If you take away the whole bit about this being a 4G iPhone, the facts are something like this. Guy leaves cell phone at a bar. Cell phone is picked up by another patron. Instead of leaving the phone with the bartender, finder takes it home. Finder fires it up, logs onto FaceBook, discovers who the phone belongs to. Instead of contacting the phone's owner, finder sells it to Gawker for $5000.
Gawker makes halfhearted attempt to contact Apple. Gawker knows who phone belongs to, yet never makes an attempt to contact them directly and return it. Gawker (to our knowledge) never tells Apple "Hey, this is Gawker Media, we have one of your development phones". Gawker takes apart phone and runs a story. Gawker exposes phone's owner as the most unlucky engineer within Apple.
If it were my phone (even aside from the dev phone aspect), I'd be pissed. I'd probably press charges. If it were just a matter of losing my phone, okay, these things happen, I should've been more careful. If it were a matter of losing my phone, someone picking it up and not knowing how to contact me, okay, that's understandable. But if someone picks up my phone, knows exactly who I am, and then sells it instead of giving it back, how is this not theft?
How would HP react if Mark Simon had paid for some information?
How would HP react if someone had left a briefcase in a bar, and it was sold, and it's content put online.
Not to mention the fact that Apple is incredibly secretive, and in this case, for good reason. The iPhone is a multi-billion dollar product, Apple only releases a new once a year, and it is a huge event.
