Well I got a reply back from Gizmodo...

[otis123]

In my eyes this was bad journalism. Gizmodo is ran by a pack of New York, hipster douchebags. These people don't have normal lives, they have no concept of reality, they get paid to obsess over gadgets. I honestly think they have no idea, this guy's life is ruined, and they blackballed him in the tech world, and their editor posted some garbage apology that the story was "human" that's ********, they wanted to get as many clicks as they could, they don't care about him at all, so they dragged out the story as much as they could. I'm not proposing a witch hunt, or anything like that, but I used to be a frequent reader, and I will no longer be visiting the site. Telling the world his name, and showing his picture was wrong.

(p.s. I really don't have any animosity towards people from new york, it's just the attitude that gizmodo has that NY is the center of the universe.)

 

[Jack Dangers]

The mistake is laughable, and if Apple really fired him for this simple mistake than Apple is a company which I'd never want to work for. I'd hate to see what happens to the guy that gets Steve Jobs the wrong flavored coffee. Gizmodo said it best... "After all, it's just a f***ing iPhone and mistakes can happen to everyone—Gray Powell, Phil Schiller, you, me, and Steve Jobs."

Sorry Gizmodo is wrong. If the story is true, this is a lot more than just a phone. This is the prototype or actual next generation model of the most coveted piece of tech out there. Love it or hate it, the iPhone is the phone to beat. The effects of this technology being leaked prematurely are quite serious.

and I'll say it again, the outing of Gray on their blog was just wrong and unnecessary.

 

[aluren]

I've found phones before. The first thing I do is go to the contacts list and look for Mom. Or Dad. Or Sweetipie. Or Babycakes, Shnookems, Googlybear, etc.

Next I go to missed calls and usually there are ten or fifteen from a single number made from the guy missing the phone or a friend of his. If not, I start at the top.

If one is going with the 'controlled leak' conspiracy theory, one could assume that the guy who 'found' the phone was a part of it. Apple doesn't leave anything to chance and IMO that would include 'losing' a prototype phone hoping that a random person would know to go to a gadget blog site so that it could be dissected and shown to the world.

If Apple is indeed behind the whole thing (and that doesn't necessarily mean Jobs) then the 'random guy' who 'found' the phone did just enough to claim he tried to get the phone back to it's owner before going to Gizmodo, knowing his attempts would be brushed off as a hoax.

Again, all of the above only comes into consideration if you believe that the entire situation is a setup by Apple.

I'm thinking the same thing. The first thing I thought of was why Gizmodo. Out of all the possible people/companies that this guy could sell the phone to, he sold it to Gizmodo. And also, it mentioned that he asked around to see if anyone lost their phone at the bar. If his intention was to really return it to the owner, then he should have left the phone with the bar owner to handle it.

 

[ronnyuk]

Looks like he did try to give the phone back by calling Apples switchboard, but then prob realised what he had and made some $$$


Quote
"The saga of the missing Apple iPhone 4 continues. Blogs have named the unlucky Apple employee who lost a prototype for the upcoming Apple iPhone 4 while in a Californian bar.

27-year-old software engineer Gray Powell is believed to have been working on the iPhone’s call enabling software. He left it disguised in an iPhone 3GS case on a bar stool.

A passer-by played with it whole playing with it noted Powell’s name on the Facebook app and then realised that the phone was superior to the standard Apple iPhone 3GS it was disguised as. Apple apprently “killed” the iPhone 4 remotely and the passer-by is understood to have called the Apple switchboard to contact Mr Powell. When that failed, the passer-by then sold it to technology blog Gizmodo. It’s unclear exactly how much they paid but I’ve seen figures ranging from $5,000 to $10,000.

 

[Junkie2]

most people felt the same way as you OP in the beginning.

gizmodo is right though.. he screw up pretty big and now he is protected to some extent.

 

[sommls]

i'm glad that there is at least that 25% of people who would actually turn it in to the bar or try to call owner or a contact, not everybody is that dishonest, to just sell it off.

Want something that will actually renew your faith in humanity?

I dropped my 3G a block from home in a park while playing with my kid. Within an hour, a guy's 5 year old picked it up and handed it to him. He called Apple, got instructions on how to pull the SIM card for the number, and told them what it was. They emailed me within 6 hours and gave me contact info for the guy, who returned it without asking a reward (he got one, anyway).

OK, it wasn't even the current model, but still...

 

[pixelated]

I think it's a strange coincidence that the things he said he did to return it are all things that can't be documented or really confirmed/denied by anybody.

I'm just forming opinions on information given. I'm not going to assume there is a lie because that's impossible to confirm.

