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Apr 12, 2001
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cava22-sf-0445-500x333.jpg


SFWeekly has cast some serious doubts about the lost iPhone 5 report posted by CNet yesterday. CNet had reported that an Apple employee had lost an iPhone prototype at a San Francisco restaurant and bar in July. Apple and the San Francisco Police reportedly investigated and even tracked down the location to a house which was searched.

SFWeekly called the San Francisco Police Department and discovered that they had no records of any investigation nor of any visit or search of the house claimed in the original article.
Esparza says no records of the visit to Bernal Heights by police officers -- which should be recorded in documentation per standard SFPD procedures -- exist at either Mission or Ingleside stations, at least one of which would have handled the incident. (Ingleside station covers Bernal Heights, while the phone was allegedly lost at Cava 22, a bar in the Mission.) Police dispatchers also have no records of any incident involving the address where the search for the phone supposedly took place, Esparza says.
Furthermore, the officer they spoke to said they had told CNet's reporter the same just weeks ago. Despite this, CNet reports their information came from someone 'familiar with the investigation". CNet has yet to clarify.

PCMag similarly contacted the San Francisco police who also denied any knowledge of the incident.

Article Link: San Francisco Police with No Record of Lost iPhone 5 Investigation
 

chrmjenkins

macrumors 603
Oct 29, 2007
5,325
158
MD
The whole thing has smelled kind of fishy. You're telling me this thing has been gone for over a month and no has paid to put it on the web?
 

eawmp1

macrumors 601
Feb 19, 2008
4,158
91
FL
Publicity. For the bar, CNET, Apple. However, what are th chances of history repeating itself?
 

Illumination

macrumors regular
Jul 6, 2011
196
0
Georgia, USA
Oh dear. Calling the police about the next iPhone. Talk about a new low. The police have better things to do than answer questions about a cell phone.

EDIT: -6? I feel so special. I love you all.
 
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pdjudd

macrumors 601
Jun 19, 2007
4,037
65
Plymouth, MN
Oh dear. Calling the police about the next iPhone. Talk about a new low. The police have better things to do than answer questions about a cell phone.

Maybe, but their job is to respond to press inquiries like this. Of course this should have been done by CNET and they would never have bothered to publish, but that’s life I suppose (actually they did - oops!). I think we can call the prior study nonsense at this point. It’s highly unlikely to be true. Either the Police is lying or the sole unnamed source is. Given that we have somebody on the record denying the events happened, I question the source even more than before.
 

pdjudd

macrumors 601
Jun 19, 2007
4,037
65
Plymouth, MN
crafty publicity scam to get mentions for the bar.

It’s possible a phone was lost in that bar and that phone is an iPhone. It’s very likely the rest is just a bunch of hooey that was made up afterward since the same thing happened last year. Who knows what this source really knows. I doubt that this source is from Apple though. I’m betting Apple is rather confused right now and is trying to communicate with all of it’s engineers to make sure any prototypes are accounted for - something they aren’t talking about.
 

theBB

macrumors 68020
Jan 3, 2006
2,453
3
As soon as the rumor came out, there were people who got suspicious as the article was so gushing about the menu options at the bar. It sounds like a publicity stunt for the bar and another low point for CNET.
 

ChrisA

macrumors G5
Jan 5, 2006
12,540
1,652
Redondo Beach, California
Have you ever been some place where an even happened that later shows up on the news. I have several times. In each case some reporter shows up, sometimes with a camera crew. Typically that are completely clueless about what is going on and ask a few questions, stay for 15 minutes then leave. later when I see the story they generally have the basic outline of the facts right but all the details wrong and some stuff they must have just made up. The print media is lightly better as they are doing more than a 15 second spot.

Can't blame them to much as they aren't experts on what they write about and are on short deadline.

on-line it's FAR worse as reporters mostly "report" on what they read on-line and never bother to fact check so these stories are cut and pasted from each other's web sites like a dog tail-chasing.
 

caliguy

macrumors 6502
Jun 12, 2005
331
1,029
Ok, so maybe there was no prototype iPhone lost at Cava 22, but did you know they offer a lime-marinated shrimp ceviche?
 

Juan007

macrumors 6502a
Jun 14, 2010
778
936
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A5313e Safari/7534.48.3)

One moron makes up a story and the entire media reports it as fact. Next time confirm with sources, it's called being a journalist.

I knew it was a bogus story all along. No way someone loses another prototype in a bar, Steve would come out of retirement just to rip the loser a new *****.
 

AIP5

macrumors 6502a
Aug 2, 2011
556
0
This story sounded way too much like an action movie to be true. With the world's wealthiest corporation dispatching "agents" to recover an unknown product, etc. Just don't think it's true....

Besides, we would have seen the leaked images of it by now, right?
 

old-school

macrumors 6502
Sep 2, 2009
285
34
UK
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_4 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8K2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Obvious PR for the bar.
 

The Beatles

macrumors regular
Jun 16, 2010
228
0
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

bb426 said:
Reporting nowadays can be summed up in three words.

It HELLA sucks.

What's up CNet?

The Media and especially web based news has lost it's credibility a long time ago. It's just clicks for ad revenue.

Have you ever wondered why web sites span a story across five different pages? It's all about the click. Screw the user and their experience.
 

The Beatles

macrumors regular
Jun 16, 2010
228
0
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

theBB said:
As soon as the rumor came out, there were people who got suspicious as the article was so gushing about the menu options at the bar. It sounds like a publicity stunt for the bar and another low point for CNET.

Thing is, marketers and businesses need to start thinking twice because all this crafty marketing BS has made me dislike businesses. I would rather NOT eat/drink at that bar because now I see them as deceitful and untrustworthy.
 

vitzr

macrumors 68030
Jul 28, 2011
2,765
3
California
That's OK, I still think the whole thing is hillarious.

Perhaps they were just mocking Apple :)

You've got to have a sense of humor!
 

mac=saif

macrumors newbie
Aug 26, 2010
21
0
London, UK
Even if this were true, how can a dude lose a one of a kind iPhone 5 prototype in a restaurant? It should be the first thing on his agenda to check for the iPhone when he leaves.
Saying that I have never managed to lose any of my mobile phones when I'm outside, not to forget my iPhone.
This is just a publicity stunt or that Apple engineer has go to be really dumb. Which I highly doubt latter!
 

Glideslope

macrumors 604
Dec 7, 2007
7,887
5,326
The Adirondacks.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

2nd post. Never Happened.
 
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