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We’ve been hearing a lot of whispers about the Mac mini as of late, and we’ve brushed a number of them off as fake.  But it seems that either this is one of the most elaborate hoaxes we’ve come across in a long time, or this is actually the next Mac mini.

Just taking a brief look at the image, it’s your standard crappy camera phone image, but it lines up perfectly with the earlier leaked Mac mini images and Mac mini video. I feel pretty confident when I say this image is very likely (say, 99% sure) not Photoshopped. Why do I say that? Well, it’s dead simple to fake packaging. Here, let me outline the steps for you.

1. Find a box, preferably of appropriate size.
2. Take the image you found of the Mac mini online, extract it and put it against a white background.
3. Slap an Apple logo somewhere on there, and make it look consistent with Apple packaging.  This means semi-extreme minimalism.
4. Print the image, and put it on the box from step 1.
5. Shrink wrap the box.
6. Find a 5 year old camera, turn off half the lights in the room, and make sure there’s at least one light reflecting off the object You know, so no one thinks it’s Photoshopped.

Ok, so I’m done having my fun with how to fake packaging, but the truth is that I’m not completely ruling this out as fake. When a lot of rumors tend to line up like this, I start to believe them. I don’t want to, but I’m starting to accept this. I’m still hoping this is a preproduction model or someone’s big joke. What do you think? Is this real? Do you want it to be real? Will you buy whatever Apple puts out anyway?