The past few days, Engadget has been going around and around with photos of the supposed new iPhone 4G.  Supposedly the phone was “Lost” in a bar in San Jose, and of course, they just happen to have photos of it.  Number one, I doubt anyone would even have the phone outside of the Apple premises unless the phone was really close to release and they were testing it.  This just does not happen without Apple taking serious precautions to not “Lose” their equipment or have someone inadvertently  photograph the item.

Secondly, how would they have it long enough to take apart and get the specs on.  The new supposed iPhone 4G has 80gb and looks like another popular phone on the market.  Apple does not copy other people’s standards, they create the standards.

Now a story in Apple Incider is saying that Gizmodo paid $10,000 for photos of the phone and hands on time.  This is a more likely scenario that Engadget also paid for the same rights, since Apple’s legal department has not slapped them with a cease and desist order yet.  One only has to look at Engadget’s original story to know it is fully of holes.  At least the people behind Gizmodo had the guts to come out and say, “Yeah we paid!” after they had produced an elaborate back story on the “Lost” phone.

The traditional Apple style is just because they design something does not mean it is necessarily going to be released.  But of course, if people are willing to pay Apple for a look at something that they are going to release, I am sure Apple is glad to have them pay and then write their dribble to help Apple whip up the masses of Apple fans into a frenzy so that when the product is finally released, they sell a million in the first week!  If you ask me, all this fake story, paying for information smacks of the payola scandal journalism that have been wracking the blogosphere lately.  It used to be that journalists just dug in deep and asked the right questions to get the scoop.  Now they pay money to get the story!

Over the past several years, several people have accused Apple, Inc. of copying their works or blocking their works and then introducing the Apple version of the app in question.  This ugly side of Apple, Inc. has once again raised it’s ugly head in the software realm.  It makes everyone think of Apple as the Borg and that all our software will be assimilated. This moniker has long been associated with Bill Gates and Microsoft, however, these days, with the rise of Apple to the forefront of the computing realm, it is now being associated with Steve Jobs and Apple.

Many of us who are long time Mac users already know which app we are referring to when we talk about the blatant copying that Apple did with the iPad introduction.  I have been using Delicious for a long time to manage my books and while I dont think it is perfect, it is a nice app.  Obviously Apple thought so too when they introduced  their book shelf at the latest release conference.  Many of the people i was with at the time said, “oh, did Apple buy Delicious?”

According to twitter complaints by Wil Shipley, the author of Delicious, Apple, Inc. has not approached him nor have they offered to buy his software.  Instead this is a case of them seeing something they liked and taking it.  Of course, with many of the former employees of Delicious working for Apple now, this is no real surprise.  However, the real surprise is that they would try to display something like that when almost anyone who has a Mac likely also has Delicious installed on their machines.

Apple really needs to do the right thing here and either confess their sins or buy the Delicious software rights from Wil. I doubt however that this will happen and once again another developer will have wasted his time writing a wonderful program for the Apple platform only to have Apple, Inc. steal it from under their noses.  Not Cool Apple!!