I read an article over on John Chow’s blog that lead me to an interesting bit of information from Kyle Conroy’s blog about buying Apple stock over buying Apple product. At first, I expected it to be a rant about how great the stock market is and how we should all invest in our favorite corporations, but after looking at it, it proved to be much more of a “why didn’t I think of that” type of story.

Although I loved the article, I now hate myself for not being “smarter” in my younger years. I guess I can chalk it up to just not being sure about the future, but then again when it comes to Apple, did anybody really think this company would fail? Google maybe, but Apple? Likely not.

The Breakdown

Essentially what Kyle did was compare the selling prices of almost all of Apple’s products to the stock price on the day these products came out and then again to today’s stock price. Here are the products I own for example:

• Original iPhone – Price paid on January 9th, 2010: $499 – If I had bought Apple stock on the same day instead of the iPhone, I would now have $1,460 in my portfolio.
• iPhone 3GS – Price paid on June 8th, 2009: $199 – I would now have $375 in my portfolio.
• 2.4G MacBook (13″ unibody, late-2008) – Price paid on October 14th, 2008: $1599 – I would now have $4,161 in my portfolio.

That would have given me a grand total of $5,996 in my portfolio today! Instead, I have negative $2597. Granted, the products have served me well and I don’t regret owning (or buying) them, but the point is still made.

Could I have forgone these items to have a few extra thousand in a volatile environment such is the stock market? Probably no more than any of us could forgo our new cars and expensive clothes. However, one item that took the cake on this list is one that I could have forgone if only I had that much money at the time.

Apple PowerBook G3 250 (Original/Kanga/3500) – Price on November 10th, 1997: $5700 – If you used that money to buy stock on the same day, you’d now have $330,563 in your portfolio! On the other hand, maybe you used that PowerBook to start your business and now you make more than $300,000 a year being your own boss! You never know how the tides may turn.

Go check out the rest of the list here and see what your Apple products could have amounted to.

I’m not the first to report this, but I will toss in my two cents. First off, if you haven’t heard, someone is claiming to have found an iPhone at a bar in San Jose and upon closer inspection, noticed that it was not your everyday iPhone! They go on to further claim that it is the newest iPhone expected out this summer and was disguised in an iPhone 3GS case.

The new iPhone is speculated to be called iPhone 4G or iPhone HD due to its faster network speed and HD screen. If the new phone is to sport a screen like the iPad, the price might still be too high for most. The HD screen for the iPad costs around $60 while the same screen in iPhone size might reach as high as $500. Gizmodo has launched a full story on the issue, and here is what they found in terms of hardware:

What’s new

• Front-facing video chat camera
• Improved regular back-camera (the lens is quite noticeably larger than the iPhone 3GS)
• Camera flash
• Micro-SIM instead of standard SIM (like the iPad)
• Improved display. It’s unclear if it’s the 960×460 display thrown around before—it certainly looks like it, with the “Connect to iTunes” screen displaying much higher resolution than on a 3GS.
• What looks to be a secondary mic for noise cancellation, at the top, next to the headphone jack
• Split buttons for volume
• Power, mute, and volume buttons are all metallic

What’s changed

• The back is entirely flat, made of either glass (more likely) or ceramic or shiny plastic in order for the cell signal to poke through. Tapping on the back makes a more hollow and higher pitched sound compared to tapping on the glass on the front/screen, but that could just be the orientation of components inside making for a different sound
• An aluminum border going completely around the outside
• Slightly smaller screen than the 3GS (but seemingly higher resolution)
• Everything is more squared off
• 3 grams heavier
• 16% Larger battery
• Internals components are shrunken, miniaturized and reduced to make room for the larger battery

Is this real?

According to John Gruber at Daring Fireball, Apple has has lost a prototype although Apple is considering the phone “stolen” and they would like it back. Gizmodo apparently got wind of this phone from the individual who found it and subsequently purchased the phone, disassembled it and created the exclusive article and breakdown as summarized above.

The person who found it also mentioned that at first, he/she was able to play with the operating system for a bit before Apple apparently remotely wiped it (naturally). Now, all they get is the “Connect to iTunes screen”. However, it has been said that when the OS was working, it appeared to be that of iPhone 4.0 which is due out around the same time as the expected new phone.

My two cents

I don’t really care if it’s real or not. I won’t be buying a new iPhone this year anyway. In an effort to save money, I have started a plan to skip a year for new phones, so I’m staying with my 3GS. However, this phone does look pretty slick and if this is the new design, I’m pretty happy with it.

I was just thinking how funny it would be if this whole episode was planned by Apple in an effort to generate more buzz while at the same time diverting attention away from the actual design of a new iPhone. I wouldn’t put it past Apple to send this out in the world so other phone makers can copy the look and feel and then turn around and release something completely different!

