Another Unreleased iPhone Lost by Employee In a Bar 225
First time accepted submitter MightyMait writes "Looks like another Apple employee left an iPhone prototype in a bar. From the article: 'The errant iPhone, which went missing in San Francisco's Mission district in late July, sparked a scramble by Apple security to recover the device over the next few days, according to a source familiar with the investigation. Last year, an iPhone 4 prototype was bought by a gadget blog that paid $5,000 in cash. This year's lost phone seems to have taken a more mundane path: it was taken from a Mexican restaurant and bar and may have been sold on Craigslist for $200. Still unclear are details about the device, what version of the iOS operating system it was running, and what it looks like.' Once might be an accident, but two unreleased iPhones lost in bars starts to look like a strategy."
It's a double-reverse (Score:5, Insightful)
Once might be an accident, but two unreleased iPhones lost in bars starts to look like a strategy.
No, it actually makes it look more like an accident.
Strategy? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have friends who lose their phones in bars every month. I had no idea they were strategic geniuses, I assumed they were just clumsy and drunk. Silly me!
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
2: Deny all access to new product for rank-and-file
3: When attention starts to wane, "accidentally" leave product somewhere it can be found and analyzed
4: Watch media hype increase
5: Release new product
6: Profit!!
Re:It's a double-reverse (Score:2, Insightful)
To quote my friend Auric Goldfinger: "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, it's enemy action."
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Response from cops to Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
I find most interesting from this episode the following:
Apple electronically traced the phone to a two-floor, single-family home in San Francisco's Bernal Heights neighborhood, according to the source.
When San Francisco police and Apple's investigators visited the house, they spoke with a man in his twenties who acknowledged being at Cava 22 on the night the device went missing. But he denied knowing anything about the phone. The man gave police permission to search the house, and they found nothing, the source said.
When you or I go to the police and tell them our phone/computer was stolen, but we can track it via GPS from any computer and can even use the built-in camera to take pictures of the perpetrator, they tell us to take a hike and go read up on vigilante justice.
When Apple goes to the police with a missing phone, the police go with them, stick around to search a person's house, and in the last case:
Last year's prototype iPhone went missing when Robert Gray Powell, an Apple computer engineer who was 28 years old at the time, left it in a German beer garden in Redwood City, Calif.
In early August, San Mateo County prosecutors filed misdemeanor criminal charges against two men, Brian Hogan and Sage Wallower, for allegedly selling Powell's iPhone 4 prototype to Gawker Media's Gizmodo blog. An arraignment is scheduled for tomorrow.
Prosecutors obtained a warrant to search the home of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen, and indicated they might prosecute Gizmodo, but eventually decided not to file charges.