iPhone 4G leak: Shit just got real

[ManaByte]

If you weren't following this here's the recap:

1. Apple employee goes to a bar, gets drunk, and leaves his iPhone 4G prototype (in a case to make it look like a 3GS) in the bar stool and leaves.
2. Someone finds it and sells it to Gizmodo for $5000.
3. Gizmodo reveals everything about the iPhone 4G.
4. Apples big unviel is spoiled so they stomp their feet and lie to the police and say that Gizmodo stole the prototype.

Now cops stormed the house of the guy who wrote about the phone and siezed all his computer equipment:
http://gizmodo.com/5524843/police-seize-jason-chens-computers

[ManaByte]

Apple helps run the task force that raided the guys home:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts1795

And CA law says if you find lost property you need to make a good faith effort to return it. Gizmodo did that when they called the guy who left it in the bar.

[Cormacaroni]

Yeah, they wanted that phone returned to Gray Powell so bad, they spent 6 weeks and $5,000 negotiating its release

What a bunch of fucking saints. I regret giving them the pageviews.

[The Dark Shake 3000]

Why is anyone sticking up for Gizmodo? It's pretty obvious they cut ethical corners just to get pageviews. They brought this on themselves.

[brawndolicious]

I'm sure it's all just a publicity stunt.

[naff]

Ahahaha. Who cares, boohoo they cut ethical corners to get pageviews ANY news outlet in the same position would definitely do exactly the same thing. This was too good an opportunity to pass up. Capitalism bitches, everyone cuts ethical corners (some corners bigger than others, I'd say this was in the trivially minor category) to make a buck if the the payout is better than the punishment.

[The Dark Shake 3000]

Then stop bitching about the punishment

[naff]

Then stop bitching about the punishment

I never was 

[The Dark Shake 3000]

No, the Gizmodo people crying about their journalistic rights. Journalists don't get special treatment for buying and possessing stolen goods.

[brob]

Also, they denounce the journalist label every time someone bitches that they don't have any integrity or do fact checking or whatever else bullshit those gawker sites do. "professional blogs"  

[Donono]

So dramatic!

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[youtube=560,345]MtZEstimrfA[/youtube]

[close]

[naff]

Then stop bitching about the punishment

I never was 

No, the Gizmodo people crying about their journalistic rights. Journalists don't get special treatment for buying and possessing stolen goods.

Um... Yeah, the dudes house got invaded and his computers and servers taken JUSTICE never said he didn't deserve it (even though I do think it's OOT). I was commenting on the morality police that suddenly popped up here. Also I don't understand this "No, the Gizmodo people crying about their journalistic rights".  Anyway. idc, move on.

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

Then stop bitching about the punishment

I never was 

No, the Gizmodo people crying about their journalistic rights. Journalists don't get special treatment for buying and possessing stolen goods.

Um... Yeah, the dudes house got invaded and his computers and servers taken JUSTICE never said he didn't deserve it (even though I do think it's OOT). I was commenting on the morality police that suddenly popped up here. Also I don't understand this "No, the Gizmodo people crying about their journalistic rights".  Anyway. idc, move on.

The people crying over this are Apple fans who are all that the iPhone 4G got revealed in an event other than the upcoming Apple presentation.

[The Dark Shake 3000]

Well personally I don't give a fuck about apple or the iPhone, I just find it that Gizmodo is trying to paint themselves as some WikiLeaks-type intrepid underground journalists who are being targeted by the system for not playing by the rules, man when from by all accounts they brought this all on themselves anyway for telling everyone they purchased ill-gotten goods.

[naff]

Yeah that's pretty funny. Ass covering 101. Make yourself look like the victim.

[The Dark Shake 3000]

Wow, I didn't even know Chen put the apple dude's name out there. That seems totally uncalled for and probably cost him his job or at least got him in deep shit. I wasn't with Gizmodo before, but now I'd be perfectly okay with the cops stomping on all this dude's little toys and then letting the apple dude clock him in the face for good measure.

[naff]

He's still got his job (it has been reported on). Don't fret. Unlike the Apple engineer that showed Steve Wozniak an iPad 3G pre launch for 2 minutes and got fired.

[BlueTsunami]

SMH, its just a damn phone.

