Apple loses iPhone prototype —again

Oops, it did it again: Apple Inc. lost another unreleased model of what could be its upcoming iPhone 5, tech site CNET reported Thursday (Manila time). CNET cited sources familiar with the investigation who said the iPhone went missing in a restaurant-bar in San Francisco's Mission district in late July. It said this year’s lost phone may have been taken from a Mexican restaurant and bar and may have been sold on Craigslist for $200. The incident, similar to the loss of an unreleased iPhone 4 last year, triggered a scramble by Apple security to recover the device over the next few days, the report said. CNET said there were no clear details about the device, what version of the iOS operating system it was running, and what it looks like. Previous incident In last year’s incident, a gadget blog site had bought the unreleased iPhone 4 for $5,000 in cash. CNET said Apple declined to comment on the matter, while a spokesman for the San Francisco Police Department said Apple did not file a police report based on the loss. Neither had Craigslist responded to requests for comment, CNET said. CNET quoted its source as saying Apple representatives contacted San Francisco police, saying the device was priceless and the company was desperate to secure its safe return, a day or two after the phone was lost at San Francisco's Cava 22. It said its source claimed Apple electronically traced the phone to a two-floor, single-family home in San Francisco's Bernal Heights neighborhood. When San Francisco police and Apple's investigators visited the house, they spoke with a man in his 20s who acknowledged being at Cava 22 on the night the device went missing. The source said the man denied knowing anything about the phone. The man gave police permission to search the house, and they found nothing. Protecting vs leaks After last year's loss, Apple has reportedly taken extraordinary steps to protect its prototype devices from leaks. It has kept next-generation iPhones sent to carriers for testing "inside locked and sealed boxes so that the carriers can carry out checks on their network compatibility in their labs." — TJD, GMA News