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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 $200. Still unclear are details about the device, what version of the iOS operating system it was running, and what it looks like.' Once might be an accident, but two unreleased iPhones lost in bars starts to look like a strategy."
Once might be an accident, but two unreleased iPhones lost in bars starts to look like a strategy.
No, it actually makes it look more like an accident.
-- thinkyhead software and media
I have friends who lose their phones in bars every month. I had no idea they were strategic geniuses, I assumed they were just clumsy and drunk. Silly me!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Do you really need to know what it looks like? I'm sure it has rectangular design with rounded corners, I mean Apple has invented rounded rectangles so I'm sure they wouldn't waste their greatest contribution to the world of computing. Seriously, this whole secrecy reminds me about Harry Potter. No one would read it if it wasn't the greatest secret on Earth. People, it's just a freaking phone! Who cares if it was lost or not, how it looks like or what OS version is it running. It could run Window$ 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)
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
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.
real issue. Apple has a drinking problem.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Okay, everyone call Apple and say you found this funny looking iPhone in a bar....
Their they're doing there hair.
But "real world testing" can be done BEFORE going out to the bar and getting wasted enough to leave your phone there...especially if it's a prototype.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
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.
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
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
You conveniently cut off the rest of my sentence. It read: 'But "real world testing" can be done BEFORE going out to the bar and getting wasted enough to leave your phone there...especially if it's a prototype.' The ending is key. I'm not saying that testing shouldn't be done in a bar. But when you are carrying a prototype device that has already once been lost in a bar once before, just last year, you'd think it could be done responsibly or without incident. And is a bar the best place for "real world" tests? I think "real world" tests implies that tests should be done all over the "real world". Seems these testers they are giving these prototypes to have a penchant for going to the bar and forgetting they have a prototype device in their pocket that CAN'T GET LEFT IN THE BAR.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
In my book, "real world testing" doesn't mean "take it home and fiddle around with it as if you're using it."
Agreed. But it also doesn't mean "go get wasted at the bar with the new prototype and then leave it there...AGAIN". UNLESS they are doing it on purpose. Hence, my initial comment.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
That's what she said.. hmm.
which is totally what she said
Well, one of the best ways to do real-world testing is to use that phone as your primary phone - make all your calls/texts/etc on it as things can crop up during that testing that you may not see by simply carrying your own phone around, using that for your daily activities and only glancing at the phone you're supposed to be testing from time to time.
And unless Apple hires a bunch of teetotallers to do their testing, part of real life involves going to bars after work. And other social places.
Plus, carriers often do their own testing as well, so they'd need a few prototypes, and chances are one of those could lose it as well.