Apparently the story goes that some young Apple developer went to a bar and left a new iphone prototype behind, which was cleverly disguised in a case to make it look like a regular iphone.

Some guy picked it up, tried to find the owner, and the next day it was dead (presumably that Apple killed it once it went missing.) So the guy opened it up, knew he had something awesome and sold it for $5,000 to Jason Chen who writes for www.gizmodo.com
They spent some time taking it apart and documenting the components and posted all the info.

http://gizmodo.com/5520471/the-tale-of- ... ext-iphone

Apple demanded their property back, to which there was some back and forth letters. Then the police raided his house and took 4 computers and 2 servers among other stuff.

Jon Stewart gave Apple a piece of his mind:
http://tv.gawker.com/5526868/jon-stewar ... zmodo-case

Hilariously, the engineer who lost the next gen iPhone was a fellow alum of NC State

im so bored with smartphones and the news of smartphones

i was pretty excited when i initially got my iphone. but that was the first time i've had a cellphone. and my excitement wore off after a couple weeks. now i throw up a little bit when people are talking/giving a shit about phones.

This is interesting thing in some ways. I mean, Apple is less sympathetic by virtue of being a big corporation, but the idea that you obtain something illegally and then flaunt it around, all the while making a profit from it, isn't exactly so innocent either.

I mean, if I got something of mine ripped off and someone was walking around town waving it all over and showing everyone how proud they were of their new whatever it was, and then using said whatever it was to promote their business, I'd be pretty pissed if the cops wouldn't make 'em give it back.

they gave the phone back per request of apple's GC.

later, the cops broke in to a to one of gizmodo's reporter's house in violation of law with an improper warrant. i wonder what happens next.

I don't think finding it left in a bar constitutes it as being obtained illegally. Especially after the finder called apple to have it returned (allegedly) and the tech people thought he was some whack job claiming to have a prototype device. Apple also killed the device, so he couldn't even look in the address book for the Owner in the morning.

these dudes pretty much gloated that they paid $5k for it so they had this coming. and didnt they temporarily ruin the guy's life (the one who lost it)?

He didn't call Apple.

That's a rather conclusory statement. Determining whether a warrant is illegal isn't really a simple matter.

Right, and if he hadn't collected 5K that wouldn't have been bad. However, him collecting the money sorta says he knew what he had, and therefore, would've known who to call--Apple.