9to5Mac: How we got those iPhone XS and Apple Watch photos

Wednesday at 10 am PT, the world is not only expecting Apple to reveal three new iPhones, but SPECIFICALLY the iPhone XS *.

Why so sure? Because 9to5Mac's noted Apple leaker Guilherme Rambo was the one to bring us to the picture you see above – a picture that looks like it could have been pulled directly from Apple's marketing materials.

And because today, Rambo has revealed that he found the pictures at Apple's own website. Whoops!

In his own words, here's the clever trick he used:

So, about those marketing images: they came from the recap section of the special event website. I used the URL pattern from the last event and guessed the device's names. Apple took them down immediately after we published. pic.twitter.com/5ywgetkAbx

– Guilherme Rambo (@_inside) September 11, 2018

I just took the technique for a spin myself, and it could not have been difficult to pull it off. Observed:

Here's Apple's Special Events website, where the company offers recaps of previous keynotes.

And here's the page for Apple's September 2017 event, where it announced the iPhone X, iPhone 8 and Watch Series 3:

Want to find out where Apple stores those product images? Chrome's Inspect Element does the trick:

If you compare a few such images, you quickly see Apple's URL format has been pretty consistent, making it ripe for URL hacks.

Theoretically, anyone could have swapped out "september-2017" with "september-2018" and "iphonex" with "iphonexs" and found the same pictures that Rambo did.

Just do not expect Apple to make that mistake ever again. It might be a good idea to have URLs – or better yet, not yet publicly available.

You might have to find your next unannounced iPhone in a bar. Gold in a firmware leak.

I agree. Tho people said the same thing last year about the firmware leaks and here we are ¯ _ (ツ) _ / ¯

– Guilherme Rambo (@_inside) September 11, 2018

We are always considering the possibility that a company might leak things intentionally, or change its mind at the last minute. There's still a chance it will not be the iPhone Xs.