If I find a lost phone, I first ask anybody in the immediate surrounding area if they know whose it is (which he supposedly did). Immediately after that I'd go in the recent calls list and call someone and tell them. (which he didn't do).

Yes, because i'm sure the guy was using the prototype as his regular phone

I highly doubt he had intentions of returning the phone. He probably saw an iPhone laying there and picked it up figuring he could sell it on craigslist for $500 or so, just like 75% of people who find iPhone's would do.

But he didn't. He sold it to a news source.

You really don't see the difference between "can't find the owner" and "accepting cash for the item"?

There's, like, no gap there in your mind? No middle-ground or other choices? It's just all the same thing?

I don't really understand your question. Of course there is a difference, but this isn't a simple case of an individual loosing his phone. Its a lazy form of corporate espionage.
As the iphone was obviously an unreleased model, the owner is Apple. Apple is getting the phone back, and we all get a sneak peak. So some guy makes a little cash and the idiot who lost it gets chewed out. Is that so morally disgusting?

 

[Dammit Cubs]

I think i would of sold it for more than 5K.

5K = weak sauce.

 

[Jelsoft]

Hello,

Powell is now under the public eye, which will protect him against
Apple firing him (We believe he's still employed and Apple didn't fire
him when they found out, a month ago. He's a valuable engineer). It's
embarrassing, yes, but it's like insurance. If Apple fires him, they
will get a huge PR backslash.

That is some ******** right there. Why should Gizmodo orchestrate an insurance policy for this guy? Set up a potential PR backlash? Totally unprofessional. It's Apple's sole business. Maybe they forgave him, but now we'll never know.

Also, as if Brian Lam wouldn't have fired his own if they had similarly lost the prototype right after purchase and it somehow ended up with Engadget, who would have then got the whole scoop.

I'm also sure they wouldn't, in that hypothetical scenario, have appreciated Engadget also having the audacity to setting up their own 'insurance' scheme.

**** gizmodo. What kind of a scoop was that anyway? No internal specs, no attempt to find a way around the remote wipe, losing to Engadget for the first pics.

Journalists? Amateur hacks with zero credibility. They're just the TMZ of tech. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the problem with their scoop was simply down to their combined sheer ignorance towards technology.

Plus that whole gawker template thing sucks.

Oh, and either they've really ****ed Apple, or they've really been ****ed by Apple. Unfortunately for them, the first entails the second anyway.

 

[Pared]

The phone was under his full control and it was 100% his fault for losing the iPhone. Why are we sympathizing him?

Because it's a ******* phone. It's not the cure for cancer and it was a simple mistake. No need to possibly destroy someone's life over such a trivial thing.

And yes, I realize the zealots here can't understand my post. Oh well.

 

[Dammit Cubs]

It's one thing if apple terminated this employee the very next day for the loss of a prototype phone.

But the reason we sympathize is that because there's one thing for people to know that apple lost a prototype phone. It's another for the world to know that gray powell lost the iPhone due to excess drinking on his birthday.

Both answers hold gray powell at fault, but the second brings more WTF questions than the first. And giving the guys name, you are basically adding salt to a wound. I think he learned his lesson when he lost Apples most important device that night. Now, forever will there be jokes about him.

Maybe he will get sympathy sex.....I heard its in lately.

 

[msavwah]

gizmodo annoys me, stopped paying attention to that site a long time ago.

this whole iphone4 incident just fortified my position against them.

 

[Voidness]

I've said it before: Gizmodo are a bunch of clowns. Anyone remembers their CES Prank?

Carey Holzman of Computer America brought to my attention this prank that Gizmodo is bragging about. Apparently, Gizmodo’s Richard Blakeley brought an infrared device that shuts TVs down and went around the show floor crashing people’s presentation. Even DEFCON hacker’s convention would consider this form of miscief bad form and they’d throw you out for doing this.

 

[Dammit Cubs]

Someguy wrote this on gizmodo as a commenter.....

I think it's funny that you (the Gizmodo staff) are calling us trite, childish buffoons when it is you (the Gizmodo staff) that have, in all seriousness, been acting like a five year old discovering a sand dollar on a beach for the first time over this iPhone nonsense.

While I understand and respect that your site is not meant to be a serious, highly professional journalism outlet, it is no excuse to abandon all pretense of journalistic integrity in a fairly bizarre attempt to clamber up the highest mountain to shout "HA HA!" at whoever will listen.

I have been a faithful Giz reader and commenter for quite a while now, and have always loved your site for its unique reporting style and timeliness in discovering new (and cool) gadgets and gizmos. Lately, though, the site has taken an undeniable and very noticeable bent towards Apple fanboy-ism.

