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50% bigger screen than Apple's next-gen iPhone that was leaked, (4.3"), and yet it's still a smartphone, Small enough to fit comfortably in one hand, unlike the iPad.

HDMI out, runs flash, works as a hotspot for up to 8 other devices, Yes, it even does pinch-to-zoom. And at 4.3", it's got 50% more surface area than the current iPhone (and the leaked iPhone's screen is even smaller).

A tablet's too big to just shove in your pocket or purse. The iPhone's screen is too small to really share. This is "just right". It's a tablet-killer. So maybe HP sees that the tablet market, after more than a decade of trying to take flight, is going to nosedive, and will come out with something Palm-ish in a 4.3" format?

Actually... Windows 7 cheapest version yet.

Wait a minute -- it can't be vaporware. Gizmodo said it was in the "late prototype" stage of development. Why would they lie? What would they have to gain?

So the first info about the Courier I can find is dated September 22 2009.

But OLPC already showed off a concept XO-2 back in May 2008.

Funny that earlier - Steve Jobs offered to put OS-X on OLPC for free, but they "declined because it's not open source".
Now, after "a deal with Microsoft" Both XP and Linux will be options.

Makes me wish I hadn't gotten those two OLPC's. when I heard that.
But if the XO-2 ever materializes (and it probably wont) I think I'll just wait for the Mac iPad duo.

The Gizmodo article on the wrong ways to make a tablet makes me sad. Most of the complaints about downsizing laptop OS's to work as tablets stem from all of the awful problems that are inherent in modern computing UI's. Norton antivirus popping up every 5 seconds and asking to update. Background applications constantly demanding attention. Crashing processes. Slow and clunky boot-up and shutdown. All of these things are huge limitations of modern desktops that we shouldn't have to put up with by now.

Courier wasn't just going to be the iPad killer. It was going to be a computing OS that wasn't the hideous bloatware that we've come to know and hate.

Far more interesting than the fact that they've tracked down the finder of the phone:

Police broke into and searched Gizmodo journalist Jason Chen's home, seizing basically every piece of technology in his home, under an apparently illegal warrant:

Check it out.

You never, ever, ever camouflage your military systems to look like civilian infrastructure.

The U.S. did it in World War II with no discernable downside:

http://gizmodo.com/5380774/how-to-disguise-an-airplane-factory-as-a-subdivision

Apparently nothing awful. I clicked a link on the TFA page to one by Steve Wozniak. He seems convinced by inside information that the engineer wasn't fired (though another was for showing him an iPad prototype a short while ago). As one of the Gizmodo editors put it, it seems that Steve Jobs has a Michael Corleone honor code. Mistakes are forgivable, but deliberately breaking secrecy (even in a very harmless way) is not.

Some of their content isn't even that spectacular. They went around CES turning off TVs and were promptly banned from future ones.

Actually, from what I understand, California law states that it is illegal for someone to find something off the street, take it as their own, and then sell it (in other words, what I've heard is that there is no "finders keepers" right in California, at least if you don't bother to let the police look for the true owner first). Supposedly, it becomes extra illegal if you have good reason to believe that it's owned by someone else but don't try to return it (of which there is, supposedly, no evidence in this case).

He did try to return it. Read (carefully) the Gizmodo timeline, more specifically, the section entitled "Lost and Found"

He reached for a phone and called a lot of Apple numbers and tried to find someone who was at least willing to transfer his call to the right person, but no luck. No one took him seriously and all he got for his troubles was a ticket number.

He thought that eventually the ticket would move up high enough and that he would receive a call back, but his phone never rang. What should he be expected to do then? Walk into an Apple store and give the shiny, new device to a 20-year-old who might just end up selling it on eBay?

He did his due dilligence, and got no response whatsoever. So nothing illegal happened here.

Not quite, since he didn't contact the police to report it found (at least on your link, as far as I can see). That is generally what you have to do if you find something of value. Not reporting it to the police is a pretty big mistake, but of course we don't know if it was intentional.

