Apple loses another prototype iPhone - maybe not (Updated)
Update 2: SF Weekly kept digging, all the way to the man who claims "investigators" stormed his house and searched his stuff. SF Weekly obtained a phone number, one for a man who appeared on LinkedIn (before the page was pulled) as an Apple "senior investigator." When SF Weekly called the man, who had 103 connections on LinkedIn just before his page was removed, he confirmed he worked at Apple but offered nothing else. SF Weekly will continue to investigate, but considering the circumstances the SFPD has indicated it wants to know just what the heck is going on. To us, it sounds like a hoax, and Beatweek Magazine suggests the bar where the iPhone prototype was supposedly lost could be at the center of it.
Update: According to SF Weekly, the San Francisco Police Department has no record of this investigation.
CNET reports that an Apple employee lost a prototype of an unreleased iPhone in a San Francisco-area bar. No, you haven't fallen through a wormhole and woken up in 2010 -- it happened again. The prototype was reportedly lost in July, and Apple's efforts to recover the device have not succeeded thus far.
Rather than immediately remote-wiping the phone as it did with the iPhone 4 prototype last year, Apple used the Find My iPhone feature and co-ordinated with San Francisco police to trace the phone to a home in San Fran's Bernal Heights area. The homeowner gave police permission to search his house, but the device was not recovered.
Supposedly the prototype has already been sold on Craigslist for US$200, a paltry sum compared to the $5000 a certain "gadget blog" (CNET's words) paid for the iPhone 4 prototype last year. No other details on the device are available, but considering the firestorm that erupted in 2010, it's unlikely that any "gadget blog" would have the stones to buy the device even if it was offered to them.
We're not judging here, but doesn't it seem like bars, pubs, watering holes, and all other forms of alcohol-serving establishments ought to be off-limits to prototype testers from now on?