This is fine, as you have every right to determine the direction your site takes, but know that you will lose a lot of readers that frequent this site, which was formerly known for its unaligned nature. Yes, we know that Apple has come out with a lot of new products, and deserves a fair amount of coverage, but - to put it bluntly - you've taken it too far.

This "We found ur iPhone lololol" fiasco really pushed it over the line. Gloating that you found an iPhone? Fine, great! Journalism scoop of the century! Awesome! Admitting you paid $5,000 to get said iPhone kind of tarnishes it - the whole "paying for stolen property" thing - but whatever, it happens.

Then you had to go and find out who lost the iPhone and destroy his ****ing life. That's the part I'm not cool with at all. No, I'm serious. He is ruined. He will forever be known as "The guy that lost the iPhone" solely because of you. He will never be able to get another job after he gets angrily fired from Apple because the first thing that's gonna pop up when somebody Googles (or Bings, whatever) his name is going to be you - you *******s broadcasting to the planet what an idiot he was. He will never have a chance to recover from this.

Have you ever heard of concealing your sources? You remember Valerie Plame? People die when sources are revealed, and I will not be surprised one bit if police find his body hanging from a noose in his closet in a few weeks, and it will be your fault.

This is why the comment streams have become rivers of fire lately. It is not because we've suddenly forgotten how to be civil, or that our intelligence levels suddenly decreased 50 points. It is because you have wholly and recklessly abused the power bestowed to you as journalists, to the detriment of at least one person's life, and society as a whole.

This is why I've taken the time to write a 500 word essay about this. You can ban me, disemvowel me, do whatever you want, but I've made my point. I write this because I care. I write this because I long for the Gizmodo of Old, where the authors discovered and shared the delights of new and wonderful things without bias or disposition.

I write this because I love you, Gizmodo. Please don't hurt me any more.

Love,
Jason

 

[greygray]

Well done. Gizmodo has been a total bitch about this.

 

[JonB3Z]

"...destroyed his life..." Seriously, people? Yeah, the poor guy is probably embarrassed and upset, but that's a long way from having one's life destroyed. (I know a guy who got hooked on pain killers after a traffic accident then descended into heroin drug addiction. He has lost his wife and job and is presently living in a halfway house. Now that is "destroying his life.") Perspective, please!

Apple runs the risk of this sort of thing happening when they allow prototype devices out of the building. If they "destroy the life" of someone who innocently lost such a device by mistake, what Apple employee would ever again agree to field-test a prototype product?

 

[jayenh]

going back to the guy who should have returned the phone...

he knew it was running 4.0, so we can assume he could get in to the device. we also know that one of the last things that Gray guy did with the phone was update his facebook profile, so we can assume the facebook app was on there...

it's not rocket science, i don't need to explain further. i think the finder was probably going to keep it, realised the next day that it wasn't a regular iphone, and so made a poor effort to return it knowing he was just going to sell it to the media anyway.

in fact how do we know this guy didn't steal it out of Gray's jacket or something? there seems to be a lot of trust in a guy who "found" a phone at a bar then made the least possible effort to return it, and the only part of which that can be proven happened when he realised he didn't have a regular iphone in his hands. how convenient.

this is, of course, all still assuming that this is genuine and not a planned leak.

[edit] just noticed the quote above mentioning rining apple and asking for Gray, i hadn't seen that part on Gizmodo yet, what i read at the time of it happening was that he found it, waited around, took it home, rang apple, then rang gizmodo. anyway... he rang apple support asking for Gray? how is that going to work. if he knew the name he should have gone back to the bar and asked if someone called Gray had been looking for a lost item. or even better, get on facebook and send him a message?

 

[angevil]

Maybe it was a controlled leak, now the new iPhone is all over media and that`s what they wanted in the first place. Maybe the guy who lost it was an irresponsible idiot - why would he get drunk in a bar with something so valuable and secret? I would fire him for sure. Either that or make him clean toilets in the Apple headquarters. Maybe his iPhone was stolen by the ″guy who found it″. I guess we will never know the truth. We just get some stories. The ″guy who found it″ should have given it to the bartender.

Whatever is the truth, I don`t care that much, I just want the new iPhone, NOW!

 

[jakeacc]

everyone is a douche

Everyone involved in this article is a douche:

1. Gizmodo is a douche for displaying the Apple employee's name. (and picture??) They are a tech blog. If they wanted to post pictures of the prototype, fine. They claim they are doing the employee a favor by publishing his full name. Apple will not get any backlash for firing him. And he will now have his name tainted when applying to other companies. (no one wants to hire a dumb ass who leaves a valuable prototype on a bar stool) All employees who receive confidential info from Apple have to sign agreements. If any of this info is leaked, they should be prepared to suffer the consequences.