> WHERE'S THE INTERIOR PHOTOS!? ONE photo of the interior, and not a good one. WTF? This is my biggest skepticism.

That may be allayed by the twenty photos of the insides

> Apple has 3 generations of iPhones shaped exactly the same, and now they go in a different direction?

The 3G and 3GS are the same, the original was quite a fatter, more geometric design (flat back, rounded sides)

Actually, there was a post on Gizmodod about how the guy who found it called up Apple and the phone reps said "what prototype".

http://gizmodo.com/5520729/why-apple-couldnt-get-the-lost-iphone-back

http://gizmodo.com/5520155/gal-1//gallery/6 - puddin' proof

also -

http://www.apple.com/contact/

why not take the chance that because it says apple on the back it would be a good idea to send it to them

even if it was a knock off I'm sure Apple would appreciate the gesture...

Actually, from what I understand, California law states that it is illegal for someone to find something off the street, take it as their own, and then sell it (in other words, what I've heard is that there is no "finders keepers" right in California, at least if you don't bother to let the police look for the true owner first). Supposedly, it becomes extra illegal if you have good reason to believe that it's owned by someone else but don't try to return it (of which there is, supposedly, no evidence in this case).

He did try to return it. Read (carefully) the Gizmodo timeline, more specifically, the section entitled "Lost and Found"

He reached for a phone and called a lot of Apple numbers and tried to find someone who was at least willing to transfer his call to the right person, but no luck. No one took him seriously and all he got for his troubles was a ticket number.

He thought that eventually the ticket would move up high enough and that he would receive a call back, but his phone never rang. What should he be expected to do then? Walk into an Apple store and give the shiny, new device to a 20-year-old who might just end up selling it on eBay?

He did his due dilligence, and got no response whatsoever. So nothing illegal happened here.

Is reading a lost art?

http://gizmodo.com/5520729/why-apple-couldnt-get-the-lost-iphone-back

Apple told them to get stuffed. Apple is using the police to intimidate, again.

It'd be hard for me to imagine that Apple -- the pseudosecretive company that it is -- wouldn't have stringent policies in place. Still, firing Powell would look less than heartless. I'd be shocked if any company as big as Apple didn't have such policies explicitly spelled out.

The big question directly applicable to the case is what exactly those policies are and how they're enforced. From the article:

On the other hand, if Apple doesn't have clear-cut rules, if Powell wasn't prohibited from taking the phone out of his office, if engineers routinely ignore or bypass security rules and -- as long as nothing bad happens -- no one complains, then Apple needs to understand that the system is more to blame than the individual. Most corporate security policies have this sort of problem. Security is important, but it's quickly jettisoned when there's an important job to be done. A common example is passwords: people aren't supposed to share them, unless it's really important and they have to. Another example is guest accounts. And doors that are supposed to remain locked but rarely are. People routinely bypass security policies if they get in the way, and if no one complains, those policies are effectively meaningless.

As you noted, one would expect that stringent policies are in place (and if Woz's comments are accurate, then that's probably true). But it's also a matter of how the corporate culture treats those policies. I've certainly been in environments where security policies were routinely ignored by anyone with any clout (especially when done as political favors) which completely undermines the overall effectiveness of those policies.

That seems to be the gist of Schneier's post. It's less about the incident in question and more about applying it to general concepts. It's always easier to explain these concepts when you've got real-world examples; even if just remotely applicable to your situation.

But with that in mind, I'm still curious as to what Apple's policies are. I would expect engineers have to do some sort of dogfood testing at some point - perhaps even sooner than later. And there's certainly value in taking a device you're developing and committing to it - making it the only device you use. In such a situation, corporate policy is going to have to accept a certain risk if they want to take advantage of that. Even with all the mitigation one can think of (there was a kill switch), there's still that risk.

