For anyone who has ever lost a cellphone, remember this: it could be worse. You could be the person who left his phone in a bar in California. And it wasn\u2019t just any phone; it was a supersecret version of the next iPhone. That model is not expected to be formally unveiled for a couple of months. <\/p>\n
For the people at Apple, it must be like a bad version of the guy walks into a bar joke.<\/p>\n
The company is known as the most secretive in Silicon Valley, and leaks are rare. But after the phone prototype was left in a bar in the Silicon Valley town of Redwood City, photos of the device began appearing over the weekend in technology blogs, sparking a frenzy of hype among the Apple-obsessed.<\/p>\n
Before long, pictures of the product appeared on Gizmodo, a technology news site, whose editors ripped it apart \u2014 as if it were an alien from another planet \u2014 to dissect its features. The Web site said late Monday that the phone belonged to an Apple engineer.<\/p>\n
The phone\u2019s authenticity was hotly debated, but most bloggers concluded it was real. And a person with knowledge of Apple\u2019s hardware plans who was not authorized to speak on behalf of the company confirmed to The New York Times that it was real.<\/p>\n
Apple declined to comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is very stunning,\u201d said Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, who has been following Apple for nearly three decades. \u201cApple has such tight control on new products, and they are kept under wraps diligently and religiously until the day of their release. If it is true, it is really a first.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some wondered whether the phone was planted by Apple\u2019s formidable publicity machine.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the sake of the person who dropped it, I hope this is a devious marketing scheme,\u201d said Paul Saffo, a veteran Silicon Valley forecaster. \u201cBut I think it is unlikely. There is no one else on the planet whose shoes I would less like to be in it at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a blog post on Monday detailing how it obtained the phone, Gizmodo said it was left by an iPhone software engineer at Gourmet Haus Staudt, a German specialty store and beer garden in Redwood City.<\/p>\n
The person who found the phone peddled it to Gizmodo, which bought it for $5,000, Nick Denton, chief executive of Gawker Media, which owns Gizmodo, said by instant message.<\/p>\n
His company\u2019s sites have had a longstanding practice of paying for scoops, and the windfall was tangible. Traffic spiked on Monday, and at midday more than one million visitors stopped by the site in one hour to see pictures of the coveted gadget.<\/p>\n
By late in the day, reports began to surface on the Internet that Apple\u2019s chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, had called Gizmodo to get the device back. Mr. Denton declined to comment, saying any conversation between Mr. Jobs and Gizmodo would most likely have been off the record.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t had any formal communication with Apple,\u201d he said. Brian Lam, the editor in chief of Gizmodo, said his publication would \u201cprobably\u201d return the device to Apple.<\/p>\n
From the front, it looks similar to the current iPhone, but it has sharper edges and is a little thinner. The volume and power buttons are stylistically different, and the back of the phone appears to be a ceramic glass, which would enable better reception. That would address a persistent problem that has plagued the iPhone since its inception three years ago.<\/p>\n
Late Monday night, Gizmodo said that it received a letter from Bruce Sewell, Apple\u2019s senior vice president and general counsel, requesting the phone back. “It has come to our attention that Gizmodo is currently in possession of a device that belongs to Apple,” Mr. Sewell wrote in a letter that Gizmodo published.<\/p>\n
“This letter constitutes a formal request that your return the device to Apple,” the letter said.<\/p>\n
Resource<\/b>:
\n http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/04\/20\/technology\/companies\/20apple.html?src=busln<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For anyone who has ever lost a cellphone, remember this: it could be worse. You could be the…\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[168,196,765],"class_list":{"0":"post-1101","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-enterprise-mobile-application-development","7":"tag-apple-iphone","8":"tag-iphone-app","9":"tag-iphone-application-development"},"yoast_head":"\n