> Who remembers the story of an iphone 5 prototype left a bar.
That was the iPhone 4 actually which was special for having the first “retina” screen. It was in a case to make it look like a 3GS to be used for field testing. The journalists that got their hands on it and published about it before the announcement could not turn it on past I think the Apple logo and a message saying to return it to Apple (or maybe it was just completely off, my memory is fuzzy), but were able to confirm the pixel density via microscope and I remember it blowing everyone’s minds at the time.
> people were signing petitions for Apple to not hunt down but instead forgive the employee that made such a grave mistake
FWIW I asked about it when I worked at Apple and he was indeed not fired and I think may have even still been working there when I was there around 10 years ago (though don’t quote me on that last part, he may have left already and I’m misremembering).
He was apparently not fired or even really reprimanded since it was a genuine accident and he wasn’t the one that sold it to the press, but that did start a slew of new policies around accounting for work devices.
I had dev fused phones for open carry outside of the office while I worked there but had to register when I got them and when they were returned, which apparently didn’t used to be tracked so tightly until that incident according to my coworkers who had been there longer.