6. Don't show new stuff to the other Steve

Folks here on Earth are working on it:

http://blogs.msdn.com/stevecla01/archive/2009/07/19/bill-gates-is-making-cows-that-don-t-fart.aspx

http://gizmodo.com/349723/scientists-discover-how-to-neutralize-cow-farts-your-farts-next-god-willing

It's a good cause . . . with no visible methane on our planet, those aliens won't be able to find us, and eat us. And our cows.

Global warming and volcanoes are related.

What's your source for this?

Here's a few for you.

CO2 output from volcano's have not varied wildly meaning their effect on Global temperatures is minimal.

CO2 from eyjafjallajokull vs CO2 from Europe's airline industry.

I guess these aren't the citations the OP was looking for.

It's not that I didn't believe you. I just wanted to get the details of the law you were referring to since those specifics seem especially relevant here. For instance, bricking the phone took away the finder's "knowledge of or means of inquiry as to the true owner". All they knew was that it probably belonged to Apple, whom they contacted, thus satisfying the criteria of "reasonable and just efforts to find the owner". Here's a more detailed link that explains the timeline of events.

Even if Gizmodo was lying about this stuff, I doubt they would have gone ahead with their story before talking to their lawyers. If anyone in this case gets charged with a crime I'll concede my point, but I doubt that's going to happen.

When Apple said "here, carry around this priceless prototype phone and test it out"

What's really priceless is the photo of the guy who lost the phone holding an open container of Jack Daniel's. Not exactly the first guy I would entrust with the device.

And if you're unable to contact or find the owner, CA law also indicates that you are then to turn it in to the local police...

Umm...citation please? Here's a link to Gizmodo's account of how the finder attempted to return it.

A reasonable attempt to return the phone was clearly made, but was hampered by the fact that Apple bricked the phone on that same night. The article just says that the finder poked around a bit (who wouldn't?). There's nothing to indicate that he had the owner's personal information, or would have even remembered it the next day, having presumably been intoxicated.

I doubt that a reasonable person's first thought in this scenario would be: "Wow, I found someone's cool new phone...I should call the cops". That being said, they could have just left it at the bar in the back office or a lost-and-found bin.

As for Gizmodo -- they are in the busiess of reporting news about gadgets. Successfully suing them under the UTSA would set a dangerous precedent that could hamper other forms of investigative journalism. Kind of like how some organizations try to use the DMCA to silence their critics.

From the How Apple Lost the Next iPhone post. "Apart from that, just six pages of applications. One of them was Facebook." Given Apple's level of security, what is the possibility a secret prototype iPhone would be let out of the building without it using a passcode and auto-lock?

I wondered the legality of this whole situation myself. As it turns out, the item would be considered "mislaid property" and what the person who found it was supposed to do was leave it with the property owner (the bar in this case) on the theory that the person would return to reclaim their mislaid item.

Given that this didn't transpire, the finder of mislaid items is the new owner, unless the original owner returns to claim it. The law also talks about the new finder making a "reasonable effort" to return the mislaid item.

The finder did apparently did try to contact Apple... but has since sold it to Gizmodo. Apple has made a formal demand for the property being returned to them, so it will be... but the damage has already been done, to an extent. I wonder if Apple has any recourse at all.

Here's the CA penal code on the matter: Lost and Unclaimed Property. Article 1. Lost Money and Goods.

They want their phone back... http://gizmodo.com/5520479/a-letter-apple-wants-its-secret-iphone-back?skyline=true&s=i

Their source found the device and contacted Apple to attempt to return the device but in typical large company fashion, the people at Apple who knew the device was missing never got that message from the people the guy talked to, and Apple basically blew the guy off.

This is what their source claims but personally I find this suspect. What if his "trying" involved calling tech support and saying "hurr hurr I have an 4g iphone"? because that's what it sounds like from the article:

No one took him seriously and all he got for his troubles was a ticket number.

He thought that eventually the ticket would move up high enough and that he would receive a call back, but his phone never rang.

