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Another Unreleased iPhone Lost by Employee In a Bar
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 $200. Still unclear are details about the device, what version of the iOS operating system it was running, and what it looks like.' Once might be an accident, but two unreleased iPhones lost in bars starts to look like a strategy."
Slashdot in decline with the loss of Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. Samzenpus's initiative to reimagine Slashdot as reddit still on the table until pizza gets delivered to the FatLab.
Sounds like more viral marketing on Apple's part.
Did they find it at the Velvet Spike or Cruisy Pete's Sailor Retreat in the Castro?
Once might be an accident, but two unreleased iPhones lost in bars starts to look like a strategy.
No, it actually makes it look more like an accident.
-- thinkyhead software and media
I have friends who lose their phones in bars every month. I had no idea they were strategic geniuses, I assumed they were just clumsy and drunk. Silly me!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Even just once was suspicious... but twice? Yeah right. A regular iPhone is expensive enough that it would be silly to leave it somewhere. As for a prototype of their next generation hardware? Good luck. If this really was an accident, the idiot who did this should be fired.
Do you really need to know what it looks like? I'm sure it has rectangular design with rounded corners, I mean Apple has invented rounded rectangles so I'm sure they wouldn't waste their greatest contribution to the world of computing. Seriously, this whole secrecy reminds me about Harry Potter. No one would read it if it wasn't the greatest secret on Earth. People, it's just a freaking phone! Who cares if it was lost or not, how it looks like or what OS version is it running. It could run Window$ Mobile for what it's worth and people would still line up to buy them because it's Apple. There, I said it. What I am more concerned about is not the OS version, the design or whether it finally has a real keyboard or not, but more important issues that have real impact on Web developers. Does it finally understand Mobile Web sites? Does it render XHTML Mobile Profile? Or even WAP for god's sake? ActionScript anyone? What about MMS? Let's face it - no matter how badly does it do all of those things that you expect from a $29 Nokia, people will still buy them and love them and the Mobile Web developers will have to live with all of their limitations. XHTML MP, cHTML, WML, AS, MMS, SMS - the level of support of those technologies that in the pre-iOS era we used to take for granted is what we should be interested about, not the shape or color of the new iPhone.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
Wonder if it gets any service.
Almost all of this text was taken vertatim from a CNET article posted earlier today: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20099899-37/apple-loses-another-unreleased-iphone-exclusive/
In order to make calls on the new iPhone you must select the phone number you wish to contact from the iPhone Marketplace (only $0.99 per number!). To get your number listed in the Marketplace you must pay the $300 per year development license price and submit your information from a Macintosh computer. Apple reserves the right to pull already released numbers from the Marketplace thereby erasing them from everyones phones.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Once might be an accident, but two unreleased iPhones lost in bars starts to look like a strategy
First we need to know how many unreleased iPhones are out there and for how long this field testing goes on. iPhones get lost/stolen in bars all the time, the pre-release loss rate may be comparable to the post-release loss rate. Personally I think it looks like drunk guys are not very good at keeping track of the expensive gadget they leave laying on the counter or table.
I mean if they dummy corded the phones to them with like a coiled bungee cord I'm sure the phones are very less likely to get lost unless someone cut the cord on them.
Michael Bay should make a movie about the process of Apple getting iPhone prototypes back.
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!!
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Tell me that it has a 3.5" disk drive. I really miss them.
It was neither funny nor subtle the first time. Now a second time? I was going to say that someone at marketing lost his original touch, but then I remembered the whole never ending "I'm a mac vs. I'm a PC" campaign... and that was that.
Who losses a phone in a bar anyway?!
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!
The job interviews for marketing at mobile phone vendors must be fun. How many beers does it take before you begin to have trouble keeping track of items on the counter or table.
