iPhone 4G/HD Saga Continues: Apple & Police Are Investigating the Lost/Stolen iPhone [Apple Wants to Find Out How Next-gen iPhone Got Lost; Where Will Apple Stop?]

Posted on TFTS by Chris Smith on Friday, 23. April 2010 under: Comment & Opinion, Mobile/Cell Phones

I know you must be tired to hear about the next-gen Apple iPhone everywhere you turn your head to, but it looks like the saga of the lost/stolen iPhone 4G/HD continues. This time around we have more details about the police involvement in the matter which goes to show that Apple wants to find out exactly what happened with its prototype in the month since it was stolen.

According to CNET it now looks like the police is investigating the events that lead to Gizmodo’s iPhone 4G/HD front page story being published and getting picked up by every other important news channel in the world.

Apple has talked to local police and the investigation is apparently lead by a computer crime task force, the REACT (Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team) led by the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office. It looks like Apple wants to know if there are enough grounds to file criminal charges and it will be interesting to see whether Cupertino’s legal department will sue Gizmodo or Gawker in the weeks to come.

We all know that Gizmodo published an exclusive iPhone 4G/HD story this week and there’s nothing really wrong with that, is it? They paid for that prototype $5,000 and claimed the unit was lost, not stolen. Nothing wrong with that either you’d say but here’s where things get complicated, legally speaking of course.

A California law says that any person that finds lost property, knows the owner and doesn’t return the item is guilty of theft. Clearly with an iPhone 4G/HD on your hands you’ll surely know who’s looking for it. It’s Apple, and the company will be more than happy to get it back before it makes it to the press. Once the press gets it, it should make sure it doesn’t divulge any details regarding that newly discovered device and return it to the owner, in order not to breach other existing laws. But then again that wouldn’t be much of a story, would it?

On the other hand, if the device was truly lost back in March, and if the person that contacted Gizmodo tried to return it to Apple but failed, then Gizmodo wasn’t really breaking the trade secrets law, was it? Since basically Apple lost the iPhone but Apple was well aware at all times that this was a possibility, having issued lots of prototype units to various engineers. Furthermore, by not revealing to its staff the problem that appeared, lost new iPhone in the wild, its customer care representatives failed to establish a first contact with the person that found the device. That could be the real story or that could be the story being fed to all of us so far.

Speaking of this person, and I am sure you are as curious as me as to who s/he is and why isn’t s/he willing to come clean with everything, I am actually surprised to hear how many people are making fun of the guy that lost the device, whose identity is public by the way, but miss the fact that nobody, except Gizmodo for now, knows who the person that found/stole the device really is. Wouldn’t it be a lot easier if we all knew who that person really is and then get to hear her/his side of the story?

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