Joe has posted what has to be one of the funniest pictures I’ve seen today. Evidently a picture of a man perusing an iPod display was run in the New York Times yesterday to illustrate an article on Apple’s 88% profit growth.

As Joe pointed out, there is nothing odd about the photo at first glance – other than the fact that the guy pictured looks like a Jobs clone and the Bluetooth headset makes him look like a bit of a borg.

But when you blow the picture up, you can see an example of product placement at its finest…You’ll see that there are actually four Zunes on the rack in front of the shopper. Bear in mind that this photo occupied half the width of page three of yesterday’s Business section.

Clever product placement by Redmond? As Joe says, “Bet Steve Jobs choked on his granola when he turned the page and saw it.”

Indeed.

Read the whole article, Joe’s take, and see the much larger pictures here.

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