Either Apple encourages their employees to have fun on the job, or they need to offer alcohol treatment for their employees.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
It would be nice to know what radios this thing has... CDMA? GSM? AWS? LTE?
real issue. Apple has a drinking problem.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Wouldn't you think that Apple would have immediately made it against policy to leave Apple grounds with a prototype if they were serious about preventing them from being lost? Unless Apple announces that in accordance with their policy set in place last year, WHEN THE EXACT SAME THING HAPPENED, the employee who lost the phone this time is fired, and then ask the public for assistance in returning of the phone, it is a marketing strategy in my opinion.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
What does seem strange is that they would use the exact same leak 'method.' i.e. once again leaving a phone at the bar. Do they actually *want* people to suspect they're leaking the phone on purpose?
How about some different venues, like... a public toilet? At the desk of some Apple journalist? At a White House briefing?
It looks like Apple marketdroids spend too much time getting drunk in bars.
And now I bet someone stole it, and will sell it to some unsuspecting everyperson for $60. I smell another interesting stolen goods story!
The more you know, the more you have to say and the more you should listen.
Apple may reserve the right but Google exercises it.
Okay, everyone call Apple and say you found this funny looking iPhone in a bar....
Their they're doing there hair.
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.
As some people have already said in the comments on CNet, this entire story may be made up, as the only citation for the phone being lost–and searched for–is an unknown source. The SFPD never received a request from Apple to get the phone, as is noted in the article; however, the unknown source tells us that SFPD did search a house in the SF area. I have a hard time believing this story because of a lack of specific information about the phone itself.
The conclusion? CNet page views. Mission Accomplished.
On the bright side you only have to list your phone number in one store and it works with all flavors^D^D^D^D^D^D versions.
An Apple employee walked into a bar...
Remember that prototype MacBook with what appeared to be a SIM card clot and antenna popping up on e-bay? /. never covered it. )
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20092180-248/3g-equipped-macbook-prototype-pops-up-on-ebay/
( I'd link to a Slashdot article but Google's failing to find it. Or maybe
Welp, they want it back. Rather suddenly, coinciding with cnet's requests for comments from Apple.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20099494-248/apple-wants-its-3g-macbook-prototype-back/
source: http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=13272429&postcount=38
Guy walks up to a discarded iPhone on a bar.
Guy: Hey, you're new here.
iPhone: Yeah, that's right.
Guy: Could I sell you to iGadget for a million dollars?
iPhone: Oh, well, yes!
Guy: How about ten dollars.
iPhone: How dare you! What kind of iPhone do you think I am?
Guy: We already established that, now we're just talkin' price.
Wait, stop me if you've heard this one before.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Could you patent that before Apple does?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hey, are we talking about it or are we not? It worked.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Bartender says, hey, buddy... you look lost.
Apple knows they're going to lose more prototypes of iPhones, iPods, or whatever other new shiny things they make over the next few years, because that just happens sometimes. Employees accidentally take the wrong devices out of buildings, go to bars, whatever. They try to keep stuff under wraps, but can't stop all the accidental leaks.
So Apple's now having their art department make fake prototype devices and leave them around in bars on purpose. They don't all have to work perfectly, the amazingly cool features can be simulations, the battery life doesn't have to be as long as they'd like, the parts can be more expensive than the real manufactured product, the cases can be entirely different shapes, the phone number in the speed-dial list is for Fake Steve Jobs, and in general you'll see stuff that's at best quirky and interesting, but won't find out anything about the real products. And if those Android folks get one, it's going to take them forever to reverse engineer the product or application because it's fake.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
. . . it's a cheesy marketing ploy.
Still unclear are details about the device, what version of the iOS operating system it was running, and what it looks like.
(Emphasis mine)
Having never owned an Apple product in my life, I just googled images of iphone original, iphone 3g, iphone 3gs, and iphone 4. After carefully comparing the changes over the years, I think I have a pretty good guess about what the iphone 5 prototype probably looks like.
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
Do they actually *want* people to suspect they're leaking the phone on purpose?
What precisely is the downside to people thinking, or even knowing, that these phones are fake-leaked?
Do you now think less of Apple than you previously did?
The fact of the matter is that regardless of how you feel about Apple, the details about upcoming products are welcome by many.
"His name was James Damore."
ploy. same thing, happening twice eh. in the SAME fashion to boot. aaalright.
