Apple seeks product security boss after iPhone loss

Apple is advertising for a new head of product security, following the second loss of an iPhone prototype. The new hire, based at Cupertino, will be required to handle “the protection of, and managing risks to, Apple’s unreleased products and related intellectual property,” the job ad reads. Given that not one but two iPhone …

[Damo]

Seriously?

So in the last week or so Apple have lost an iPhone 5, there's been screen shots of the release date, a picture of a plate of food that's exif data claims it was taken on an iPhone 4 in Cupertino but with an 8no camera and now this crap!

This has Apple PR's grubby fingerprints all over it.

[bazza]

Or...

Or they could just choose to chill out a bit and be less obsessively secretive. Would that really dent their sales in any measurable way whatsoever?

Anyway, Apple products are pretty predictable - shiny, lacking in some useful buttons and features that everyone else has been doing for years (FM radio, anyone?), pricey, designed to lock you into an ecosystem designed to make yet more money, and occassionally suffering form over function (antennagate?).

[Edwin]

Alternative explanation...

Maybe this is all a ploy by Apple's marketing department to attract attention to the new shiny shiny.

Protos from all manufacturers get lost all the time, and while corporate security types get quite excited about it, it's not usually a disaster - especially not this close to launch when any competitor worth their salt knows all about the new toy anyway.

[Giles Jones]

Reasons

It would dent their sales for a few reasons.

1. Many people obviously love the secrecy. Do you like to know what you're getting for xmas?

2. The "wait for...." crowd would know when the new product was coming out, so would be posting on all the forums "wait for the new model".

3. The competitors would know what the new model was going to be like and get to work on ripping off the aesthetics.

4. Producers of cheap unauthorised accessories would be able to get to work on producing them. There would be no incentive to join any official programme.

[Cyberspice]

How quaint!

Can't remember the last time I listened to FM radio. Radio yes, but its always digitally.

[Arctic fox]

The very first thing their new security chief can do when he is appointed.........

..........is to make it very clear to his subordinates that impersonating police officers is against company policy (at least one assumes that it is) *as well as* against the law. This might also be accompanied by a series of lectures from the company's PR people to the security employees about "personal conduct", "company reputation" and "damage" linked to the well known "career down toilet" concept.

[Oninoshiko]

AMEN

Everyone involved in this little stunt should get walking papers, plus ATLEAST one level of management up. I am a firm believer that if your immediate subordinates do something it reflects on you as a leader.

That's on top of whatever legal hot-water they are going to be in before this is all over, of course.

[Ammaross Danan]

New Security Policy

Put all prototypes on a Kensington lock lanyard. But don't give the employee the code.

Done and Done.

[FarmerBob]

Apples never loses things . . .

. . . they're just "PreLeaked".

[jake]

Two points, and an opinion or two ...

1) It's clearly Apple marketing at work. Anyone who suggests otherwise is delusional.

2) WTF were the SFPD thinking, allowing ordinary citizens to search a private residence, especially without the supervision of the police?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again ... Apple's Officers need to be up on charges of influence peddling, and they and various bits&pieces of LawEnforcement(sic) need to be up on charges of collusion ...

[Robert E A Harvey]

Oh?

Is he going to follow every employee into the toilet in bars?

[Anonymous Coward]

A second prototype has hit the Blogs

never forget!

[Eddy Ito]

The real question

Where will he leave his iPhone 6 prototype and do you think they prearrange the publicity shoots with the bar ahead of time?

[Lance 3]

HR

HR could handle this job; lose a prototype and you're fired. That should be a good incentive. Gray Powell is still at Apple.

[Richard Jones 1]

Patents

Can I please patent stupidity and sue them for breaching my patent?

[Anonymous Coward]

who needs to hire someone..

Just make a new style of iphone case that's styled around a briefcase with a handcuff so they can attach it to their wrist...

Case solved... so to speak!

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple impersonating police

Here's the story you couldn't bring yourselves to link to

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2011/09/iphone_5_apple_police.php

or did apple ask that you remove the ilnk?

[Drefsab]

meh

Apple seeks new marketing boss after iPhone loss stunt is pulled again

There I fixed it for you, marketing cant be bothered thinking of a new PR stunt for the new revision of the Jesus/Zombie phone.

[Armando 123]

Other requirements

Must have no qualms about flogging dippy nerds, must be able to snarl in a vaguely central European accent, and must provide own cat-o-nine-tails.

[Ramazan]

thanks to AC @08:54

For providing the link. As I read it:

1. Apple investigators didn't impersonate themselves as police officers, they just came in the same group so that someone could just believe they are from the police too and Not Ask Questions

2. Calderon himself let them in, he wasn't forced to do it. Most probably he agreed because he didn't have the iPhone or didn't have it at the moment of search

3. Police officers did not enter because for them it would be illegal to perform search without search warrant or how it's called in USA

[Lance 3]

3) If he let them in, a search warrant is not needed. He should have said no to the search no matter if he had the iPhoney or not. If all they wanted to do was talk, the porch is the best place, not in the house.

[dssf]

SFPD conducts internal probe...

http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/2011/09/loss-iphone-5-prototype-sparks-sfpd-internal-investigation

"In response to recent media reports discussing the alleged loss by an Apple employee of the item at a Mission District bar in late July, San Francisco police said that four of their officers later accompanied two Apple employees to a home in Bernal Heights. Apple had tracked the lost item to a house in the 500 block of Anderson Street.

Police said the Apple employees met with a resident there and searched the home but did not find the item. The employees did not want to make an official report of the loss.

Police spokesman Officer Albie Esparza confirmed Wednesday that the department has begun “an internal investigation into this incident.” Further details were not provided."

I bet the internal investigation will lead to severe disciplinary actaion against the officers involved if it is determined that they facilitated a corporate search/ransacking of a private citizen without proper warrant authorization and/or for letting CIVILIANS do the searching with police acting as an intimidation force.

If it is determined there was no warrant, and that apple's "employees" or investigators or contracted device tracking people illegally searched, then Apple should get something more fierce than a recommended minimum 1 year. Jailing Jobs won't work. He's a dying man. But, Jailing the upper 25 cognizant employees and leadership, plus a $200,000 fine for each corporate officer involved, and if apple pays their fines, then jack the fine up to $1,000,000, AND then fine apple itself $250,000,000 to show that corporations will not be allowed to sway police, judges, courts, and media in some publicity stunt. They might do swaying in other illegal ways that are part and parcel in lobbying, but not in THIS kind of case.

Go ahead... hit me with thumbs down...

[Tidosho]

Bah!

Apple, quit crying wolf you publicity hungry cowards! If it means so much to you, why didn't you hire security when you "lost" your iPhone 4 proto to Gizmodo in a cafe?

Mine's the one with the open source Android OS...