I just went to Cava22, the San Francisco bar where an Apple employee reportedly lost a secret prototype of the iPhone 5.
I was hoping to get more details, and maybe even track the missing iPhone to Bernal Heights, where police apparently tried to recover it. I live in that neighborhood.
Cava22 is a tequila bar on 22nd Street near Mission Street. It’s a happening block. There’s a ton of bars and restaurants nearby.
I wasn’t the only reporter at Cava22. There was a TV truck outside from a local affiliate. The reporter was talking to Cava22’s manager, Jose Valle, who said he’d been taking calls from other reporters.
Unfortunately, it was the first Valle had heard of the missing prototype. He hadn’t had any dealings with Apple, the cops or frantic Apple engineers. His bar hadn’t been searched by the cops or Apple security. He had just heard the story from another reporter who called the bar.
He did say a customer called back in July saying they’d lost their iPhone in the bar. Had it been found it and handed in? Valle said he looked in the lost-and-found box, and asked his staff. No one had seen it. Coming up empty, he tossed the number. Could it have been an Apple test engineer? He had no idea.
As for the source of CNet’s story, Valle said it wasn’t him or his staff, he was pretty sure of that.
Talking to him, Valle seemed genuine and truthful. A story like this would be a great way to drum up publicity for his bar — genius even.
But I’m sure he was being truthful. There was, however, a mystery patron with an open laptop sitting in the empty bar. This was 30 minutes before opening time this afternoon. But that seems a stretch.
It’s certainly not a publicity stunt by Apple. The company has all the publicity it needs.
UPDATE: Cnet’s story has been updated with comments from Valle saying the same thing: he hadn’t been contacted by Apple or police.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
