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Comment by angstrom | Hacker News Reader

I find it pretty despicable they made no honest attempt to get the prototype back to Apple. Until they posted actual information they could've returned it to Apple and I'm sure Apple would've reimbursed them the $5K for the phone and possibly given them future preference for the good deed.

This is "Finder's keepers, loser's weepers" hiding behind freedom of press. It isn't by any means in the territory of whistle blowing. And you certainly don't have to steal in order to post an opinion. Suppose I find someone's credit card and I want to laugh at the silliness of the design on the card, do I really need to post pictures of the card along with the 16 digit number, expiration date, and security number before giving it back to them and hiding behind "Freedom of the Press"?

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> I find it pretty despicable they made no honest attempt to get the prototype back to Apple.

Apparently they did, and were ignored. Nobody has come up with anything that refutes this so far.

I look at it as: someone made an innocent mistake losing a phone, someone found a phone and called a company, Apple's bureaucracy fucked up and didn't respond as soon as it should have.

Wonder if sjobs@apple.com with attached pictures would've worked. An honest effort isn't "Oh, we called and employee # 1034434393 was clueless." It's on par with a lost wallet. They had all the information.

Unless you diligently read "the letters from steve jobs", you probably wouldn't even know he answers emails.

Though, I upvote you, because all this time, I thought it was steve.jobs@apple.com :/

Googling for "Steve Jobs email" turns up a huge number of references.

My memory could be off but wasn't it the guy who found the device and sold it to Apple that supposedly made the effort to return it?

> sold it to Apple

Did you mean Gizmodo? Or am I completely out of the loop on this one?

nope… you're right. I mistyped that.

If that were true, then how did they so easily contact the guy who lost it and out him after the original post detailing the phone? Conceivably they could have called him before they printed the story about him.

"Apparently they did"

Nope. He had Gray Powell's information but didn't contact him. He took it from the bar and then didn't check back, despite that being the obvious first place it would be looked for. He didn't take it to the police, despite that being both common sense and the law.

Instead, he claims he tried calling a public apple number or two and then sold it.

From what I've been told it was Gizmodo who pieced together Gray Powells identity. The finder knew part of the info, Gizmodo did some detective work to find the rest.

Again, I'm not quite sure the californian police care items left by drunk people in public places.

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