At any rate, if this is legit and the phone was “lost” or “stolen” and if Gizmodo actually paid a price to exploit it, I believe they’re going to have some tough questions to answer if Apple decides to pursue this issue legally.

UPDATE 4-20-10

This phone is indeed “a device that belongs to Apple” according to a letter sent to Gizmodo by Bruce Sewell, Senior VP and General Counsel for Apple. Here’s the full letter:

Also, we all know the who the person is that lost it! His name is Gray Powell an Apple software engineer. He truly did leave the phone on a bar stool after getting drunk on his 27th birthday. The bar is a place called Gourmet Haus Staudt and it’s located in Redwood City, CA. All you crazy Apple fans can now go here and see the very stool that the new iPhone was left on for the world to discover months before it came out. They have the stool behind bullet-proof glass and you can’t take pictures of it, but it’s sure worth the drive!

Get the full story on how this whole fiasco unfolded at Gizmodo.

As for me, I feel sorry for Gray and I hope Apple doesn’t fire him for this mistake. Apple (as well as all of us) knows that this won’t hurt sales at all! In fact, it might even boost sales. They can now use the constructive criticism that’s sure to come to make improvements. Of course we lose the excitement of seeing the latest device from Apple being unveiled, but isn’t this whole story exciting enough?

There it is folks…the new iPhone has been leaked and the most uptight and secured company in the world has had a major blow dealt to its ego. My thoughts? Let’s move on to more important things in life–like when will the iPhone come to Verizon?!

UPDATE 6-9-10

We all know now that the iPhone 4 has just been announced and all your dreams of owning one can now become a reality on June 24th. In fact, AT&T has even allowed early upgrades for previous iPhone owners. This means that I might actually be getting the new phone! All I have to do is find someone that wants to buy my 3GS from me. Good thing there’s people on eBay looking to buy phones without having to sign up for a 2 year contract.

UPDATE 6-21-10

After a crazy and disasterous pre-order system and a bunch of drama later, I finally ordered my iPhone 4 and can expect it at my door sometime this week!

It seems like a simple task and for the most part it is, but what happens if you set up your IMAP email account and then you get an error message stating this when trying to delete messages:

Unable to Move Message

Well first, let me send you over to an awesome guide for setting up IMAP email on iPhone alongside the Mac app, Mail. The link for this guide can be found here and it contains a very detailed look at the configuration from beginning to end. I only have one piece to add to it.

If you’re getting the message above, it’s simply because by default, iPhone wants to use the Trash, Sent and Draft folders on the phone rather than the same folders on your mail server. What this means is when you try to delete a message, you get an error saying it can’t be moved. For whatever reason, iPhone does not allow you to throw email away in your phone’s trash. My best guess on this would be that it defeats the purpose of IMAP, which is to completely map ALL folders on the server to each of your email devices.

At any rate, the fix is very simple. Follow these steps:

1. Go to the iPhone Settings
2. Tap on Mail, Contacts, Calendars
3. Tap on the email account you wish to edit
4. Scroll down to Advanced
5. Under the header ‘Mailbox Behaviors’, tap on each of the three mailbox folders and check off the identical box under the ‘On the Server’ header.

You’ll see that you’ve changed the folder from being ‘On My iPhone’ to ‘On the Server’. Once the changes have been made, you’ll be in business!

My friend had some issues with a random caller on her cell phone, so I decided to try out one of those reverse phone lookup services online to see what, if any, kind of information I could find on someone. Of course, all of these sites allow you to search any number for free, but if you want more information, you must pay.

Anyway, this site touts the availability of all this information:

At any rate, my intention in this operation was to at least get an idea of who might be behind these calls, so I opted to pay the $14.95 (I believe the site changes its pricing often because right now its saying $9.95). Here’s what I got for my fifteen dollars.

I’ve blocked out the “sensitive” information, but you can get the idea of what kind of information I got. Now, since running this report, I’ve gotten more information on the caller by simply talking to my girlfriend about it and I must say, the person who was on the other end of the phone does not match the person that showed up on the report! Also, the links you see only point toward more services you can pay for. These come in two flavors: a one-time, one-search charge or a monthly, unlimited searches charge.

I also want to point out that the report listed three addresses from persons with the same (or similar) name. To me, this was nothing more than a name search you’d do in the white pages of the phone book. In other words, useless. Imagine how long the report would be if the person’s name was John Smith?!

In conclusion, I didn’t particularly find any useful information from this website and I’m sure no others would be better. However, the site does NOT guarantee any amount of information you’ll get on the report, so I can’t complain too much. It was a crap shoot to begin with. This ‘review’ isn’t intended to sway you one way or another on using PhoneDetective.com or any similar site–I just wanted to share my experience.

Good luck!

Last words: Aside from you being a private detective where you might actually get some use out of the unlimited searching membership, I doubt you’ll get any real value from these services.