EXCLUSIVE: Ambrosia Finds Apple's Unreleased iPad Nano!!

Posted Apr 22 2010, 07:31 PM

ROCHESTER, New York -- April 23, 2010 -- It seems that when it rains, it always pours-- even if you're Apple. Following this week's news that one of their precious iPhone prototypes was discovered in a Silicon Valley bar, the story continues as yet another unannounced device has been found. This time, however, the little gadget is far from Apple's home base in Cupertino, on the far side of the country-- in upstate NY. The surprisingly sunny side roads of Rochester, a nice place to enjoy good walk as you help the world by picking up trash. And if you are an Ambrosia Software PR person, it's also a nice place to make a surprising discovery of technology of the future! An Apple iPad Nano!

John Champlin—a goofy PR guru for Ambrosia Software, busily filling his days working to make sure people enjoy the products and services Ambrosia produces. From it's Utilities like WireTap Studio, to it's latest iPad games like Mondo Solitaire. A dream job for a social bastard like Champlin, an Apple fan who always wanted to work with a company like Ambrosia and a chat with the likes of people like Andrew Welch, until Welch talks about "RimDog", at which point Champlin gladly walks away.

On this day, enjoying the sun as he and his fellow coworker spent the afternoon volunteering to pick up the road side litter on their stretch of adopted highway. The weather was great, and the garbage was disgusting. "How in the hell does a bag of dog crap even end up in a tree?" he heard El Presidente say as the man delicately removed this fruit from the branch.

It seems that Apple security's mighty walls fell sometime midday on April 20th. We are unsure who dropped it (and the contact information is blank on the iPad). But, what we can fill you in is the riveting tale of how an Apple unannounced iPad Nano came into the hands of Ambrosia!

As yet another plastic bag full of dog waste was removed from the trees, Champlin heard the distinct laugh of El Presidente, followed by "Here Catch"… Fearing the worst, Champlin recoiled just enough to watch a mass of fabric sail past his head. Luckily it wasn't a bag of poo, nor was it an overly bloated raccoon roasting on the warm blacktop, but rather some unattractive hoodie that found it's way into the road. As he bent down to grab the dingy garb, something came tumbling out. A flash of silver, a bit of wires, and what quickly appeared to be relatively familiar shape. 

"Hey man, is that yours?" ask Champlin looking towards his hoodie assailant.

"Hmmm, what?" replied Welch. "No, no, it isn't mine."

"Yoooink" exclaimed Champlin as he snagged the shiny precious.

The crew took time and looked the item all over for contact information, email accounts, or anything that would lead to the discovery of who dropped this device. "As at first we didn't realize what we truly had in our hands." Explains Champlin. "I thought it was just an iPod, and I was happy that it wasn't a bag full of dog crap," he pleasantly said. That is when the all knowing Welch eyes opened, realizing what they had in their gloved hands.  Instantly he realized that this wasn't an iPod at all, but clearly a new iPad, reduced down to a handheld size, as any Mac person would grasp: Nano!

There it was, a shiny thing, completely different from everything that came before, bent and folded in a completely new way. The excitement was in the air. The crew instantly realized that they had something amazing, something they had to share with the world, unlike whatever the hell this is...

The Rundown of the Runover.

What's new

• Front-facing video chat camera cleverly hidden inside deep scratches made to resemble damage from being flung from a car.
• Improved back shape. No longer straight metal, but contoured to fit your hand, or a steel belted radial.
• Grass Stains (Always thinking green!)
• Micro-SEM (Street Encrusted Mess)
• Improved Textured display. Much higher resolution than on a 3GS and a rough coating of gravel to help with increased sensitivity for the users.
• What looks to be a secondary mic for noise cancellation, or possibly a crack due to being repeatedly run over by vehicles.
• Split buttons for volume, again, might just be blunt force trauma
• Power, mute, and volume buttons are all almost still there.
• The glass separated from the frame in multiple spots, possibly for heat dissipation
• Dock Connect opening slimmed in the middle, or bent completely out of whack.
• Low profile headphones, very very flat, with wires sticking out randomly, and sharp pieces of plastic and metal seemingly designed to help keep these amazing new headphones in place in your (bleeding) ear canal.

What's Changed

• The back is no longer entirely flat, made of either metal (more likely) or ceramic or shiny plastic in order for the cell signal to poke through and for tires to leave a devastating unfixable mark. Tapping on the back makes a more hollow and sometimes a crunching sound, but that could just be the orientation of components inside making for a different sound, or possibly Ants.
• An aluminum border going completely around the outside, bent away from the glass exposing some of the inner workings. We are assuming this is due to heat dissipation
• Slightly smaller screen than the 3GS, pressed downward and inward with quite a few dead pixels dancing across the screen.
• Everything is more squared off, except for the scratched and bent bits.
• 3 grams heavier, after we dumped the dirt out of it, it was fine though.
• 16% Larger battery, horizontally speaking.
• Internals components are shrunken, miniaturized and reduced to make room for the larger battery, this might have been due to clever ants, and not the people at Apple.

 Gallery

Is It Real??

We were as skeptical—if not more—than all of you. I mean, we've all fallen for those nigerian scams a few times. And, who hasn't?! We get false leads and "leaks" all the time. But after playing with it for about a bit—the overall quality feels exactly like a finished final Apple iPod that may or may not have been run over by a few passenger vehicles. In disassembling this unit, there is so much evidence stacked in its favor, that there's very little possibility that it's a fake. In fact, the possibility is almost none. It only stands to reason that an Apple Engineer would trek across the country, deliberately leaving this device to be found as the Ambrosia crew were doing their Adopt a Highway roadside cleanup.

What all this means

Apple has updated the exterior drastically different from the previous iPods. That design is old, it felt out of place compared to the rest of their products and needed desperately to be killed, perhaps running it over with a car or two might have been their plan all along. Now you have a thinner body, a much more pleasant form factor with no wasted space and lots of hard lines, the smell of asphalt and dirt possibly more of a comfort design. But the design isn't the most important part that's changed. They've delivered many of the features people have been waiting for—that damn front camera, or maybe those are just gravel damage, but hey, I want a front facing camera—while at the same time upgrading everything else. Flash, better back with new dents for finger grooves, better battery life, the ability to be spotted by a Ginger while picking up road litter, and ports so distorted you can't actually plug a dock connector into it. This iPad Nano looks like a piece of once nice technology tossed from a moving vehicle, and repeatedly ran over, yet still somehow works… sort of.

Update : If gizmodo reads this we'll totally sell the device for $5,000. We might even toss in an African Grey for free.