Gizmodo outs Apple employee who lost prototype phone

http://gizmodo.com/5520438/how-apple-lost-the-next-iphone

Long story short: Apple engineer loses a prototype phone, random stranger finds it, realizes what he has, and sells it to Gawker-owned tech blog Gizmodo for $5000. Gizmodo runs a story detailing the specs of the phone, then publishes the name of the poor sucker that lost it.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, Gawker being Gawker, but this seems like a pretty classless and unethical move on the blog's part. As if it's not bad enough for them to buy what is essentially stolen property, they then turn around and potentially ruin some guy's career for no particular reason. Gawker has claimed that Apple obviously already knew who lost the phone and they're trying to protect the guy's job by bringing public scrutiny on Apple before they have a chance to just fire him outright... but it seems like it'd be pretty hard to get another development job when everyone in Silicon Valley knows you as "the guy that lost Apple's prototype at a bar."

Predictably, people have also suggested that this is all a big PR stunt by Apple. Given the amount of coordination and collusion that would require (convincing Gizmodo to flat-out make up a story about buying a phone for $5000, etc.), that just doesn't seem likely.

The saddest part of all this is that, tech journalism and especially tech blogging being what it is, it'll probably be a huge win for Gizmodo/Gawker in just about every respect, unless Apple decides to crush them with lawsuits.

 

Short story shorter: D_B
http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/77320/

 

Dang, didn't think to check the anything goes forum and my search skills are clearly lacking. I was mostly concerned with Gawker's shady journalistic practices, rather than the story itself, in any case.