Lost and Found iPhone

Apple was rocked to the core in the spring of 2010 when an engineer left his iPhone 4 prototype at a Redwood City, California bar and a passing patron picked it up. The phone was incognito in a third gen case, but the patron soon realized he had something incredible in his hands. He sold the phone for $5,000 to the website Gizmodo, which ran a story about the highly-anticipated phone's new look and features. Virtually overnight, Gizmodo started feeling intense blowback, including an aggressive criminal investigation and a police raid of editor Jason Chen's home in which computers were seized. But some observers figure Apple came out ahead in spite of the leak, as the new iPhone got tons of free publicity from it. With security so notoriously tight at Apple, there were suspicions that Apple and Gizmodo were in cahoots, staging the whole incident to drum up buzz for the iPhone's second coming. A criminal investigation into the incident is nearing an end, and no one has been charged.

In case we didn't notice his svelte new figure (Jobs in 2011, Reuters/Landov)

Mac Attack

When Psystar, a small company in Florida, began selling Mac clones in 2008, Apple's response was fast and furious. But in the face of Apple's intimidating legal onslaught, Psystar kept rolling out their personal computers and hired a powerful anti-trust law firm to file a countersuit, claiming Apple violated anti-monopoly laws with its end-user agreement. Was there more behind this upstart company than replicating Macs? Apple seemed to think so when it named ten John Does in an updated complaint in the case. "The true names or capacities, whether individual, corporate, or otherwise, of these persons are unknown to Apple," the filing stated. Speculation followed that Apple suspected its competitors were secretly supporting Psystar. The John Does were never identified and Apple eventually settled in 2009 when Psystar agreed to pay damages and no longer produce the clones.

Finding Jobs

Apple stocks have risen and fallen in tandem with news of its chief exec's long battle with pancreatic cancer. Many believe the health of Steve Jobs is critical information for shareholders and that his prognosis was repeatedly covered-up. Apple kept his diagnosis a secret for nine months before Jobs revealed in 2004 that he'd been treated for pancreatic cancer, a disease that typically leads to a swift death. (Though Jobs had a rare, slower-moving form of the disease, the survival rate is still only five to seven years.) Jobs explained away his dramatic 2008 weight loss as a hormone imbalance, but soon announced a six-month leave of absence. His subsequent liver transplant was revealed four months after it took place through a leak to the Wall Street Journal. When Jobs took his latest leave in January, his statement gave no specifics about his condition and included no planned return date.