An Apple employee apparently left a prototype iPhone 5 in a San Francisco bar, according to CNET.
The report claims that the phone was lost in a Mission District tequila bar called Cava 22 in late July. The missing phone ‘sparked a scramble by Apple security to recover the device over the next few days,’ said an unnamed source.
CNET adds that Apple traced the device to a San Francisco apartment, which was searched by police, but turned up nothing. Apple employees then apparently offered cash to the man living in the apartment for the phone’s safe return, however ‘the man continued to deny he had knowledge of the phone’.
Lost prototypes are nothing new for Apple; a similar incident happened in April 2010 when the then-unreleased iPhone 4 went missing in a German beer garden in Redwood City, Calif.
But some cynics say that the latest episode smells suspiciously like a publicity stunt, generating headlines worldwide about the iPhone 5, which, it is rumored, launches this fall.