I see, so he randomly dialed some numbers and then dialed tech support. Way to go all out, buddy. How about actually contacting the owner ?? After all, he had access to the owner's facebook account as well as his home/work phone number before the 4g was remotely disabled. It seems like an obviously half-hearted attempt because the finder did not want return the phone but wanted to appear like he did.

I don't see the entire point in naming names here, but the dude did lose the phone and it is his fault...

Yes, it is absolutely his fault, and he was probably going to suffer harsh consequences already. However, Gizmodo decided to heap public humiliation on top of this. He was already going to get fired, but now he is a laughingstock who will have a seriously hard time getting another job in the industry because of his newfound name recognition.

This guy was already screwed but Gizmodo decided to utterly destroy his career and reputation -- all for a few more clicks. Total dick move.

Apple only made a few of these prototypes and an engineer would not have one out on the town without Apple being well aware that it could get spotted.

Which is why, if you had read the articles, you'd have noted that it was found in a case that made it look like an ordinary iPhone 3GS to the casual observer.

http://gizmodo.com/5520164/this-is-apples-next-iphone

He reached for a phone and called a lot of Apple numbers and tried to find someone who was at least willing to transfer his call to the right person, but no luck. No one took him seriously and all he got for his troubles was a ticket number.

It was only weeks later, after receiving no word back from Apple, that he decided to sell it to Gizmodo. I think Apple will have a hard time proving he was malicious. Apple has finally claimed it and Gizmodo's giving it back.

br/

There seems to be a lot of bad information surrounding this and as usual Slashdot is going off half cocked without the full picture, let alone RTFA. Gizmodo is not my favorite site, and frankly I think some of the editors over there are assholes (Jesus, I'm talking to you) but some of them are pretty good like Mark and Rosa. Anyway:

First, they didn't out their source: This guy isn't their source, he's the guy that lost the phone. Their source found the device and contacted Apple to attempt to return the device but in typical large company fashion, the people at Apple who knew the device was missing never got that message from the people the guy talked to, and Apple basically blew the guy off.

Gizmodo paid their source for the phone after Apple failed to respond to him. So the guy found a phone, tried to return it to the owner, the owner didn't respond so he sold it. I don't see a problem here.

Gizmodo found out who the guy who lost the phone was and contacted him. Whether or not they had permission from him to publish his name is unknown, but they did talk to the guy. I don't see the entire point in naming names here, but the dude did lose the phone and it is his fault (unless you believe the Apple did it on purpose theories) so while I probably wouldn't have released his name, I don't really have a problem with it as it seems to be a legitimate if somewhat tabloid story.

And finally, after publishing the story, Apple contacted Gizmodo to return the phone and they complied. http://gizmodo.com/5520479/a-letter-apple-wants-its-secret-iphone-back.

So, in the end Apple got their device back, we got to know what the next iPhone will look like, and Gizmodo made a shitload of money from all the traffic the story generated. I just hope that guy gets to keep his job. If not Gizmodo should hire him.

My wife has called bars, stores, restaurants, and cabbies to track down her crappy LG. You're telling me this guy never thought to call the bar the next day? Or that the bar sold it off before the guy could claim it?

The answers to all this and more, when you RTFA! :)

But the short answer: some guy at the bar apparently tried to figure out who owned it, failed (because the guy who lost it had already left), and started messing around with it trying to figure out the owner. Eventually he found the guy's Facebook page, and thought "Aha! I'll return this tomorrow". Unfortunately, when he woke up, the phone had been remotely bricked, so he couldn't get the contact info back again.

... that Apple released a tablet called the iPad, which is white, has mutitouch and runs iPhoneOS, and just move on? In the meantime, Endgadget received a JooJoo board and made a quick video preview of it, there were news about the Notion Ink Adams (along with a nice video too), the HP Slate, the Gemini, and probably a slew of other tablets nobody even heard of, because they were drowned by the Big Apple Marketing Monster.

