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Well, I guess this settles it as far as the authenticity of Gizmodo's iPhone 4G scoop Monday. The definitive piece of evidence: a letter from Apple's top lawyer, formally requesting the safe return of the wayward next-generation iPhone — the one left on a Redwood City barstool last month by a young (and surely red-faced) Apple software engineer.
Gizmodo posted the letter late Monday, and the missive — while firm in tone, and signed by Apple General Counsel and Senior VP Bruce Sewell — stops short of making any legal threats, at least for the time being:
It has come to our attention that GIZMODO is currently in possession of a device that belongs to Apple. This letter constitutes a formal request that you return the device to Apple. Please let me know where to pick up the unit.
Gizmodo Editorial Director Brian Lam replied cheekily that the lost, radically redesigned iPhone was "burning a hole in our pockets" and that he was "happy to see it returned to its rightful owner" now that "we definitely know it's not some knockoff."
The news came just hours after the bloggers Gizmodo described how a 27-year-old software engineer at Apple (who is named and pictured in the post, by the way) managed to leave the precious iPhone 4G prototype — disguised to look like an iPhone 3GS — on a barstool at the Gourmet Haus Straut, a "nice German beer garden" in Redwood City, about 20 miles northwest of Apple HQ in Cupertino. (Engadget had blogged over the weekend that the phone was lost in a San Jose watering hole, leading to some initial confusion.)
Having downed a few brews, the hapless Apple engineer eventually rolled out of the bar, according to Gizmodo, absentmindedly leaving behind the next-generation iPhone (which he'd been field testing, the post said). Hey, it happens. (If I had a nickel for every time I left a credit card at a bar ... ) Another man in the bar ended up taking the phone home, peeled off the protective jacket the next day, and realized he had a windfall on his hands.
And as we all now know, "weeks later, Gizmodo got it," says Gawker Media Inc.'s Gizmodo — leaving out a key detail that Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media, filled in later for the Associated Press: The company paid $5,000 for it.