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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Wozniak having a "sense of humor" about someone else's misfortune doesn't help that person. Meanwhile, there's the guy's name, plastered on a rich famous guy's belly, being mocked. I stand by my original comment and believes it sums the situation up precisely.

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Had I lost my iPhone prototype, having Woz go to the effort to make a t-shirt and take this picture would absolutely have made my day. Anyone who knows anything about Woz knows that this was done with a good heart.

Had I lost it, I would have thought it weird that a guy like steve wozinak has nothing better to do than make a t shirt with my name on it.

With all the publicity this story has gathered? I certainly wouldn't. Then again, Woz was the guy that placed professionally crafted signs reading "Warning: Do not use over populated areas" and put them on airplane lavatories, so I wasn't surprised to see him pull something like this.

He didn't make it. Those shirts literally appeared hours after the story broke and his name was out there.

Au contraire... He's making light of the situation because it doesn't deserve a heavy-handed approach, and the engineer in question will be just fine at Apple. Losing the prototype could have happened to anyone.

It's good-natured ribbing. Besides, Woz doesn't have it in him to be mean, I reckon.

There's not a single pair of subject and predicate in this comment that I agree with. That's fine. We can disagree. I think much less of Wozniak for joking about someone else's career.

I agree to disagree - I don't have insider knowledge, so I may be utterly wrong. Perhaps we'll find out soon enough.

My feeling is this is a bit of social signalling going on. Woz is saying 'Gray is one of us, we can joke around about it, because that's the kind of teasing we can do in our circle'. If the matter were serious, Wozniak would indeed be out of line, and he'd hopefully know better than to do this. There's no need to keep Powell's name secret anymore, he's part of the Apple mythology now.

There is a few bits more info in this article: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20003345-37.html

Woz:"It seems clear that (Powell) kept the iPhone prototype secret enough to satisfy Apple. It's a bad accident that could happen to any of us."

If Wozniak was an Apple spokesperson, that comment would carry a lot of weight. But he isn't. He has no authority here whatsoever. And I think he's wrong.

I imagine he has the ear of more than a handful of important people at Apple, so him saying 'give the kid a break' would have a fair degree of influence.

Why do you imagine this? Apple in 2010 is to my eyes a completely different company than the one Wozniak worked at. Wozniak has publicly criticized it.

Do you disagree with the first sentence, the second sentence, or both?

There's clearly no malice intended, and I'd say "mocked" is far too strong a term. He's making fun of the situation, not Gray himself.

If you find this joke to be insensitive I'm having a hard time imagining what sort of humor you approve of, given practically every joke out there makes fun of someone/something.

There's nothing wrong with making fun of people. I do it incessantly. But I avoid doing it to people when they're down. And, if I ever achieve the sort of success Wozniak has, I hope I'll avoid doing it to people just starting to make their way in my field.

Totally agree that publishing the guy's name in the first place was the dickest move in a long time and that it's douchey to keep publishing it. But Wozniak by all accounts doesn't have a malicious bone in his body, so people (including me) take for granted that his intent is not to kick a guy when he's down.

I'd be willing to bet this wasn't his idea, that someone handed him the shirt and he went along with the gag as much to be agreeable as because he thought it was funny. So as far as gradations of jerkdom are concerned second prize ought to go not to Woz but to whomever produced the shirt, whose purpose requires no speculation:

http://www.zazzle.com/the_unofficial_gray_powell_iphone_t_sh...

(Edit: Deleted the sentence "It does seem like poor judgment, though, also not out of character for Woz." That was sloppily and hastily written, didn't convey what I meant, and isn't even something I believe.)

An iPhone baseband engineer is not "just starting to make [his] way."

He graduated in 2006. He's a kid. I'm sure he's better at his job now than I ever could be, but that's beside the point.

You really have no idea who, never mind what, you're talking about, do you?

I don't know the baseband guy at all, even a little bit, if that's what you're getting at.

"practically every joke out there makes fun of someone/something."

Those are the types of jokes Americans like. I prefer surreal/absurdist humor. http://www.laughlab.co.uk/

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