I wondered the legality of this whole situation myself. As it turns out, the item would be considered "mislaid property" and what the person who found it was supposed to do was leave it with the property owner (the bar in this case) on the theory that the person would return to reclaim their mislaid item.

Given that this didn't transpire, the finder of mislaid items is the new owner, unless the original owner returns to claim it. The law also talks about the new finder making a "reasonable effort" to return the mislaid item.

The finder did apparently did try to contact Apple... but has since sold it to Gizmodo. Apple has made a formal demand for the property being returned to them, so it will be... but the damage has already been done, to an extent. I wonder if Apple has any recourse at all.

Here's the CA penal code on the matter: Lost and Unclaimed Property. Article 1. Lost Money and Goods.

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me dozens of times, I'm an Apple customer."

Well said.

The thing is that there is nothing much new in the design, other than the unimaginative and unstylish slab sides. It looks so old, so boring. They have run out of Ideas.

Steve Jobs said it best:
http://gizmodo.com/5462381/mosspuppets-epic-steve-jobs-interview

Only can a true fanboy turn the phrase "like a Braun product from the 70s" into a compliment.

Not really. Dieter Rams is considered one of the best industrial designers. Take a look: comparison of Braun and Apple; and, slideshow of his work.

Windows NT is a damned good OS for the time it was made.

Sorry, but I remember the early versions of NT, and I've used the recent versions, and I'm not clear on what era it could be considered to be a "damned good OS" in. Its functionality and stability was pathetic compared to any commercial Unix when it was introduced, and it's a security fuckfest today. If you were comparing it to Windows 3.1 and DOS, then you might think it was a real operating system, and not a rube goldberg nightmare of tinkertoys.

I don't think the changes were out of incompetence either, the bunch at Apple seem to be fairly competent in what they are doing. To me it seems like something that was necessary to go from a Mouse/Keyboard based UI to a multitouch one.

This is utterly, totally false. In fact, OSX can do Multitouch with little modification.

Having used both the old and new Palm dev tools and the Windows Mobile dev tools back when it was pocket pc, developing on the iPhone is much less painful.

I understand not wanting to have ports of desktop apps clogging the app store, but what Apple has actually accomplished is not to prevent those ports, but to make porting those applications more difficult, which means that developers creating these ports will make more mistakes. Thus Apple has only succeeded in reducing the quality of ports by making porting more difficult. Since so much of what Apple did was just renaming existing methods, it's hard to defend their actions from a performance standpoint. The relative difficulty of developing for Palm operating systems is a Red Herring; it has no bearing whatsoever on Apple's development system, or the development experience of the iPhone as it compares to OSX, which is what we're actually talking about today. Stay on topic.

Newspaper/magazine apps have been banned already for editorial content. Now, Bild is a steaming pile of crap, and Stern doesn't exactly cater to intellectuals, either, but still...

Oh, forgot the link to how Courier looks like.

Once again, that product is the Courier. The Courier. I'm completely impartial but if you want to buy something that's not the iPad (which barely holds up to Microsoft's 1998 model and in someways is less than what MS had in 1998) than that is the Courier. Did I forget the link to the Courier? No, the Courier link is up there. That's the Courier. Let's see, I'm forgetting something, I'm forgetting something. The Courier. That's it.

Oh, forgot the link to how Courier looks like.

At least according to this site. Now how about some comparisons of the Courier versus the iPad!

Yes, GP rushed it. It is coming to Android, but it hasn't been released to public yet.

But actually, you can overclock the Droid if you root (jailbreak) it. I've heard of people clocking it up past a GHz (from the stock 550MHz): http://gizmodo.com/5457672/how-to-overclock-your-droid-possibly-to-death

http://gizmodo.com/5495946/ipad-alternatives-the-main-contenders
or in a chart form
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/4/2010/01/slate_chart_v2.jpg
From the not shipping just yet to the over priced to the Linux to Windows units.
You have the choice to wait, over spend, be locked into Apple/MS or pick up a cam, flash supporting low cost super slate with ok battery life.

