'Father of the iPod' Tony Fadell revealed as buyer of Product (RED) Mac Pro, gold EarPods

A series of tweets from noted photographer Kevin Abosch seems to have outed iPod inventor and former Apple executive Tony Fadell as the buyer of a one-of-a-kind Mac Pro and a set of solid gold Apple EarPods at last month's Product (RED) charity auction.

The metallic red Mac Pro, which was estimated to bring in between $40,000 and $60,000, sold for an astounding $977,000, while the EarPods fetched $461,000 at the auction to benefit The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. If Fadell is the buyer, that would bring his outlay at the charity event to nearly $1.5 million.

Of the Mac Pro, Abosch says Fadell is "already trying to hack it." Fadell oversaw Apple's iPod division until 2008, and eventually went on to found connected device company Nest Labs, makers of the Nest Learning Thermostat and Nest Protect intelligent smoke detector.

Tony Fadell with the solid gold Product (RED) EarPods Credit: @kevinabosch

The bespoke Mac Pro —  the most expensive desktop PC ever sold —  and EarPods were among more than 40 lots created exclusively for the auction by Apple Senior Vice President of Design Jony Ive and fellow industrial design legend Marc Newson.

Other notable sales at the auction included a 1966 bottle of Dom Pérignon housed in a custom red cooler designed by Ive and Newson that went for $93,750; a one-of-a-kind Leica Digital Rangefinder Camera that brought $1,805,000, and "The (RED) Desk," a desk designed to look as though it were machined from a solid block of aluminum, which took $1,685,000 at the hammer.