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No. His theft resulted in Apple's loss of millions of dollars in trade secrets and marketing. $5000 is not even a drop in this bucket - it's really beside the p

No. His theft resulted in Apple's loss of millions of dollars in trade secrets and marketing. $5000 is not even a drop in this bucket - it's really beside the point completely (it is merely strong evidence of his guilt). He belongs in prison if he is found guilty on the broader principle of justice. I am referring to the principle that says that a man that robs you as a private citizen should get at least as severe a penalty as someone that robs a large group of people (in this case, Apple's employees and shareholders). This is required if we are to maintain our rule of law and the benefits that it entails.

noonespecial 17y ago
If he had robbed me personally in a non-violent manner, he quite likely would receive a punishment much like I described. Maybe even less. His theft resulted in Apple's loss of millions of dollars in trade secrets and marketing. That's one claim that would require a mountain of proof. Until then, prototype or not, its a $400 phone.
- maxharris 17y ago
  > mountain of proof When Apple almost went bankrupt in 1997, they were one really leaky ship. Everyone knew what they were working on, so when Macworld time came around, there were no real surprises. Steve Jobs realized that they were losing millions in publicity by screwing this up, and he stopped the leaks and saved Apple. Obviously he did a lot of other things that had a lot to do with their success, but stopping the leaks did have a very measurable impact on them. Edit: I forgot to mention this earlier, but the Osborne effect is probably the larger factor to consider here. Lots of people will be waiting to get new iPhones now (myself included).
- tptacek 17y ago
  $400? What are you talking about? Apple's margins on the iPhone are reportedly between 20-50%; by your logic, since Apple itself lost the phone, this guy should only be on the hook for ~$300 or so! Of course, using reality-based logic, the story is a little different. The reality is that if this incident caused Apple to reschedule the iPhone unveiling by one day, or pushed the release date of the phone back by a week, or took an engineering team offline for a couple days, or forced Apple to spend 80 billable hours with outside counsel, or... look, there's probably not a single action Apple could have taken in response to this that doesn't immediately incur 5-6 figure damages. Could this guy have possibly realized that? Not Apple's problem. Not the world's greatest caper, this one.
  - Lazlo_Nibble 17y ago
    Yeah, and here's the nightmare scenario for Apple: what if the prototype is actually for iPhone 2011 instead of iPhone 2010? Everyone expects a front-facing camera in the next release now. Wanna take bets on what happens to Apple's share price when they formally announce the fourth-gen hardware and it doesn't have one?

noonespecial 17y ago

If he had robbed me personally in a non-violent manner, he quite likely would receive a punishment much like I described. Maybe even less. His theft resulted in Apple's loss of millions of dollars in trade secrets and marketing. That's one claim that would require a mountain of proof. Until then, prototype or not, its a $400 phone.

maxharris 17y ago
> mountain of proof When Apple almost went bankrupt in 1997, they were one really leaky ship. Everyone knew what they were working on, so when Macworld time came around, there were no real surprises. Steve Jobs realized that they were losing millions in publicity by screwing this up, and he stopped the leaks and saved Apple. Obviously he did a lot of other things that had a lot to do with their success, but stopping the leaks did have a very measurable impact on them. Edit: I forgot to mention this earlier, but the Osborne effect is probably the larger factor to consider here. Lots of people will be waiting to get new iPhones now (myself included).
tptacek 17y ago
$400? What are you talking about? Apple's margins on the iPhone are reportedly between 20-50%; by your logic, since Apple itself lost the phone, this guy should only be on the hook for ~$300 or so! Of course, using reality-based logic, the story is a little different. The reality is that if this incident caused Apple to reschedule the iPhone unveiling by one day, or pushed the release date of the phone back by a week, or took an engineering team offline for a couple days, or forced Apple to spend 80 billable hours with outside counsel, or... look, there's probably not a single action Apple could have taken in response to this that doesn't immediately incur 5-6 figure damages. Could this guy have possibly realized that? Not Apple's problem. Not the world's greatest caper, this one.
- Lazlo_Nibble 17y ago
  Yeah, and here's the nightmare scenario for Apple: what if the prototype is actually for iPhone 2011 instead of iPhone 2010? Everyone expects a front-facing camera in the next release now. Wanna take bets on what happens to Apple's share price when they formally announce the fourth-gen hardware and it doesn't have one?