Looks better that the 3gs and older.

*promote

Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, April 19th, 2010 3:41pm PDT - promote requested by original submitter volumptuous.

<feigned excitement>
OH WOW THE EDGES ARE LESS CURVY!!!
<sarcasm>
SO AWESOME!
</sarcasm>
</feigned excitement>

This video is ten seconds of a product being slid around a table. I must resist the upvote.

^ Yeah, but the link contains more images, details about the phone, and the pretty crazy story of how it came to appear on the internet video box.

I know the story. I'm pretty damn sure it was staged. Still, the video is ten seconds of a phone being slid around a table. I'll go upvote the article.

I <3 my droid too much to upvote this. I'll never cheat on you, Baby

>> ^volumptuous:

^ Yeah, but the link contains more images, details about the phone, and the pretty crazy story of how it came to appear on the internet video box.

There's no accident. It's a viral marketing technique.

That's all we needed to hear-*downvote for slap-stupid viral marketing

I'm glad so many people KNOW this is viral marketing. I wouldn't doubt if it is, but I guess I'm just not an assumer in that way.

If the 4G was weeks away from release, then yes, I might buy the viral advertising thing...

I don't buy it. It makes no sense to market the new phone this way. There's a shitload of brand-spanking-new-in-box 3Gs in Apple and ATT stores across the country waiting to be sold.

Showing the public that the man behind the curtain is going to make those still-shrink-wrapped 3Gs obsolete within a year by releasing the 4G sometime soon is a magnificent way to keep people from buying the phones that are already in stores.

That was rather *brief and *uninformative.

This video has been flagged as being less than 1 minute in length - declared brief by dystopianfuturetoday.

One of the least useful videos ever. Sure, the link is useful. This could have been a blog post with an animated gif and accomplished the same thing.

People still legitimately make mistakes in the world. I think the guy just got too blitzed on his birthday, and accidentally left it. Not everything is a conspiracy, even though Hippy would say differently.

With that said, I haven't jumped on the iPhone bandwagon yet, but I most likely will with this next release. I'm getting to old to futz around with hacking phones, etc. anymore.

Why is this staged? Here are my thoughts.

1. This is obviously not a random guy's phone who works at Apple. Who would have access to carry one of these?
2. Knowing how fanatical Apple is about security, why would they allow someone to take the brand new top secret iPhone out to a bar?
3. Who was the person who found it? And why did he have an interest in disassembling the phone as opposed to just returning it?
4. Did the person who lost it try to call the phone to get it back?
5. There are a number of new smartphones, and a lot are marketing themselves as better than the iPhone. And being that the new Apple 4G phone won't be on the market for a while, a stunt like this may keep new customers from signing a new 2 year phone contract and purchasing a different smartphone if they know Apple's is coming and it will be bad ass.
6. What about WTC 7?

All your number points are answered in the articles attached to the original Gizmodo post.

You could've educated yourself in the time necessary to formulate that list.

Sorry to say, but I'm not voting on content that's at another site, I'm voting on this video and the sad fact is, it's pretty much worthless.
Would've been better as a talk post imo.

No thanks, Siftbot. But thanks for asking.
>> ^KnivesOut:

[show the body of this ignored comment]

Typical troll behavior. It's occurred to me that what's really funny is... how did you know my comment was directed at you if you're ignoring my comments?

What a big baby you are!

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

I trust John Gruber- no way this is a staged viral. I do hope though that it's only a prototype- I was looking forward to the bug reveal by el Jobso.

It makes sense that this guy had it out of the office- he is (was?) a wireless network engineer- have to test the unit in various real world conditions. Like the geman ale house ...

>> ^blankfist:
I know the story. I'm pretty damn sure it was staged. Still, the video is ten seconds of a phone being slid around a table. I'll go upvote the article.


That's okay. Bizzaro Blankfist did it for you.

1- One of the main wireless network engineers

2- So one of the main wireless network engineers can test the unit in real world conditions (see dags response)

3- The name of the person who found it was not given. I'm guessing since he lives in Silicon Valley, he's quite probably a tech geek, thought the phone looked odd, and wanted to take it apart to see why

4- Yes. Using mobile me, you can easily turn the phone off, lock it down, and get GPS coordinates for where it is, all through mobileme's easy web interface. Apple did lock it. It was locked the next morning.

5- I understand what you're saying, but this phone is to be released in the next 3-4 months. Apple would be doing a great disservice to themselves and AT&T with a stunt like this, causing tens of thousands of units to sit on shelves, and untold number of new AT&T customers to wait to sign up. It's not practical by any means.

6- WTC7 was an inside job.


I also called around to my Apple friends, and all of them said there was a giant shitstorm brewing, noone knew what it was about until the Gizmodo article came out. Then shit sincerely hit the fan. One of my friends was on the original iPhone team, and had a working one that he carried around, months before the official release. He couldn't even show his wife.

When you are one of these lucky duckies, not only are you on über strict NDA, but you are also a very very loyal Apple employee who loves the products, loves the company, and really loves their job and wouldn't do anything to sacrifice it.


>> ^blankfist:

Why is this staged? Here are my thoughts.
1. This is obviously not a random guy's phone who works at Apple. Who would have access to carry one of these?
2. Knowing how fanatical Apple is about security, why would they allow someone to take the brand new top secret iPhone out to a bar?
3. Who was the person who found it? And why did he have an interest in disassembling the phone as opposed to just returning it?
4. Did the person who lost it try to call the phone to get it back?
5. There are a number of new smartphones, and a lot are marketing themselves as better than the iPhone. And being that the new Apple 4G phone won't be on the market for a while, a stunt like this may keep new customers from signing a new 2 year phone contract and purchasing a different smartphone if they know Apple's is coming and it will be bad ass.
6. What about WTC 7?