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iPhone 4G Leaks and CheckBook Journalism

2010-04-20
what's going on everyone jon rettinger from technobuffalo here in case you've been living under a tech rock the past few days you've no doubt seen the leaks that gizmodo posted about their hands on time with the iphone 4g i'm going to give you a bit of background on the story and talk about swear the ethical quandary and whatnot i agree or disagree what gizmodo didn't talk a little bit about checkbook journalism so here's the brief story about three and a half ish weeks ago an apple junior engineer who had a iphone 4g prototype actually disguised as an iphone 3gs went out to a bar to celebrate his birthday just a few miles from apples Cupertino headquarters presumably you may have celebrated a little bit too much got up and left and left his prototype iphone 4g on the barstool this is all according to gizmodo so somebody found it changed hands a few times by time the guy got at home you realize this actually wasn't an iphone 3gs that's heard of a weird casing on it pulled up the casing and revealed some very very different and unique hardware he had a chance to play around the phone for for a few hours went to bed woke up the next morning and the phone had been remotely wiped by Apple which itself was probably a bit of a red flag this was indeed a legitimate iphone 4g prototype so evidently he called Apple as they listen I've got a prototype what you want to do with it Apple the junior sales rep saying to the phone or the customer service rep sort of blew it all figured it was a hoax has what I and the guy was left with a legitimate iphone 4g prototype so what he did next sort of where this video starts he tried to sell the device to different tech blogs it was offered to engadget gizmodo I'm presumably a few others and now this is all sort of happenstance and we don't know if everything that's being said is true but the senior editor of engadget said he passed on the device didn't feel was right to actually buy a post and buy news and gives motor decided they wanted to jump on and actually paid five thousand dollars portable device this is where things start to get a little bit gray and a little bit hazing sir depending on where you stand so what gizmodo did was they paid five thousand dollars for the device they did their due diligence they took the device apart verify that it was actually an apple product there was apple internals and they went live with the story now here's where my question is if they knew this was indeed an apple prototype then it was apples property and they bought apples properties so that you consider them buying stolen stolen goods or whether Apple really didn't make an effort to get it back at a time it's going to be up to you so where do you stand on checkbook journals and you think his moto was right to buy the device well I have to be honest with you I'm a pretty clean-cut guy i buyed by a pretty set code of ethics however if someone offered me an iphone 4g prototype to post on TechnoBuffalo I'd be very hard-pressed to say no and I'm just being honest with you and you know trying gone to their selfie entrance question if I had the opportunity to buy the iphone 4g prototype i probably would have bought it now i would have probably closely done what gizmodo did would have posted on it as soon as Apple got in touch with me I would have given them their property back so essentially I was would have been letting Apple know that I had their device in a very public forum I know it's a bit shade in a bit grey and I can see both sides of the bait but push comes to shove I probably would have done it and that's a tough thing to admit you know whether or not you would do something like that or not to something like that and I think the majority of people out there would definitely want to get their hands on device however what gizmodo did next I do not agree with they found out the name of the junior engineer who lost the prototype and published it and this is where I tend to disagree and there are two sides of the fence here's some are claiming I'm not going to mention the guys name that his moto published his name to get public support for the guy so that Apple couldn't fire him and if they did their be public outcry the other side of that fence is gizmodo was just trying to milk it a little bit and wanted people to know who this guy was we'd be held vote for what he did I would not have posted the name that kinkos handled a little bit tacky side however if their intentions were good if they wanted to drum up support for the junior engineer then good for them although i think i would have had a very hard time play that information out there gizmodo essentially costs this young man his career and some of his motor did by the phone somebody else what else the information would have gotten out there somehow there's no doubt about that some his motor sort of preempted their competition by agreeing to purchase of advice so I wanted to give a bit of a history on and see what you guys thought would you have bought the device if you ran a tech blog or a technology-focused youtube channel do you agree or disagree it's tough to to make a decision on that so I'm kind of curious what you guys have to say to leave a text or video response anyway I'm John retin Yorkin technobuffalo and i'll see you in the next video Oh bye
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