The Huffington Post has seen the iTablet... not!

Gerald Sinden of the Huffington Post writes, with tongue firmly in cheek, that he was given the first production model of the iTablet and 24 hours to play with it. According to his post, it's gesture based and sports a 10" screen along with being a phone, albeit a large one. And foam corners. To prevent people from inadvertently blacking their eyes when they try to use it as a phone. Mmm-hmm. Really.

There will be two cameras in it, and an option to mount it on the dashboard of your car when one camera will serve as a back-up camera, an option present in many high end automotive GPS systems. And it will come with apps to show you what your new haircut will look like. Insert giggle sound effect here.

Books will be sold by the chapter instead of by the book, which sounds odd to me but does seem to go along with the iTunes concept of buying individual TV episodes or songs. And it's at least consistent with Apple doing its best to extract maximum profits out of every device sold.

My first and primary thought is that T The article is a hoax. The only reason I'm telling you about it is that it came from the Huffington Post which, in my experience, doesn't print many rumors and their fact checking has usually been excellent. Also their humor is a little bit... arch.

However, this does seem HIGHLY suspect. Why would Apple give the Huff Post one and no tech venues? And a 10" phone? Really? It's beyond suspect. It's just not all that funny.

Take a gander at Mr. Sinden's post and tell us what you think. Could this be real? No. The consensus of the TUAW crowd around the water cooler says it's somewhere between parody and satire.

Thanks to Stuart Carnie for sending this in.