The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is working to verify the authenticity of a videotape released Wednesday purporting to show Apple CEO Steve Jobs a day after the company said he would no longer be making appearances at the annual Macworld Expo in San Francisco.
The video, released to YouTube, shows Jobs, wearing his iconic black turtleneck, visiting Apple’s retail store in Palo Alto, Calif., looking through a selection of iPod Nanos on sale.
Although the footage is grainy, owing to obviously not being shot with an iPhone, one Apple expert challenged the notion that the video was shot Wednesday. Jobs, says AppleFanatic.com Editor Josh Newman, appears to be holding a previous generation Nano, not the new line of “nano-chromatic” model media players introduced in September.
“Do they think we’re stupid?” Newman asked, incredulously.
The news that Jobs would no longer make Macworld public appearances raised speculation among a skeptical press corps about Jobs’ health, especially in the wake of his noticeably gaunt appearance at the Apple WWDC in June.
While the CIA studied the video with the same team of experts that study Osama bin Laden’s taped tirades, shareholders petitioned the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to require Apple to produce a photo of Jobs holding a copy of today’s newspaper.
A shareholder rights advocate, Ben Larsen, assured the SEC that some newspapers still print hard copies of their publications which Jobs could hold up in a photo.
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, in an obscenity-laced statement, said he could confirm Jobs’s continuing good health, but demanded $350,000 and "a f***ing brand new" 3G iPhone to divulge it. "And with free service from f***ing Verizon, not AT&-f***ing-T," the governor added.
One piece of evidence indicating the video may be of recent origin is a blurry image of what appears to be a shoe flying over Jobs’s head as he leans down to inspect a new MacBook.
