iPhone shuffle revealed

Okay, it's hard to remain dead serious amidst all the unprecedented speculation and rumormongering concerning Apple's worst-ever kept secret. The iPhone has been perhaps the biggest shoe-in the history of the entire Mac rumor industry, as well as the obvious lock of the decade.

Hungarian news portal Index.hu had decided to join the mayhem, and announced a Best iPhoto Mockup contest among readers. Did the planet really need yet another iPhone mockup contest? Turns out it did.

One entry inspired by the contest might look conspicuously familiar to Mac Thought Crime readers, yet the winning enrty (or rather, the "enty that would have been a winner if one had been chosen"), reproduced here by permission, is a true gem. Kudos to fellow Hungarian György Gazics for an instant classic.

On a historic note, the launch of the iPod shuffle almost two years ago was orchestrated pretty carefully. Months before the product shipped in January 2005, Apple had started to hype the Shuffle feature, even making a big announcement out of putting it into the iPod main menu. Coincidence? I think not.

So, if Apple suddenly starts talking about how cool it is to just randomly call or e-mail people in your contact list; if a new minor update to Mail or Address Book offers a "Blindfold Mode" where you only have a BCC field and the recipient is randomly selected, you'll know: the iPhone shuffle is real, and coming soon.