2. The guy who apparently found this iPhone in the bar is a douche. If he REALLY wanted to return the phone to the owner, he could have. He had access to the Facebook app, the email app, Recent Calls/Phone Book. He did not tell a single bar employee about the lost phone nor did he leave his contact info in case the owner returned. (the apple employee did call the bar several times in the days after the incident frantically looking for his phone)

3. The Apple employee is a douche. He signed confidentially agreement forms when he took possession of the prototype. As a "tester",he could do whatever he wanted with it - play games, surf web, try to break it, etc. The one and only rule was DON'T LOSE IT. When he wasn't using the phone, it should have been in his pocket. Don't leave it laying on a bar stool. Gizmodo says that Apple would get bad PR for firing him. I say he should be fired immediately. the next-gen iPhone is a huge product for Apple which details would have only been officially released in June. Now that several hardware specs (front-facing camera, etc) have been released, Apple's competitors now have 2-3 extra months starting to implement them into their own phones. One of the reasons the iPhone has always been successful is because they create must-have features that other phones don't have. (and competitors have to spend several months after the iPhones release to copy their features - ala touch-screen, multi-touch, app store)

 

[GoCubsGo]

Looks like you are a Cubs fan so you are probably used to blurting out things before thinking...like World Series baby!

J/K I had to -White Sox fan here.

I'd like to believe that this member is not representative of Cubs fans as a whole. Some of us don't tend to do silly attention-seeking things and then advertise them for unknown reasons.


OP, you were real wrong. If Gizmodo is a douche it's because they resort to childish pranks, not because they outed the dumbass who lost the phone.

 

[Dammit Cubs]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20003021-261.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Father says he was "devasted"

 

[marksman]

I sent an e-mail to them telling them "you suck balls" and all I got back was a vacation message, saying that he was hiding out until May 10th or so.

 

[Penguissimo]

Everyone involved in this article is a douche:

1. Gizmodo is a douche for displaying the Apple employee's name. (and picture??) They are a tech blog. If they wanted to post pictures of the prototype, fine. They claim they are doing the employee a favor by publishing his full name. Apple will not get any backlash for firing him. And he will now have his name tainted when applying to other companies. (no one wants to hire a dumb ass who leaves a valuable prototype on a bar stool) All employees who receive confidential info from Apple have to sign agreements. If any of this info is leaked, they should be prepared to suffer the consequences.

2. The guy who apparently found this iPhone in the bar is a douche. If he REALLY wanted to return the phone to the owner, he could have. He had access to the Facebook app, the email app, Recent Calls/Phone Book. He did not tell a single bar employee about the lost phone nor did he leave his contact info in case the owner returned. (the apple employee did call the bar several times in the days after the incident frantically looking for his phone)

3. The Apple employee is a douche. He signed confidentially agreement forms when he took possession of the prototype. As a "tester",he could do whatever he wanted with it - play games, surf web, try to break it, etc. The one and only rule was DON'T LOSE IT. When he wasn't using the phone, it should have been in his pocket. Don't leave it laying on a bar stool. Gizmodo says that Apple would get bad PR for firing him. I say he should be fired immediately. the next-gen iPhone is a huge product for Apple which details would have only been officially released in June. Now that several hardware specs (front-facing camera, etc) have been released, Apple's competitors now have 2-3 extra months starting to implement them into their own phones. One of the reasons the iPhone has always been successful is because they create must-have features that other phones don't have. (and competitors have to spend several months after the iPhones release to copy their features - ala touch-screen, multi-touch, app store)

Agree with you entirely on the first two points, and on the third point that Powell should have been more responsible, but the bolded part is a little weak. In theory, yes, this could give competitors an advantage and sneak peek at Apple's next-gen features. In the real world, however, Apple is rarely at the cutting edge in terms of hardware. Most of their competitive advantage has come from software-hardware integration and the user experience that results from this. The only new features provided by this "scoop" that weren't already revealed by the OS 4.0 unveiling (noise-canceling mic, front-facing camera, better rear camera, LED flash for the camera) are things that Apple's competitors implemented into their own phones a long time ago; it's not like everyone is going to wake up and say "Wow, a front-facing camera?? We never would have thought of that!" The real story here will be what Apple DOES with the camera (see iChat rumors), and of course we don't know yet what that'll look like.

So basically the only real revealed secret here is the new body, which is a big deal, but hardly something that warrants firing the guy. Maybe not trusting him with a prototype again for awhile (although I find it hard to believe he'd make this mistake again), but I don't think it'll hurt Apple too much for its competitors to find out about the LED flash a few months early.

 

[appleguy123]

This is nothing like how Apple has leaked information in the past. This is not a controlled leak. I wish people would stop latching on to the phrase "controlled leak". Sheesh.

ConTrolled leak like a cloastomy bag?