This has to be by far the earliest and deepest leak Apple has had in the Steve Jobs II era, if not in its history. New iPods have occasionally been blurrily snapped a week or so before the unveiling; ambiguous new MacBook chassis parts have been leaked from factories weeks before the reveal, even the iPad was caught in a photo of its lockup the night before its unveiling.
But here we have a fairly radical redesign of the flagship iPhone, with the actual prototype hardware in full possession of a gadget blog fully two months before it was to be formally shown to the public.
The mood around One Infinite Loop can't be a pleasant one this morning.
On the other hand, is Apple willing to eat the bad press it would get from crushing Gizmodo?
I do think that Engadget took the high rode by passing this opportunity up. Yea, it seems like a big scoop now but in 3 months it won't mean anything.
Why would this be any different, especially given that it's in the case of a company that knowingly partook in illegal trade?