I am in the process of migrating my office to Apple products. I needed a way to install iWorks and Parallels on my boss’s shiny new MacBook Air, but the MacBook Air has no optical drive, and we have not yet ordered an external drive. My assumption was that I would need to make an image and copy it over to her machine; I was wrong. After I launched Finder on her machine, I saw “Remote Disc” as one of her drive options. A little research revealed that I could enable “DVD or CD Sharing” from my Sharing Preferences pane. Doing so made my drive visible from her machine, and the installation went along without a hitch.

Finders Keepers?

What he never did, however, was notify anyone who worked at the bar, according to its owner, Volcker Staudt. That would have been the simplest way to get the phone back to the Apple employee who lost it, who “called constantly trying to retrieve it” in the days afterward, recalls Volcker. “The guy was pretty hectic about it.”

Nor did the finder report it to the Redwood City Police Department, says Sgt. Dan Mulholland. To be fair, no one from Apple told the police the phone was lost, either. I contacted a company spokeswoman to ask why not but never heard back.

Assuming the jury in a hypothetical criminal or civil suit consisted of locals like Volcker, the claim that the sellers actions constituted a “reasonable effort” to contact the owner wouldnt hold much water. “The most reasonable effort would have been to bring it back to us, because he knows that person would be going back to us first,” says Volcker. “Why not just make it simple and bring it back?”

Buyers Burden

And make no mistake: In this case, it was up to Gawker to establish that the seller legally possessed the property. Paul J. Wallin, a founding partner at the California law firm Wallin & Klaritch, offers an analogy. “If you purchase a Rolex watch at a swap meet for $200, a reasonable person would be put on notice that it might be stolen goods,” he says. The buyer would thus be required to take extra measures to determine that it wasnt.

via Why Apple Could Sue Gawker Over Lost iPhone Story – DailyFinance.

The scoop of a lifetime occurred for Gizmodo recently when, through intense research and journalistic savvy they managed to uncover the highly anticipated iPhone — months before it’s release.  It would be a great day for Gizmodo were that the case, but in fact it’s not.  Gizmodo Forrest Gumped their way into possession of the top-secret device by being willing to pay $5,000 for stolen property.

The top headlines on their site right now read like the front page of a supermarket tabloid:

• How Apple lost the next iPhone!
• How Apple missed chances to get the device back
• Why Apple didn’t leak the iPhone to us
• And finally, how Apple asked to get their phone back
• How we put the phone in an envelope and sent it to them

Okay, I made the last one up, but it isn’t too much of a departure from those that it followed.

For those unfamiliar with the story, apparently an engineer in possession of the iPhone lost it at a bar, another patron found it, it exchanged hands a few times, and somebody offered it to Gizmodo who happily purchased it for 5k.  Gizmodo then proceeded to dissect, photograph, and then blog about the device.

It is being debated as to whether they legally did anything wrong.  Some have pointed to California penal code indicating that found property is essentially stolen if it is used for profit without making a reasonable effort to return the property to it’s owner.  Gizmodo makes the claim that they (or somebody else) called AppleCare to attempt to return the top-secret-prototype.  To me, that seems akin to notifying a McDonalds drive-thru employee that I have found their lost copy of the secret-sauce recipe.

Beyond the legal issues are the ethical issues, which seem all to clear to me.  Gizmodo did not do any investigation to get this story.  They bought stolen property, and are profiting through increased exposure.  Add to that, the fact that they aren’t really covering technology here.  This story has become pure sensationalism.  How Apple lost the next iPhone?  How Apple missed chances to get the device back?  These “stories” may gather more pageviews, but so would filling the pages with pictures of scantily clad women.  But it doesn’t seem like that follows your implied mission.

What’s done is done, and a lot of people support Gizmodo’s efforts (a lot of people read TMZ too.)  I for one, have lost respect for a site that I considered to be a credible source of information on technology.  Enjoy the increased ad-revenue while it lasts fellas.  I hope you have some equally sensational stories to follow this one, because it’s going to be difficult to buy your soul back on an honest man’s salary.

I recently decided that I needed a change with respect to my desktop setup.  Out went the old Microsoft Wave keyboard that had served me so faithfully.  I replaced the keyboard with apple aluminum keyboard.  I thought I would have a tough time with the apple keyboard given that it is incredibly small.  As it turns out, that has not caused any problems for me, whereas the tactile response from the keyboard is phenomenal!  I now use an apple keyboard for both home and work.  At work I also got rid of my trackball and replaced it with the Apple Magic Mouse.  That also surprised me.  I had no intention of getting the magic mouse, as I felt that I wouldn’t be happy without a trackball.  I happened to be in an Apple Store in Reston and decided to give it a whirl.  I was very impressed, and I haven’t thought twice about the purchase.   As an added bonus, the combination looks fantastic on the desk.  Now I’m only missing an Apple Cinema Display, but I somehow don’t think that one is in the cards for me.