Read radical news here
Ambassador Andrei Lysenko: There is another matter... one I'm reluctant to...
Dr. Jeffrey Pelt: Please.
Ambassador Andrei Lysenko: One of our submarines, an Alfa, was last reported in the area of the Grand Banks. We have not heard from her for some time.
Dr. Jeffrey Pelt: Andrei... you've lost another submarine?
Hello! Why the personal attack? Nothing about how I feel about Apple matters to the intial discussion. It is simply that when one wants to be sneaky, one should obviously not re-use the same method. This applies to anyone in the world.
How does this translate into being disappointed in Apple? Or do you have something in mind here which you are reading into other people's replies?
If your (ex)CEO wore that many turtle necks!
And finds out the warranty won't cover that kind of damage.
Sig for hire.
Well, if it works...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
He didnt attack you personally. You imagined it because you are overly self-conscious about a certain (hint hint) subject.
A Strategy for What?
Maybe someone really wants to leave.
Oh please. Is him not feeling herself tonight? Hmmmm? You sound like a massive, blubbering, vagina.
Once is a fluke. Twice is happenstance. Three times is enemy action.
Hey babe. Want to see my new iPhone? Its a 5, at least. I'll bet you've never held a 5.
Sorry. That's never happened before. It usually stays up all day. Maybe its the way you held it.
Have gnu, will travel.
...So an Apple iPhone Engineer walks into a bar...
As close as I can tell, they are all drunk by step 2.
2 lost iPhones from the company in several years = standard field testing by engineers who drink beer (who would have thought it), i very much doubt it is strategy. the whole point behind apple's keynote address release style is that people DON'T have advance notice of what the new shiny looks like.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
That's certainly not a company I'd entrust my data to.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
The errant iPhone, which went missing in San Francisco's Mission district in late July...
It would have been more appropriate if the iPhone had been lost in a bar in the Castro district instead...
I first heard that joke as the following Winston Churchill witticism:
Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?
Woman: My goodness, Mr. Churchill Well, I suppose we would have to discuss terms, of course
Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?
Woman: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!
Churchill: Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
They need people to keep talking about iPhone 5 so they don't forget about it while it is delayed. It is a very effective strategy to keep Internet chatter going, and it works. Now people are thinking "any minute now, maybe I'll hold off on that Android..."
Man, Apple employees forget their phones, Obi-Wan gets into barfights....
Clearly bars are a bad influence no matter what universe you live in.
How to get the hype going,,,,lose a phone then everybody read articles, they wait to get the specs. they want to see the good and bad about the phone.
This is also a good way to have your phone beta tested by people before it gets out, this way if it sucks, the company can always say that the stolen phone was in a very early stage.
200$ on craiglist ? I think not
Considering the way they attacked the journalists who picked up the new phone last time, I have trouble believing that they would actually try this strategy again -- who do they think is going to examine the phone this time? I understand that the corporate culture at Apple is "bend over and take it," but do they really think that the rest of the world is like that too?
Palm trees and 8
With all the software out there to help you find lost phones, is it really lost? You figure they would have software to track it all down, especially since it's a prototype. Or don't prototypes have subscriptions to MobileMe for testing? http://www.wikihow.com/Find-a-Lost-iPhone On second thought maybe it is not working fully since it is a prototype. Then again if most of it is working. Humm... I have to continue to think on this one. Although if the person who picks it up keeps the phone off then sure it is lost. It's just funny no other phone maker has had lost phones, and capitalized on it being missing, that I know of. Makes you wonder about testing practices and marketing ploys.
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
Wow, Steve Jobs must have gotten really wasted at his going away party to leave his phone at the bar...
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
How can you tell if it's an iPhone. According to Apple it could easily be a Samsung phone and we would never know the difference!
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
I hear the plaintive cry of a developer who sweat blood learning the ins and outs of making the "mobile web" work, only to have it all made obsolete by real mobile browsers and faster mobile networks.
As a hacker, I feel your pain.
As a user, I say *&^%$#@! the mobile web.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
An Apple employee walks into a bar . . .
Mod Me Up. You'll make a grown man cry.