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4G iPhone Misplacer Invited To Germany For Beer
eldavojohn writes "You may recall the hapless engineer who left a fairly sensitive iPhone at a bar recently. Well, in a PR stunt, Lufthansa has invited him to visit Germany on their dime after citing his latest Facebook status, 'I underestimated how good German beer is' as well as his obvious passion for German beer and culture. It's not clear if Gray Powell has decided to 'pick up where he last left off' (as the letter puts it). I know what my decision would be."
I'm still convinced this was intentional, all the way around.
but not really worth losing your job.
Do we know that he hasn't lost his job already?
"I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
I was already aghast at Gizmodo for running a story with the poor engineer's name -- there was absolutely no journalistic reason to give his name other than to give Gawker's editors a bit of titillation. He's a human being; human beings make mistakes. I'm more than slightly disappointed that Slashdot, a community that should be sympathetic to the guy, is having a laugh at his expense. Seriously -- who hasn't ever lost their phone or their wallet?
If, mind you, it was even legitimately lost in the first place -- which I still don't believe.
Oh my god, best pun I've heard in a long time.
But poor guy, here's another round of putting his real name on the web, as if the stupid Gizmodo stunt wasn't enough...
If it were real, Apple could not only force Gizmodo to take down any mention of it, they could even get them arrested for possession of stolen property.
Nah. The cat's out of the bag, they know they can't shove it back in now, so they have to roll with it. It would only be bad press if they tried to get the info taken down or have anyone arrested, plus, everyone who wants the information already has it, so taking it down would accomplish nothing.
NPR had reported that according to "industry insiders" this was completely accidental. Apple doesn't need to pull a stunt like this to energize their fan base, and I doubt this will pull anyone new over to Apple's camp. What this does, however, is give Apple's competition a leg up on where they are heading with their next-gen device. Basically they had little gain and much to lose.
But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
I've used quite a few windows mobile devices, and honnestly I can't see what everyone's gripe with them is. Granted most of the ones I've worked with are PDA's, I haven't had a single complaint to date. A wide variety of software available, decent interface, what's wrong with it, someone just tell me please.
I don't see how that's confusing... There is the original iPhone (iPhone), the 2nd generation with 3G capabilities (iPhone 3G), the 3rd generation with some new features still on the 3G network (iPhone 3GS)... Would you rather they had called the 2nd iPhone the "iPhone 2G with 3G capabilities"? Now THAT would have been confusing...
SIG FAULT: Post index out of bounds.
He didn't attempt to return it to the owner. He allegedly (as reported by the blog that purchased the stolen goods) called Apple customer service tier one phone droids, who obviously know nothing about it and wouldn't have the first clue what to do with it.
They know the name of the person who lost it--and made no attempt to contact him.
Under California law, they could have also attempted to contact the bar where he lost it (where Apple and the engineer called several times looking for it, according to the bar staff), or turned it over to the police, who could have handled it.
When you find a Fossil wallet, you don't call Fossil. If you find a phone, even if you don't recognize the model and believe it to be an internal prototype, you certainly don't call the manufacturer's customer service line.
You could call the corporate office if you wanted, but the law says, contact the owner if that information is available (and it was), turn it over to the place of business where it was found, or turn it over to the police. The finder did none of those things, almost certainly deliberately. Calling a CSR is just an attempt to get people like you to think a valid attempt to return was made. It wasn't.
Even if it had been, the sale of the item is still conversion in this time frame. The unit showed up at Gizmodo a matter of days after it was mislaid.