Today’s iPhone 5 top story is that Apple may have lost an next-gen iPhone… in a San Francisco bar, again! That seems unbelievable, but this is a story that CNET has published today. Apparently, an iPhone 5 has gone missing in the San Francisco Mission district sometime in late July and the event has sent a wave of urgency at Apple Security whose mission was to find and extract the device ASAP.
The device was reportedly lost at Cava 22, a bar in the Mission. From there, Apple used the phone location capability, or the cellular network, to trace it to a single-family home in Bernal Heights, a residential and family friendly neighborhood. The occupant denied having the phone, and a police search did not bring anything up. Apple has even offered a reward for the return of the phone -no questions asked-, but the person still denied having the device.If you have missed last year’s drama, tech site Gizmodo purchased a lost iPhone 4 from a man who said to have found it in a bar. Gizmodo then published a lengthy series of articles detailing pretty much anything that the eye can see. In turn, it sparked Apple’s anger, and Gizmodo reporters were (and stil are) banned from Apple events since, but Gizmodo’s editor in chief’s home was search by the police and his computers were confiscated. Charges were eventually dropped.
If this happens again, iPhone hunting season will officially start in July of 2012. Frankly, if this is true, that’s completely silly. Maybe Apple should add a “bar” challenge in their interview process, or build a field testing team that can drink and not drop a 140g phone.
Update: The SF police department said that it has no internal reports of this, which briefly led reporters to think that the story never happened, but later on, facts on the ground suggest that Apple’s investigators may have impersonated Police officers. This is far from over.