The iPhone 4G story: Mindless mistake or planted PR?

As long as you haven’t been living under a rock the past day or so, you know that Gizmodo has made quite a commotion on the Internet with their purchase of a stolen/lost iPhone 4G (is that even what we should be calling it?) for a rumored 5K-10K. Whether this was actually stolen and then bought by Gizmodo or simply lost and then returned to Gizmodo for a price is up for debate, but Gizmodo did post a detailed review of the device’s hardware on their site.

If you’re interested, you can see all the important details. Putting aside any arguments about whether Gizmodo should have run this story, the iPhone hardware covered does look quite impressive once again. Killer design and a front facing camera!

Nonetheless, Gizmodo then went on to publish and publicly out the name of the software engineer who, in fact, lost the device at a German bar. This questionable move infuriated some people on the Internet. In my opinion, it was quite low of Gizmodo to do so, as that engineer was probably quite scared, nervous, and disappointed in himself as it was.

For instance, as expected, people around the internet have already been heckling him about it on his Flickr, Facebook and MySpace, and have even created a fan page for him. Who knows what’s going to happen to this engineer after making a mistake like this. For his sake, I hope he doesn’t lose his job, as he’s probably very proud of it.

Also, I’m sure Steve Jobs isn’t happy in the slightest sense of the word. Heck, even the The New York Times has written about this turn of events.

Then, as if the news from that wasn’t enough, Gizmodo received and published a letter from Apple simply asking for them to return the device. Gizmodo complied, stating, “Happy to have you pick this thing up. Was burning a hole in our pockets.” Right…

As far as we know, the device will be happily returned to Apple, and it appears as if no legal battle will begin between the two companies…yet.

Now for the more more interesting part of the story. Over the course of a day or so, Gizmodo’s article has passed four million views and is still increasing. They’re certainly getting all of the traffic they can from this. However, this has also left some people quite angry at the website and its authors. Initially purchasing the hardware and then posting the detailed review isn’t what got most people upset, it was the publishing of the engineer’s name. If Gizmodo had simply stopped after the hardware, the backlash wouldn’t have been nearly as bad. But once they brought in the man’s name (which I’m not mentioning, as it wouldn’t feel right doing so), it turned into a personal attack rather than an issue against Apple as a company. Some people feel that if Gizmodo was going to publish anyone’s name, it should’ve been the man who initially received the phone and then sold it to them, as he was the one truly at fault.

In terms of backlash, some people have all together banned Gawker Media and Gizmodo from their DNS servers, while others have simply expressed their anger through Twitter. Gizmodo has said the reason they posted all of the information is because their only obligation is to their readers, but this was still a little beyond that, if you ask me.

Regardless of whether this whole ordeal was moral or ethical of Gizmodo, there still remains the question of whether this was all a PR stunt actually set up by Apple or if it truly was a mistake in Apple’s long past of unfettered secrecy. Evidence certainly does go both ways in this case. For instance, simply the fact that this happened has some people thinking it was a PR stunt; neither Apple, nor any of Apple’s employees, have never made a mistake like this ever. Heck, if you had a to-be-released Apple product, wouldn’t you guard that thing with your life? You wouldn’t be wrong to describe this as “fishy.”

However, in the opposite direction, there is also evidence against a PR stunt. For example, I don’t feel as if Apple would allow Gizmodo to publish a random engineer’s name as part of the stunt. Not only will this stick with him forever, it may ruin his possibility of getting any future jobs if he ends up not working at Apple. Furthermore, why would Apple begin now to release product PR stunts a good two months before the device is rumored to come out? That’s just not how Apple works. Also, this gives too much insight into the inner workings of Apple. For instance, we now know exactly how Apple disguises their new devices as well as what type of people they trust with them. To me, this seems way too detailed and insightful to be a PR stunt.

Either way, this story will certainly be talked about for a long, long time. The ethical debate, as well as the legitimacy, will probably follow as the focus of the story. It will be interesting to not only see what happens with this over the next few days, but also what happens when Apple does, in fact, release this hardware to the public—hopefully this June.

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