[Eel O'Brian]

most of the the gawker media sites fall under the "new yellow journalism" label - alternating between self-righteous/moralizing and muckraking depending on which tone pulls the most page views, constantly using the "we're just bloggers" defense against accusations of sloppy research and misinformation while enjoying the same sort of journalistic access and benefits of the normal press

i like how they pixelated out all jason chen's personal information and turned off comments for the post, too bad they didn't think to show the same consideration for the dude who lost the phone

btw, the guy who found the phone in the bar first offered it to engadget, they passed after consulting with their legal team

sounds like gizmodo needs a new legal team

[cool breeze]

I remember a day earlier Engadget had pictures of the thing and everyone on gaf was saying it was fake, ugly, looked like an nokia, etc.  A day later when it was "revealed" suddenly it became hot stuff.

but yeah, someone stole the phone, they bought stolen goods, they saved up a bunch of stories to last them a while including outing the guy who misplaced it.  Lame actions from Gizmodo for sure, but at least I can say that I know this will probably be my next phone.

[WrikaWrek]

Fuck Apple.

Next time Gizmondo should just leak all that shit without telling anybody they actually have the phone. They were dumb.

[Brehvolution]

I'm running the android theme and sounds on my iphone.

[The Fake Shemp]

Too bad you can't multitask, then it'd be like using a real Android phone!

[Brehvolution]

Too bad you can't multitask, then it'd be like using a real Android phone!

On a jailbroken iphone, there is an app for that.

[Bocsius]

I think my cellphone is -1G.

[brob]

I got one of them old ass Nokia phones. Not only does it not have any of that G shit, it's built to actively withstand all kinds of Gs you could throw at it, like astronaut-level Gs. Fuck movable parts nicca, I'm too raw.

[AdmiralViscen]

Droid Incredible
EVO 4G

[Bloodwake]

lolz. I'm definitely looking at getting a Droid when my contract is up.

[Bocsius]

i'm conflicted.  i think ethics are all fine and dandy, but i also hate internet apple fans, and like seeing them upset at something as dumb as a phone leak.

Works for me.

[Don Flamenco]

Ahahaha. Who cares, boohoo they cut ethical corners to get pageviews ANY news outlet in the same position would definitely do exactly the same thing. This was too good an opportunity to pass up. Capitalism bitches, everyone cuts ethical corners (some corners bigger than others, I'd say this was in the trivially minor category) to make a buck if the the payout is better than the punishment.

you distinguished mentally-challenged fellow, engadget had the exact same opportunity and passed on it because they knew how shady it was.  How often do you see outlets buying stolen prototypes of gadgets and doing full reveals before release?  They don't because they could get sued into ground.  Same reason that video game blogs and magazines don't "review" leaked games...they could get the jump on the competition, but at the risk of screwing themselves hard.  If apple decides to be a dick about this, those ad bucks will get sucked up by legal fees pretty damn fast.

The phone part is dumb.  Everyone knew there was an update coming.  I haven't actually seen anyone bitch about that. We basically just learned that it has a different form factor and a front facing camera.  It's everything else that they did...it was like a tech-version of Perez Hilton. 

[recursivelyenumerable]

why do you care about this

why

why am I posting in this thread

[Diunx]

Fuck Apple.

Next time Gizmondo should just leak all that shit without telling anybody they actually have the phone. They were dumb.

This.

[BlueTsunami]

why do you care about this

why

why am I posting in this thread

This is like the e-Version of some Darfur massacre (in overwhelming importance)

[Cormacaroni]

Apple shareholders have a legit beef, as the stock was pretty much guaranteed a significant bump on the day of the official announcement. It always happens, and folks always make money on it. This is the very definition of what we in the trade call 'material non-public information'. It would be hilarious if gizmodo tried to play the stock as well - if any of the editors have any apple holdings and sold them off after their story, they're screwed.

[ManaByte]

Excellent article by Newsweek on this:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/237186

Apple is famous for being nuts about secrecy—and for not having a sense of humor. So it was all the more entertaining when Gizmodo, a scrappy Silicon Valley tech blog, recently landed what its publisher called "the biggest tech scoop ever." It got hold of a top-secret, fourth-generation iPhone, ripped it apart, and published photos and descriptions of the device. (Guess what? It has a camera that faces you for video chatting!) Apple fumed and demanded Gizmodo return the phone, which an Apple engineer had left behind in a beer garden where he was celebrating his birthday.

Gizmodo gave back the phone, and that might have been the end of the story, but Apple just wouldn't let it drop. Four days later, police raided the Fremont, Calif., home of the reporter who had written the piece—and that sent the story spiraling out of control, with everyone from Rush Limbaugh to Keith Olbermann commenting on it. Jon Stewart of The Daily Show lashed into Apple, saying Steve Jobs and his team were behaving like "appholes."

