Apple iProd: Guess What

What’s the new curtain warmer for Apple? Scratching into the updated USBConfiguration.plist in the most recent version of iPhone OS 3.1 beta provides a compelling evidence that the Cupertino company is working on the development of an unknown device reffered to as iProd. The evidences of such a device was out in March. Developers found a new device description for iProd 1,1 inside the configuration. Initially, developers while exploring the USBConfiguration.plist of iPhone OS 3.0 SDK beta identified a device called iProd0,1 nested inside Apple. The .plist item was incorporated in the usual iPhone and iPod Touch identifiers, and iPhone3,1, which turned out to be the iPhone 3GS released recently.

Since the latest products shipped by Apple don’t have a leading zero in the identifier, it can be anticipated to be a prototype device with active testing.

The iProd1,1 device has been assigned a new productID of 4762(versus 4757 of iProd0,1). In addition, it has been assigned a different ConfigurationDescriptor of standardMuxPTPEthernet. iPhone models also have this designation and the additional interface identified in the plist for this configuration is AppleUSBEthernet.  The developers collective view on the new device is that it might have gained high-speed networking capabilities. The iPhone uses the interface to tether to a laptop to share its 3G connection.

It’s still not clear, as various speculations indicated the device as Apple’s rumored tablet. Still there’s no evidence whether iPhone OS 3.1 is capable of running on a device with a tablet-sized screen. Possibly, it may refer to the camera equipped iPod nano or even an iPhone nano. Well, for now we can keep our fingers crossed unitil the