone be available for all carriers, or will you have to get a special subscription to iCellular for it to work?

  4. Hi Chris!
    I agree the image looks incredible for a phone!
    Some “image snobs” are saying there are better embedded cameras out there in phones and all that hoo-ha, but for the most of us — the masses of us — that Toast Guy image is so much better than what any of us have now! I CANNOT WAIT!
    My BlackBerry 8700c doesn’t even have a camera! Bring back my Samsung a900 with the rotten, grainy, image! I miss my camera phone! 😀
    I think the iPhone is limited — at least at the start — exclusively to at&t/Cingular.
    Will you be iPhone-ing in June or not, Chris?!!

  5. I’m sorry but I’m fairly sure this was just someone hacking EXIF information for a bit of hype and attention.
    It might’ve been the person who submitted it to Digg trying to improve his record.

  7. Hi David,
    I’m with the wrong carrier to get an iPhone. I probably won’t get one anyway. I purposely have a phone that doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles, because a lot of courts won’t allow camera phones into their buildings.

  9. I would expect you to be the kind of person who worries that people become personally attached to a brand label (apple for example) as a false means of representing themselves.
    Apple is just a product, like any other. They just happen to be pretty popular.

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