It seems that Apple employees are really terrible at keeping unreleased iPhones from going missing. An employee of the company reportedly left a new prototype iPhone at a bar in San Francisco. This would mark the second time an unreleased iPhone has been left in a bar.
Cnet is reporting that in late July an Apple employee left an iPhone prototype at Cava 22 in San Francisco's Mission district. Supposedly the device was taken from that bar and sold on Craigslist for $200. There aren't any specific details about the device like what it looks like or even what version of iOS it's running.
A source says that a few days after the device was left at Cava 22, Apple contacted the San Francisco police and told them the device was priceless and needed to be recovered. Apple then traced the phone's location to a home in the Bernal Heights neighborhood of San Francisco.
The police and Apple's own investigators visited the home and questioned the home owner about the missing phone. He confirmed that he was at the bar, but said he knew nothing about the missing device. The man even allowed his home to be searched by police who turned up nothing. The Apple employees tried to offer cash for the phone, no questions asked, but he still said he knew nothing about it.
Cava 22's owner, Jose Valle, told CNET that Apple had never contacted him about the lost phone but that a man did call a few times about a lost iPhone in late July.
After the prototype iPhone 4 was lost last year, Apple has gone through a whole lot of trouble to protect prototype devices from getting out into the wild. Devices are shipped to phone providers in sealed boxes so that they can be tested against the network without escaping captivity. It has got to be horrendously embarrassing that the very same thing is happening again.
It seems that sealed boxes solved the problem of iPhones going missing between Apple and cell providers, but it does nothing for the situation where Apple's own employees can't seem to keep track of their phones when they get boozed up. Perhaps the solution is to chain prototype devices to the employees carrying them. Handcuffs that only higher ups have the key for might just do the trick.
Until Apple comes up with some sort of protection from stupidity, it's likely that prototype devices are going to keep finding their way into someone else's hands.
