Did you fall for the fake Apple event invite?

Despite tons of rumours to the contrary, it looked for a moment like Apple wasn't planning to announce an event for 8 March. The company usually drops the invite a week in advance, which means tech Twitter was on the edge of its collective seat on Tuesday. So perhaps it's unsurprising that so many fell for this inevitable prank.

A Twitter user shared an impressively realistic mock-up of an Apple event invite for 8 March - and we have to admit that we almost thought it was the real deal too. But some tell-tale signs show that this is mere Photoshop sorcery. (Don't fancy waiting for the next event? Check out the best Apple deals available now.)

UPDATE: And just like that, Apple has indeed announced an event for - wait for it - 8 March. Uncharacteristically for the company, it saw fit to give everyone 6 days notice rather than the traditional 7. No wonder so many fell for the design below.

Giant Apple logo? Check. Colourful gradient background? Check. Cryptic and slightly pithy one-liner? Yep. Button to add the date to your calendar? Uh-huh. It's all there - this one fits right in with previous Apple event graphics. 

Indeed, plenty of web users appear to have fallen for the event image. "I have been waiting for this, literally counting days," one user replies to Saud Bin Helabi's tweet (above), while another adds, "Finally confirmed! Roll on next week!" And when you look at some of the previous invite graphics (below), it isn't hard to see why many thought it was real.

But look a little closer at the fake image and you'll see a little too much kerning between the letters in 'Something's up,' and that textured background is a little low quality for Apple (yep, we spend too much time looking at Apple stuff).

So what's in store next week? Rumour has it we're in for a new iPhone SE and iPad Air, and possibly even the 2022 MacBook Air. But we have a feeling the iPhone 14 won't be appearing until the traditional September slot.

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