“On March 18, a young Apple engineer had a few too many drinks at a beer garden in Redwood City, Calif., and left his cellphone behind on a bar stool,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt recounts for Fortune.
“A customer picked it up… Realizing he’s got something of value, our unnamed beer garden patron takes a few photographs and starts shopping them around,” Elmer-DeWitt explains. “He shows the pictures to Engadget and offers to let them play with it for an unnamed price. On April 17, nearly a month after the phone was lost, Engadget runs the photos… Meanwhile, Engadget’s rival Gizmodo has bought the thing outright.”
Gizmodo “takes more photos. It makes some videos. It publishes the specs. It cracks the thing open and photographs its innards. It visits the beer garden. It calls the original owner, records the interview and publishes his name and Facebook photo,” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “Gizmodo’s servers slow to a crawl under the weight of all the Web traffic. According to paidContent, just one of its posts generated more than 3.7 million page views.”
Elmer-Dewitt reports, “And then someone from Apple calls Gizmodo — according to one rumor, it was Steve Jobs himself. Apple wants its phone back. From the company’s point of view, as Daring Fireball’s John Gruber keeps reminding readers, lost property not promptly returned to its owner could be considered stolen. And paying for stolen property, in California and elsewhere, is a crime.”
Full article, with Appel’s written request to Gizmodo and Gizmodo’s response, here.
MacDailyNews Take: As P.E.D. writes, “The only important question that remains is how closely this prototype resembles the final product.”
“Did Apple fired this young engineer?”
Oh- they ‘fired’ this engineer alright… he’s currently strapped to a metal chair in Steve’s office and is being questioned… with a blow torch.
The only important question that remains is –
WHAT IS THE TRUTH BEHIND THE GRUBBY SHAGGY-DOG-STORY.
@ Mark
brilliant idea. Hang by the phone cos I believe Steve could be phoning you with a job offer to round up the posse and get to work right away.
It is beyond dubious that Gizmodo would have paid that much money for a device if it did not reasonably think that it was anything other than a real prototype that belonged to Apple. Further, the fact that it was remotely wiped provided compelling evidence that it was in fact stolen.
However, in addition to the legal issues involved with buying stolen merchandise (which are in effect regardless of whether the buyer knows the goods are stolen or not), Gizmodo also faces legal consequences under California’s Uniform Trade Secrets Act.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/04/20/apple_asks_for_iphone_prototype_back_gizmodo_could_face_utsa_lawsuit.html
Gizmo and Engadget need to both be put out of business.
“Gizmodo can come out looking good in this”
No way in Hell Gizmodo comes out looking anything other than what they are – a bunch of sleezeball idiots. No class, No moral fibre at all. I’m sure that at the least they will be barred from any further participation at Apple events. I HOPE they will be so severely hit that they are put out of business. This is NOT journalism!
Professional Journalists would have arranged a meeting to buy the iphone with it being prearranged for Apple and the Police to be on hand when the guy showed up.
If you buy your stories you are nothing more than a whore.
They returned the iPhone to Apple yesterday.
If the employee is not fired, then it was probably a planned event
I stil think this is just publicity for gizmondo. Apple wouldn’t let that much time to pass before claiming its property. Also, A lawyer will be visit them, not a phone call.
Stinks of a planned event. Apple would have tracked down the person who took the phone from the bar, especially if the phone was being “shopped around”.
Um… purchasing stolen property. I think blog standards have to be higher than this. Apple should have involved the law by now.
This is assuming this is real, and not a deliberately leaked prototype.
At this point, about two months before the release of the next iPhone model, this is only serving as more free advertising. The only way this could be bad for Apple, is if the released model did not have the new features shown on the prototype. iPhone sales are going to be lower this quarter because anyone who cares already knows there will be a new iPhone soon; this “event” will only serve to freeze Android and Blackberry sales.
Also, it is interesting that none of the photos are of the device with the screen turned on. Why is that? If it’s running pre-release iPhone OS 4.0, that would be the one thing Apple would not want shown two months before release, since there may still be software features that are secret or NDA’ed. And Gizmodo is not showing it.
Seriously folks, can you imagine being this guy? The one thing Apple really prides themselves on is secrecy. Steve lets us know when he’s ready for us to know. You know as soon as Steve caught wind of this, he was like, “What? I’m sorry – say that again. Our engineer “lost” an iPhone 4G?” and an order was issued to find this young engineer, have him delivered to Cupertino, sent to Steve’s office and can you imagine the absolute ass chewing this kid received? Oh to be a fly on that wall!!! Sure he’s fired, but he had to face the man and I bet it was ugly.
Honestly, I get that you’re cool and you work for arguably one of the best companies in the world, it’s your birthday and you’re tying one on at the pub, but to lose a prototype of Apple’s next big thing?! I mean, why is that phone not in some ‘cool’ case that is chained to your freaking hip?!!!!!
And just out of curiosity, if it is forgotten somewhere, when does ‘lost’ become ‘stolen’? Just curious.
But come on, tell me you wouldn’t want to have heard how that conversation went down with Gray & Steve? Any suggestions on how that went?
jizzmodo sucks
stopped visiting them long ago
C’mon Steve, unleash those IP lawyers.