My point being, if a company can get away with this, it's Apple.

This article pretty much sums it up.

How I wish I had mod points for you! Steve Jobs also jokes that he's God:

Q: Why have you veered away from widgets on the iPad? A: We just shipped it on Saturday. And then we rested on Sunday. Q: So widgets are possible? A: Everything is possible.

Although some aren't so sure he's joking...

You are wrong. People hate "Apple fanboyism" more than Apple itself. You see so many anti-apple comments on Engadget, Gizmodo etc since all the writers over there seem to be licking Steve Jobs balls. They hardly have any opinion of their own. Just look at this highly-stupid post at Gizmodo and you will learn why people are so much against Apple fanboyism Here is the article at Gizmodo

Another problem with Apple fanboys is that they have a superiority complex over others. They always think they know more than others and they are always right. FFS, a Sony Ericsson phone isn't a lump of plastic. Looks like your views are formed only by looking from the US perspective.

Apple fanboys are the most irrational people I have ever met. They hardly have any views of their own. Their views are copy-pasted from the views of Steve Jobs. I think I said enough.

I'm pretty sure Woz came to terms with that realization decades ago. He hasn't had a say in any of Apple's higher level decisions since his plane crash in 1981, and he hasn't worked for them at all since 1987. He probably doesn't even think of it as "his" company anymore (if he ever really did). The guy has done a lot of cool stuff since then, and is probably way more interested in talking about his more recent engineering diversions (like his attempts to get Toyota's attention about their accelerator problems) than discussing the philosophy of a company he left behind when The Bangles were still Walking Like an Egyptian.

There is nothing to suggest Apple are moving "us" towards closed environments.

Other than the fact that they deployed the iPhone OS on a device that could(should) have used a better, generically useful OS. Other than the fact that Jobs thinks this type of computer will be the future of computing? Other than the fact that with the iTunes store being the sole provider of software for the iPhone OS, Apple gets a slice of every pie? No, check that, they already got a slice with the OS being locked to special hardware; now they get a sliver of every other slice by becoming the sole software distributer. Where do you get MS Office for the iPad? iTunes. Where do you get Microsoft's free RDP client for iPad? Well, there's already a fully functional pay version from another third party, and Apple won't make money from a free App with better functionality. Denied; no reason given.

Comment by Xeno 03/31/10 @ http://gizmodo.com/5506776/what-tech-nerds-think-about-the-ipad
I really hope that this is not the future of computing. It's kinda like how most of our economy went away from inventing and producing to consuming. The iPad takes away the making and doing from computers and makes consuming the whole point. I'm not saying that consuming is bad just that I hope it's doesn't become the whole picture.

You can put non-DRM books on iPad - http://gizmodo.com/5491935/reminder-the-ipad-will-read-drm+free-ebooks-from-your-nook-or-sony-reader

I can have many many netbooks for half the price that do everything the iPod does and more. That was my point. There's none of this, "your laptop that costs twice as much" stuff, because that's ridiculous. I'm not some kind of bearded supernerd who's setting up Ubuntu netbook remix on all my machines or anything. Usability out of the box and whatnot are all important to me, but I *gasp* feel that Windows pretty much offers that, and without all of the hardware lockdown and lack of expansion options in the Apple offering.

I'm not saying anyone shouldn't buy an iPad, but I'm expressing surprise that so many people seem to want to, and I am firmly convinced that they've been sucked in by the Cupertino Reality Distortion Vortex, and they've bought into the hype. Personally, I'm waiting for the Microsoft Courier, which actually looks like it'll do some things that are innovative.

I am waiting for the Dell mini 5 so I will have the freedom to run flash and a broadcast from a webcam.
http://gizmodo.com/5443837/first-hands+on-and-video-dell-mini-5-android-slate