It's the kind of attention that Apple, long a media darling, isn't used to. Apple's control-freak nature didn't matter as much when it was a plucky underdog. Yes, Jobs was a demanding boss and a finicky perfectionist—but he created great products. We rooted for Apple, and wanted it to survive. Apple seemed like the anti-Microsoft, a company that was on our side. But this year Apple will do nearly $60 billion in sales, and its market value stands at $240 billion—the third-largest in the United States, bigger than Coca-Cola and Pepsi combined. Any company that big can seem a little scary. So when police start breaking down doors over a lost phone, it's a PR disaster, especially for Apple. The company works hard to cultivate a counterculture image, with ads that have featured Gandhi and John Lennon, not to mention the "I'm a Mac" hipster. Yet lately Apple has started to look like the big bully of the tech industry, the kid who doesn't play well others. Over the long haul, that can put customers off.

The Gizmodo affair is only the latest in a string of skirmishes. Apple has fallen out with Google, a former ally, because Google moved into the mobile-phone market and has blocked Google Voice, a telephony app, from running on the iPhone. Apple is suing HTC, a Taiwanese phone maker and big Google partner, claiming that HTC's handsets infringe on Apple patents. Apple cracks down on its own engineers, and recently fired one for giving a glimpse of an early 3G iPad to Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, who complained that Apple had been too harsh. Apple bullies developers, telling them which software tools they can use and rejecting apps that ridicule public figures or that, in the case of journalist Michael Wolff, are created by people who have criticized Jobs himself.

Finally there's an ugly war with software maker Adobe, in which Apple refuses to support Adobe's Flash program on its iPhone and iPad, even though most of the Web's videos require Flash. Apple claims its rejection of Flash is based on technical arguments, but it still comes off looking like the heavy, the big company desperate to crush a smaller opponent.

Same goes for the Gizmodo affair. The tale, as told by Gizmodo, goes like this: On March 18, an Apple engineer named Gray Powell was celebrating his 27th birthday at Gourmet Haus Staudt, a beer garden in Redwood City, Calif., about 20 miles from Apple's headquarters in Cupertino. Powell carried with him a prototype next-generation iPhone, and somehow left it at the bar.

Another patron, Brian Hogan, 21 years old, found the phone, which looked like a regular iPhone but had some unusual bar codes stuck on the back. He took it home and realized that the case was a fake, and that inside the plastic shell was an entirely different phone. According to Gizmodo, Hogan contacted the blog, a negotiation took place, and Gizmodo ended up buying the device for $5,000.

Gizmodo wasn't sure the phone was a genuine Apple prototype; it could have been a fake. But when the editors took the phone apart they discovered it contained parts stamped with Apple's logo. On Monday, April 19, Gizmodo ran its story, by reporter Jason Chen. Nobody at Gizmodo will talk on the record because of the ongoing legal proceedings. Apple, for its part, also declines to comment.

But on the day the story ran, Jobs himself called Gizmodo editor Brian Lam and demanded Gizmodo return the phone. Lam said Gizmodo would comply but wanted Apple to make a formal request in writing, which would establish that the phone was from Apple. After some back-and-forth, Apple sent Gizmodo a letter, which Gizmodo gleefully published. That evening, the same day Gizmodo's article ran, an Apple lawyer retrieved the phone from Chen.

After this, instead of letting the whole thing drop, an Apple lawyer, plus Gray Powell, the engineer who lost the phone, called the San Mateo County district attorney to report that a phone had been stolen. Why do that after the device had been returned? Apple won't say. But the purpose of reporting a crime is to encourage law enforcement to investigate, says D.A. Stephen Wagstaffe.   

On Friday, April 23, a few days after Apple filed its report about the stolen phone, Chen and his wife came home from a dinner date and found police had broken in their door and were going through their house. The police, armed with a search warrant, took six computers. Gawker Media, which owns Gizmodo, complained to Wagstaffe that Chen, as a journalist, should be protected against such searches by a California shield law. Gawker demanded police return the computers. So far that hasn't happened.

Police have not brought charges Hogan, who says he regrets his mistake, or against anyone at Gizmodo. But the whole thing has sparked a debate about journalistic ethics. Some tech bloggers, including John Gruber and Jason Calacanis, argue that both the seller and Gizmodo broke the law. Others, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a legal-advocacy group, have sided with Gizmodo, saying police had no right to break into the home of a journalist.

Apple, for its part, seems to have realized that no matter who is right or wrong, having its brand associated with aggressive police action is probably not a great idea. So last week the company scrambled to draw attention away from the Gizmodo story by having Jobs publish an essay on the Apple Web site explaining Apple's reasons for shunning Adobe's Flash software. It worked, sort of. The tech blogs all ran with the news that Steve Jobs had come down from the mountain and published an essay. But the Gizmodo mess is not going away. Will it hurt Apple's business? Not immediately. If anything, the buzz could boost sales when the new phone ships, probably in June. Long term, however, Apple's brand could suffer. "I think there's going to be a backlash. It's all just dark and creepy," says Rob Frankel, a brand consultant in Los Angeles. Call it the price of success.   

