For the very first time, Steve Jobs spoke publicly at the Wall Street Journal’s D8 conference about the much-discussed prototype iPhone that found its way into the hands of Jason Chen at Gizmodo last month. Without going into much detail (and certainly not acknowledging that the model that was being tested had final industrial design, Steve shared more than anyone else from Apple has to date about the incident. As reported on Engadget’s live-blog:
There’s an ongoing investigation. I can tell you what I do know, though. To make a product you need to test it. You have to carry them outside. One of our employees was carrying one. There’s a debate about whether he left it in a bar, or it was stolen out of his bag. The person who found it tried to sell it, they called Engadget, they called Gizmodo.
The person who took the phone plugged it into his roommates computer. And this guy was trying to destroy evidence… and his roommate called the police. So this is a story that’s amazing — it’s got theft, it’s got buying stolen property, it’s got extortion, I’m sure there’s some sex in there (huge laughs)… the whole thing is very colorful. The DA is looking into it, and to my knowledge they have someone making sure they only see stuff that relates to this case. I don’t know how it will end up.
If I recall correctly, the details about trying to destroy evidence and the roommate calling police is news. It’ll still be awhile before we know the whole truth of the situation, but it’s certainly been fun keeping an eye on the brouhaha…
