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Yeah, clearly we don't agree. I take the "no stones unturned" approach to journalism. You report every fact that might be relevant and figure out (or let reader

Yeah, clearly we don't agree. I take the "no stones unturned" approach to journalism. You report every fact that might be relevant and figure out (or let readers determine for themselves) what's relevant and what's not. The story to me isn't that it was found, it's how, a big part of which is who. I'm way less interested in whether or not the next unit has a front-facing camera or micro-sim card than how Apple (a company with better IP security than anyone) had one of their prototypes end up abandoned on a bar floor. As someone who may one day be in a position where I'm developing a product that requires secrecy, I want to know this stuff. All of it. I want to know how Apple keeps their secrets so closely guarded, and especially want to know points of failure. It's clearly not as important as government intelligence leaks, but who leaked is no less relevant to it's own story. I want to know who dropped the iPhone, because who the hell has the next gen iPhone? And who would be careless enough with such a thing to get drunk at a bar and leave it there? It's very interesting that he's in his mid 20's for instance. That tells me more about their organization than I previously knew, including that people way lower on the totem pole than I would have guessed are walking around with prototypes. (Or were anyway, that may have changed.) Also I meant they didn't do anything wrong by naming him. They may have done other things wrong (buying the phone perhaps). I'm not an attorney by any means, and I'd guess neither are most if not all of the people here speculating about legalities. I'm not particularly interested in that, though I can see why some would be. And as far as the birthday thing, that's why I said "loosely". It's moderately amusing that the guy lost it on his b-day, but by far the least interesting part. That's just good old Gawker flogging a dead horse and milking page views.

ubernostrum 17y ago
Yeah, clearly we don't agree. I take the "no stones unturned" approach to journalism. Well, here's the thing. I work at a ("traditional"; been publishing papers since the 19th century) news organization and I actually have the word "journalist" in my job title (how that replaced "developer" is a story for another thread). I spend as much time working with reporters and editors these days as I spend working with coders (unfortunately, much of it in meetings, but such is life). So I've ended up with a lot of exposure to a a particular, I guess somewhat conservative, perspective on journalism, and that's what I'm applying when I think about how this story should be handled. So. Find out who it was and publish some information to give context? Sure, that's useful. Ruin the guy's future as well as current career by making sure his name's permanently associated with this? No; it doesn't help the story in any way to do that. But then, Gizmodo's obviously operating on a very different definition of "journalism" (more akin to the supermarket-checkout tabloids), and it's not one that I really approve of because it ends up putting the focus on the least relevant information in order to drive up the sensationalism and the pageviews.
- mattmaroon 17y ago
  Well, Apple undoubtedly knows who lost the phone, so his current career isn't any more ruined than it would otherwise have been. They bricked it wirelessly so it's clear they knew what happened very quickly. My guess is he received whatever disciplinary action they were going to mete out a long time ago. One reason his name is worth publishing: to verify that this isn't a hoax, and there've been tons of hoax iPhone leaks. This all allegedly happened sometime around April first. When you say "an Apple engineer lost a phone" it's a lot less convincing than "an Apple Engineer named X" because the latter can be positively verified. In fact it sounds like people here know him (or of him at least).

ubernostrum 17y ago

Yeah, clearly we don't agree. I take the "no stones unturned" approach to journalism. Well, here's the thing. I work at a ("traditional"; been publishing papers since the 19th century) news organization and I actually have the word "journalist" in my job title (how that replaced "developer" is a story for another thread). I spend as much time working with reporters and editors these days as I spend working with coders (unfortunately, much of it in meetings, but such is life). So I've ended up with a lot of exposure to a a particular, I guess somewhat conservative, perspective on journalism, and that's what I'm applying when I think about how this story should be handled. So. Find out who it was and publish some information to give context? Sure, that's useful. Ruin the guy's future as well as current career by making sure his name's permanently associated with this? No; it doesn't help the story in any way to do that. But then, Gizmodo's obviously operating on a very different definition of "journalism" (more akin to the supermarket-checkout tabloids), and it's not one that I really approve of because it ends up putting the focus on the least relevant information in order to drive up the sensationalism and the pageviews.

mattmaroon 17y ago
Well, Apple undoubtedly knows who lost the phone, so his current career isn't any more ruined than it would otherwise have been. They bricked it wirelessly so it's clear they knew what happened very quickly. My guess is he received whatever disciplinary action they were going to mete out a long time ago. One reason his name is worth publishing: to verify that this isn't a hoax, and there've been tons of hoax iPhone leaks. This all allegedly happened sometime around April first. When you say "an Apple engineer lost a phone" it's a lot less convincing than "an Apple Engineer named X" because the latter can be positively verified. In fact it sounds like people here know him (or of him at least).