There are a few 2048x1536 monitors. But that's not the only line of evidence the article's conclusions hinge on. There's also the OS, the version, and the source of the connections from apple's corporate IP block. Given all that, and given what we already know about the iPad 3 (it will have a higher resolution display) Occam's razor leads to the conclusion that these are pre-release iPad 3 devices. The 2nd most likely conclusion is that this is an intentional hoax on the part of someone within Apple, which is hardly a more credible idea.

As I said below, all together makes sense for the iPad3 testing. But they say that resolution is very odd, and I don't agree (like you said). I'm not denying all the article, just their resolution argument.

Same here - 12 visits with Chrome for Windows last month with this resolution

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

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)

My wife's computer LCD monitor is a Samsung that uses this resolution natively (I think), so maybe it isn't that rare.

If the visits are from Apple's block of IPs, the argument is not really crapish. It can be that Apple employees are trolling Ars, but there's a better chance they are testing pre-release devices.

They affirm there are very few devices with this resolution. My GA data (and others) disagrees with this. As for the IP range, I think this makes it more legit. But I'd love Apple employees to troll Ars :)