Server logs can provide website operators with a lot of useful information. Some information, however, is more interesting than other kinds. Ars Technica is reporting that not only are they seeing hits from Retina iPad-sized screens, but they are also seeing traffic from devices claiming to be running iOS 6.
Jacqui Cheng at Ars Technica has this to say:
While digging through our logs in preparation for our monthly browser stat report, we found 346 visits from a device with a screen resolution of 2048×1536—the exact resolution rumored for the “retina” display in the next-generation iPad. Although a screen resolution by itself isn’t much to go on, a quick search around the Web indicates that there are very few devices in current use that have this same resolution[…] But to add to this discovery, we began looking at iPad user agents coming from Apple’s corporate IP block in Cupertino and discovered that Apple appears to be surfing the Web using iPads running what looks like iOS 6.0.
Anybody with a little free time on their hands could fake the way their browser reports screen size and OS. That said, Jacqui makes it clear that this is from a known block of Apple IPs. How she knows what IPs Apple is assigned, we don’t know. Her reputation in the community is substantial enough to believe her when she says that, though. It would be pretty funny if Apple employees were trolling Ars Technica with fake user agents. I think Steve would have approved of such pranking.
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Source: Ars Technica