[Eel O'Brian]

a company that was on our side

 

ah, me

"little guys"  "scrappy outsiders"

  

i mean, really, they spent millions on a ridley scott directed commercial back in 1983

 

jesus fuck i wish i'd gone to college for journalism, if this is the state of it i guess the basic requirement for employment is not sticking pencils up your nose

[Eel O'Brian]

not especially

[Purple Filth]

So he just realized apple's true nature of being bitches?

Sounds like his foundation was shattered.


How can you buy something for 5000 dollars and believed it could be a fake?

[Purple Filth]

dp

[bachikarn]

The Newsweek article made it sound like Gizmodo was a victim when they clearly weren't. Fuck both of them.

[Don Flamenco]

both came out looking dirty.  I don't think it'll have a longterm effect on apple's image, unless an ugly lawsuit pops up.  I think apple was just sending a message.  some mafia-style shenanigans!

[Yeti]

So did Steve Jobs have a good reason for not wanting to support Flash? Because I want it on my iphone, the old coot. 

[TakingBackSunday]

They have sound business reasons, yes.  Good reasons, logistically?  Probably not.

[Diunx]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/04/ellen-pokes-fun-at-apple-and-then-apologizes/

Apple

[Fresh Prince]

Ellen 
I have i-everything.

[Dickie Dee]

Ellen's awesome stfu

Apple

[Fresh Prince]

Referring to Ellen's grovelling afterwards. The skit was more about her being old and fat than making fun of Apple.

[chronovore]

I don't see why they don't press charges against Hogan, if they know he sold something he didn't own. Where's the good faith effort? I recall he called Apple and considered dropping it off at an Apple Store, but realized some counter staff might have easily sold it to someone unscrupulous...

So... what? He might as well do it himself? Selling the phone to gizmodo is like finding a jewelry shop labeled bag full of gems, and selling them to someone else after not knowing to WHICH store to return them.

[ManaByte]

I think they're not pressing any charges because they know Apple was distinguished mentally-challenged for calling the cops AFTER the phone was returned.

[bachikarn]

So did Steve Jobs have a good reason for not wanting to support Flash? Because I want it on my iphone, the old coot. 

Doesn't it require more processing power to run Flash, and thus, uses up more battery? Hence the push for HTML5 video because it would require less processing power. Although I'm sure Apple is pushing it so hard because they have stake in a private codec for HTML5. That is what my friend at work tells me, but he could be full of it as he is kind of an Apple fanboy.

[TripleA]

So did Steve Jobs have a good reason for not wanting to support Flash? Because I want it on my iphone, the old coot. 

The reason is money.

No flash support = No free music, no free tv shows, no free anything pretty much.

The iTunes trap.

[TakingBackSunday]

That's a load of bullshit.  All those don't magically go away with Flash not being in the unit.

[chronovore]

So did Steve Jobs have a good reason for not wanting to support Flash? Because I want it on my iphone, the old coot. 

Interesting opinion on that from Charles Stross' diary:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/why-steve-jobs-hates-flash.html

[TakingBackSunday]

Even Nintendo's considering it

[brawndolicious]

A few cities are doing free wifi.  I don't know of any big cities doing it though.

[Dickie Dee]

No home broadband in five years?  Really?

think where we were 5 years ago....

though then again, perhaps i should mention that obviously Japan and the US are going to have different challenges - US being HUGE is a bit of a problem coverage wise.
then again, try finding a wifi connection in TK. :/

One thing about the US is that yes, there are large swaths where not that many people live. But the thing is, not many people live there, so what, fuck'em. This doesn't mean civilized folk should be precluded from internetz and trainz.

Considering how urbanized/suburbanized the vast majority of the country is, this really shouldn't be controversial.

Edit: Oh, you're talking WiFi...dunno how that would work with suburban sprawl. I'm just continually pissed that we're not supposed to have proper public transportation in dense areas like California or the Northeast just because nobody lives in Wyoming.

[drew]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/04/ellen-pokes-fun-at-apple-and-then-apologizes/

Apple

that was actually pretty good!

ellen +1 point

spoiler (click to show/hide)

ellen now has -99 points

[close]

[chronovore]

After paying 5K for goods they could be certain were not for sale, Gizmodo is desperately trying to cast Apple as the bad guy, stumbling into Godwin's Law:

http://gizmodo.com/5427058/apple-gestapo-how-apple-hunts-down-leaks

http://gizmodo.com/5319275/report-iphone-leak-interrogations-drive-foxconn-employee-to-suicide