Stewart calls Apple “Appholes” over lost iPhone response

An Apple employee lost a prototype for the new iPhone, which is kind of a big deal to them and soon after came the headline/news: Per Apple Request, Police Questioning Gizmodo’s iPhone Scoop. RespondingiIn a segment titled “Appholes”, John Stewart went off (though gently) on Apple for handling the Gizmodo iPhone leak poorly, most notably observing that Microsoft was supposed to be the evil one, but now Apple is busting down doors in Palo Alto while Bill Gates rids the world of mosquitoes. Everything is upside down!

Commenter Durox on the Daily Show website rebuts:

1. the guy has a case# from the Apple’s support team, he contacted them but they had no idea that a ‘secret iPhone’ was lost, so they decided it was a joke (Apple also said in the begining that it’s not a prototype …) 2. the blogger paid for an iPhone; he took a chance; it might have been a joke, a replica, etc, but he considered the risks and got it. when asked to return it, he sent it back to Apple. the whole thing took days to develop, and that seems to me like a publicity stunt… Jobs’ own secrecy regarding the product, turns out to be the cause why they didn’t get the iPhone back before it made it on the news. if the support team were updated, if Jobs would not have been so paranoid, the phone would have been returned to Apple. IMO it’s like this: you buy a used bike on a garage sale. the guy says he found it on the side of the road.. you give him the money, and take the bike to a ride. someone stops you and demands that he left the bike on the street, and he wants it back. you give it back.. now, what’s going on w/ your money, what’s going on when the police arrives? ;] ps Apple has the argument that the new iPhone is top secret and the competitors might steal its ‘secrets’! come on Jobs, we are in 2010 and the iPhone still doesn’t multitask. it took several upgrades to film, and other expensive jokes like these ;]. don’t give us this BS, with the secrect technology, iPhone’s only thing is its applications. w/o them it simply blows!

and commenter Go Zi An created some buzz on the videos comments with a few along these lines:

But John Gruber actually has a fair and balanced take on this issue, unlike Jon Stewart. Steward [sic] is misrepresenting facts, leaving out important details like the prototype was stolen, and whoever found it never informed anyone at all for 3 weeks, despite knowing the identity of the Apple engineer since he could access his Facebook app on the iPhone prototype. And Gizmodo paid for the prototype, is that even ethical journalism (something Stewart himself always raves about?) Jon Stewart it’s time you actually went to journalism school to learn the basics on reporting facts.