iPhone 4G may look nothing like prototype found in bar

iPhone users who think they’ve gotten a glimpse of the next model may be in for a surprise when Apple releases the iPhone 4G this summer. While various media outlets, analysts, and pundits have been quick to label the prototype found in a bar as the “next” iPhone, plenty in Apple’s history over the past decade suggests that the found “iPhone 4G” may bear little resemblance to the real iPhone 4G.

Stories from inside Apple are rampant about how the original iPod from 2001 was developed in secret. Employees working on various features of the secret device were each given a phony prototype to work on whose only accurate feature was the one that was relevant to that specific employee. More recent insider stories have detailed how Apple employees who have access to actual upcoming products must go through a draconian series of security procedures just to get to the device, suggesting that getting an actual prototype off of Apple’s campus would be unlikely. What’s more likely to be the case is that the “prototype” the relatively low level Apple employee was working on was actually a dummy device rigged up so he could work on his specific aspect of the iPhone 4G without having knowledge of the rest of the device’s features.

This may explain the exterior design of the device, which many in the Apple community have criticized for looking more like a cheap iPhone knockoff than an actual iPhone; it could simply be a phony housing designed to keep the public from seeing the “next iPhone” even if the prototype in question did end up ending in a bar in San Jose.